Crazy Radio eBooks

Their governesses
and duennas accompanied them. Barefooted brown children darted in and
out, dodging pedestrians and horses. Priests and black-robed students
chattered vivaciously. School-boys with peaked caps hastened homeward.
The orphans from Queen Margherita's Home, higher up the hill, marched
sturdily through the dust to the sound of a boyish but desperately
martial music. It was a wonderfully vivid world, but the eyes of
Artois wandered away from it, over the terraces, the houses, and the
tree-tops. Their gaze dropped down to the sea. Far off, Capri rose out
of the light mist produced by the heat. And beyond was Sicily.
Why had that woman, Ruffo's mother, wept just now? What was her
tragedy? he wondered. Accurately he recalled her face, broad now, and
seamed with the wrinkles brought by trouble and the years.
He recalled, too, Ruffo's attitude as the boy listened to her
vehement, her almost violent harangue. How boyish, how careless it had
been--yet not unkind or even disrespectful, only wonderfully natural
and wonderfully young.


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