Amy screamed and
ran behind her mother, who visibly shrank. Katy stood her ground; but
the bat-winged fiends in Dore's illustrations to Dante occurred to her,
and her fingers trembled as she dropped some money in the cups.
Even mendicant friars are human. Katy ceased to tremble as she observed
that one of them, as he retreated, walked backward for some distance in
order to gaze longer at Mrs. Ashe, whose cheeks were flushed with bright
pink and who was looking particularly handsome. She began to laugh
instead, and Mrs. Ashe laughed too; but Amy could not get over the
impression of having been attacked by demons, and often afterward
recurred with a shudder to the time when those awful black _things_ flew
at her and she hid behind mamma. The ghastly pictures of the Triumph of
Death, which were presently exhibited to them on the walls of the Campo
Santo, did not tend to reassure her, and it was with quite a pale,
scared little face that she walked toward the hotel where they were to
lunch, and she held fast to Katy's hand.
Their way led them through a narrow street inhabited by the poorer
classes,--a dusty street with high shabby buildings on either side and
wide doorways giving glimpses of interior courtyards, where empty
hogsheads and barrels and rusty caldrons lay, and great wooden trays of
macaroni were spread out in the sun to dry. Some of the macaroni was
gray, some white, some yellow; none of it looked at all desirable to
eat, as it lay exposed to the dust, with long lines of ill-washed
clothes flapping above on wires stretched from one house to another.
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