Two little boys turning somersaults by the side of the carriage suddenly recalled to her mind the boys at the villa, and her promise to bring them a present from the festa. Not once had she thought of them during the day, and the only possible present now was the inevitable sweet chocolate of Castel Vivalanti. She glanced at her watch; there was still an hour before dinner, and she ordered Giovanni to drive up the hill to the town. Giovanni respectfully begged her pardon, with the suggestion that the horses were tired; they had had a long journey and the hill was steep. Marcia replied, with a touch of sharpness, that the horses could rest all day to-morrow. They wound up the gradual ascent at a walk, in company with the procession coming home for the night. It was a sight which Marcia always watched with fresh interest: field-workers with mattocks on their shoulders trudging wearily back to supper and bed; washerwomen, their clothes in baskets on their heads, calling cheery good-byes to one another; files of ragged little donkeys laden with brush, sheep and pigs and goats, and long-horned oxen--where they were all to be stowed for the night was an ever-recurring mystery.
Under the smiling moons of the Porta della Luna the carriage came to a halt, and the crowd of Castel Vivalanti boys, who were in the habit of scouring the highway for coppers, fell upon it vociferously. Marcia had exhausted her soldi in Genazzano, and with a laughing shake of her head she motioned them away. But the boys would not be shaken off; they swarmed about the carriage like little rats, shrilly demanding money. She continued to shake her head, and instantly their cries were transferred to the taunts of the afternoon.
'Grano! Grano!' they shouted in chorus; and Giovanni raised his whip and drove them away.
Marcia paused with her foot on the carriage-step, puzzling over this new cry which was suddenly assailing her at every turn.
'What is the matter, Giovanni? Why are they always shouting "Wheat"?'
He waved his whip disdainfully. '_Chi sa_, signorina? They are of no account. Do not listen to their foolishness.'
They were the same children to whom she had given chocolate not many days before. 'They forget quickly!' she said to herself, 'perhaps, after all, Paul was right, and beauty is their strongest virtue.'