Doing the family washing in Italy
Only when she sang and danced and the people gathered around her did she seem to take much notice of her neighbors.
"Such a voice in one so small! It is from the angels!" the women would say, as, charmed by her singing and her grace, they would toss her un soldo (a half–penny).
The other children would run with every soldo to buy macaroni, for the children were always hungry in San Lucia, where even soldi are scarce; but Pappina, a true little Neapolitan, loved dress and display. She spent her money for trinkets with which to adorn her bewitching, graceful self.
Pappina's love of beauty sprang from her eager little heart like a sweet flower from a patch of rich earth on a rocky hillside.
It grew with very little nourishment from without, for in all her seven years she had hardly been out of sight of the hivelike tenement where her hard–working father himself had been born. On rare days she was taken to a near–by street where for generations the women of the neighborhood had gone to do their family washing at a free fountain; and of course, as all little girls in Italy do, she went to a gray old church regularly with her mother. Down the narrow street, past the mean shops, to church was the longest journey out into the world the bright–eyed little maiden had ever taken.
In San Lucia
Her brothers, however, were great travelers. Sometimes at night they came home with tales of the wonderful foreigners who thronged the Toledo, of the splendid shops where all the treasures of the earth were gathered—jewels that sparkled like the sun; flowers that smelled like a breath of heaven; rich and gay clothes! Pappina sat with shining eyes and listened to these amazing tales until her heart was full of a longing to go and see for herself the wonders described.