Well,
all the better for us Italians!" with a shrug of her shoulders.
"But, Maria, it was only sixteen cents that we paid, and look at those
flowers! There are at least half a bushel of them."
"Sixteen cents for garbage like that! The Signorina would better let me
make her bargains for her. _Gia! Gia!_ No Italian lady would have paid
more than eleven sous for such useless _roba_. It is evident that the
Signorina's countrymen eat gold when at home, they think so little of
casting it away!"
Altogether, what with the comfort and quiet of this little home, the
numberless delightful things that there were to do and to see, and
Viessieux's great library, from which they could draw books at will
to make the doing and seeing more intelligible, the month at
Florence passed only too quickly, and was one of the times to which
they afterward looked back with most pleasure. Amy grew steadily
stronger, and the freedom from anxiety about her after their long
strain of apprehension was restful and healing beyond expression to
both mind and body.
Their very last excursion of all, and one of the pleasantest, was to the
old amphitheatre at Fiesole; and it was while they sat there in the soft
glow of the late afternoon, tying into bunches the violets which they
had gathered from under walls whose foundations antedate Rome itself,
that a cheery call sounded from above, and an unexpected surprise
descended upon them in the shape of Lieutenant Worthington, who having
secured another fifteen days' furlough, had come to take his sister on
to Venice.
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