ing at him, with her chin in the air, while he climbed up to the treetops after the birds' nests; and he thought also of Don Alfonso, who used to come and see him from the neighboring villa, and how they would stretch themselves out on their bellies, stirring up crickets' nests with straws. All these things he considered and reconsidered for hours and hours, as he sat on the edge of the brook, holding his knees between his arms, and thinking of the tall walnuts of Tebidi, and the thick bushes in the valleys and the slopes of the hills, green with sumachs, and the gray olive trees spreading through the valley like a fog, and the red-tiled roof of the house, and the campanile that looked like "a handle of a salt cellar" among the oranges of the garden.
Here the campagna stretched away naked, desert, speckled with dried grass, blending silently with the distant horizon.
In Spring the bean pods had begun to fill out when Mara came to la Salonia with
