Mrs. Ashe, with vague uneasiness, began to talk
of cutting short their Roman stay and getting Amy off to the more
bracing air of Florence. But meanwhile there was the Carnival close at
hand, which they must by no means lose; and the feeling that their
opportunity might be a brief one made her and Katy all the more anxious
to make the very most of their time. So they filled the days full with
sights to see and things to do, and came and went; sometimes taking Amy
with them, but more often leaving her at the hotel under the care of a
kind German chambermaid, who spoke pretty good English and to whom Amy
had taken a fancy.
"The marble things are so cold, and the old broken things make me so
sorry," she explained; "and I hate beggars because they are dirty, and
the stairs make my back ache; and I'd a great deal rather stay with
Maria and go up on the roof, if you don't mind, mamma."
This roof, which Amy had chosen as a playplace, covered the whole of the
great hotel, and had been turned into a sort of upper-air garden by the
simple process of gravelling it all over, placing trellises of ivy here
and there, and setting tubs of oranges and oleanders and boxes of gay
geraniums and stock-gillyflowers on the balustrades. A tame fawn was
tethered there. Amy adopted him as a playmate; and what with his company
and that of the flowers, the times when her mother and Katy were absent
from her passed not unhappily.
Katy always repaired to the roof as soon as they came in from their long
mornings and afternoons of sight-seeing.
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