And as she recalls that night, she sees a burnished beetle on the ground before her, sparkling along the dust as it makes its slow way to a tuft of maize, and puts out her foot and kills it. The country girl recalls a superstition connected with these bright beetles--that if one was killed, the sun, "his friend up there," would not shine for two days. They said it in her country "when she was young"; and one of the others scoffs at the phrase, but looking at her, exclaims that indeed she _is_ no longer young: how thin her plump arms have got--does Cecco beat her still? But Cecco doesn't matter, nor the loss of her young freshness, so long as she keeps her "curious hair"-- "I wish they'd find a way to dye our hair Your colour . . . . . . The men say they are sick of black." A girl who now speaks for the first and last time retorts upon this one that very likely "the men" are sick of _her_ hair, and does she pretend that _she_ has tasted lampreys and ortolans . . . but in the midst of this new speaker's railing, the girl with wine-stained fingers exclaims-- "Why there! Is not that Pippa We are to talk to, under the window--quick-- . . ." The country girl thinks that if it were Pippa, she would be singing, as they had been told. "Oh, you sing first," retorts the other-- "Then if she listens and comes close . . . I'll tell you, Sing that song the young English noble made Who took you for the purest of the pure, And meant to leave the world for you--what fun!" So, not the country girl, but she whose black hair discontents her, sings, and Pippa "listens and comes close," for the song has words as sweet as any of her own . . . and the red-fingered one calls to her to come closer still, they won't eat her--why, she seems to be "the very person the great rich handsome Englishman has fallen so violently in love with." She shall hear all about it; and on the steps of the church Pippa is told by this creature, Zanze, how a foreigner, "with blue eyes and thick rings of raw silk-coloured hair," had gone to the mills at Asolo a month ago and fallen in love with Pippa. Pippa, however, will not keep him in love with her, unless she takes more care of her personal appearance--she must "pare her nails pearlwise," and buy shoes "less like canoes" for her small feet; _then_ she may hope to feast upon lampreys and drink Breganze, as Zanze does. . . . And now Pippa sings one of her songs, and it might have been chosen expressly to please the country girl. It begins-- "Overhead the tree-tops meet, Flowers and grass spring 'neath our feet; There was nought above me, and nought below My childhood had not learned to know"