Of course, there were spectators laughing: she had no need to look round to assure herself of that.
Well! it would, perhaps, be better to be forced to think more of Paradise. But at the thought that the dear accustomed world was no longer in her choice, there gathered some of those hard tears which just moisten elderly eyes, and she could see but dimly a large rough hand holding a red cross, which was suddenly thrust before her over the shoulders of the boys, while a strong guttural voice said—
“Only four quattrini , madonna, blessing and all! Buy it. You’ll find a comfort in it now your wig’s gone. Deh! what are we sinners doing all our lives? Making soup in a basket, and getting nothing but the scum for our stomachs. Better buy a blessing, madonna! Only four quattrini ; the profit is not so much as the smell of a danaro, and it goes to the poor.”
Monna Brigida, in dim-eyed confusion, was proceeding to the further submission of reaching money from her embroidered scarsella, at present hidden by her silk mantle, when the group round her, which she had not yet entertained the idea of escaping, opened before a figure as welcome as an angel loosing prison-bolts.
“Romola, look at me!” said Monna Brigida, in a piteous tone, putting out both her hands.
The white troop was already moving away, with a slight consciousness that its zeal about the headgear had been superabundant enough to afford a dispensation from any further demand for penitential offerings.
“Dear cousin, don’t be distressed,” said Romola, smitten with pity, yet hardly able to help smiling at the sudden apparition of her kinswoman in