to my imaginings, I should be like some winged creature, living for ever in air. I’m glad I work in words, and not in marble, like Carlin here. And, apropos, suppose we should go in there.” Carlin was the sculptor whose studio was attached to _Casa Ottant’-Otto_. He was a great friend of the Signora, who had permission to see him work when she liked, and to go and come with her friends as it pleased her. “We may as well take our work,” she said. “It is pleasanter there than here this morning. When Mr. Vane and Isabel come in from their visit, we shall hear them ring the bell.” The two went out to the _loggia_, where the morning sun was blazing hotly on the pink and purple morning-glories, and, passing an ante-room where two marble-workers were chipping away, each at his snowy block, tapped at the door of an inner chamber. A loud “_Avanti!_” answered the knock. “Welcome!” said a voice when they entered. “Make yourselves at home. I’m busy with a model, you see.” Bianca glanced about in search of the source of this salutation, and perceived presently a large head looking at them over the top of a screen. The rest of the body was invisible. This head was so colossal and of such a height that for a moment she doubted if it might not be a colored bust on a shelf. But its eyes moved, and in a second it nodded itself out of sight, leaving on the gazer an impression of having seen a large, kind Newfoundland dog. Poor Carlin was very shaggy, his hair almost too profuse, and constantly getting itself tangled, and his beard growing nearly to his eyes. But the eyes were bright, dark, and pleasant, the nose superlatively beautiful, and, by some unexplained means, every one was aware at once that under this mass of shadowy beard there were two deep dimples, one in the cheek and another in the chin. Before they had well shut the door, the screen was swept aside and the sculptor’s whole form appeared. It was so large as to reduce the head to perfect proportion, and was clad in a suit of dull blue cotton worn with a careless grace that was very picturesque. One hand held a bit of clay; the other pulled off his skull-cap in reverence to his visitors. He said nothing, but immediately replaced the cap, and began rolling the clay between his hands. He was modelling a group, and his model, a beautiful young _contadina_, stood before him with her arms up, holding a copper water-vase on her head. Her mother sat near, a dark, bilious, wrinkled Lady Macbeth, who wore her soiled and faded clothes as if they had been velvets and embroideries, and reclined in an old leather chair as superbly as if she sat on a gilded throne with a canopy over her head. A pair of huge rings of pure gold hung from her ears, and two heavy gold chains surrounded her dark neck, and dropped each its golden locket on her green bodice. “We won’t mind them,” the Signora said to her friend. “Come and be introduced to the bird of our country.”