Spring had come in her
fairest shape to Italy. The Campagna had lost its brown and tawny hues
and taken on a tinge of fresher color. The olive orchards were budding
thickly. Almond boughs extended their dazzling shapes across the blue
sky. Arums and acanthus and ivy filled every hollow, roses nodded from
over every gate, while a carpet of violets and cyclamen and primroses
stretched over the fields and freighted every wandering wind with
fragrance.
When once the Campagna with its long line of aqueducts, arches, and
hoary tombs was left behind, and the carriage slowly began to mount the
gradual rises of the hill, Amy revived. With every breath of the fresher
air her eyes seemed to brighten and her voice to grow stronger. She held
Mabel up to look at the view; and the sound of her laugh, faint and
feeble as it was, was like music to her mother's ears.
Amy wore a droll little silk-lined cap on her head, over which a downy
growth of pale-brown fuzz was gradually thickening. Already it showed a
tendency to form into tiny rings, which to Amy, who had always hankered
for curls, was an extreme satisfaction. Strange to say, the same thing
exactly had happened to Mabel; her hair had grown out into soft little
round curls also! Uncle Ned and Katy had ransacked Rome for this
baby-wig, which filled and realized all Amy's hopes for her child. On
the same excursion they had bought the materials for the pretty spring
suit which Mabel wore, for it had been deemed necessary to sacrifice
most of her wardrobe as a concession to possible fever-germs.
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