Or perhaps it might be a wonderful double flight of steps
with massive balustrades and pillars with urns, on which sat a crowd of
figures in strange costumes and attitudes, who all looked as though they
had stepped out of pictures, but who were in reality models waiting for
artists to come by and engage them. No matter what it was,--a bit of
oddly tinted masonry with a tuft of brown and orange wallflowers hanging
upon it, or a vegetable stall where endive and chiccory and curly
lettuces were arranged in wreaths with tiny orange gourds and scarlet
peppers for points of color,--it was all Rome, and, by virtue of that
word, different from any other place,--more suggestive, more
interesting, ten times more mysterious than any other could possibly be,
so Katy thought.
This fact consoled her for everything and anything,--for the fleas, the
dirt, for the queer things they had to eat and the still queerer odors
they were forced to smell! Nothing seemed of any particular consequence
except the deep sense of enjoyment, and the newly discovered world of
thought and sensation of which she had become suddenly conscious.
The only drawback to her happiness, as the days went on, was that
little Amy did not seem quite well or like herself. She had taken a
cold on the journey from Naples, and though it did not seem serious,
that, or something, made her look pale and thin. Her mother said she
was growing fast, but the explanation did not quite account for the
wistful look in the child's eyes and the tired feeling of which she
continually complained.
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