We drove out again Fiesole way. It was enchanting--more roses come out every day. There was a perfect fringe of pink roses hanging over some of the old grey walls. As it was Sunday, and a lovely day, there were quantities of people about. There are scarcely any costumes left, but all Italians like bright colours, and the red and green fichus and aprons looked pretty and gay as the various groups passed us. Some of the old women were terribly bent, with such brown, wrinkled faces--one could quite see that they had toiled up and down hills under the Italian scorching sun all their lives, with baskets and bundles of fagots on their backs--but the old eyes were keen and smiling. They don't look so utterly starved and wretched as Ouida (and others) say they are. I suppose they live on nothing, and go on quite simply, leading the same lives that their fathers and mothers did before them, without knowing of anything better. Tell Henrietta I haven't made much progress in the travelling work she presented me with. I did take it out into the drawing-room one evening, but the immediate result of that was disastrous. I took it out of the bag proudly, to show that I had silk, embroidery, scissors, needles, etc., like everybody else, but left it on the table. Somebody wanted a book or a newspaper also on the table; turned everything upside down, and the work, silk, needles, thimble, etc., went rolling all over the floor. When you think of the crevasses of an old parquet floor in an Italian Palace, you can imagine how difficult it was to find anything again. The two girls were hours on their knees looking for my thimble which never turned up--however, that will be an excellent reason for buying a pretty little gold thimble with a row of turquoises that I saw the other day in a shop on the Ponte Vecchio. There is evidently a fate against my becoming an accomplished needlewoman, and I am afraid the "clumsy little fingers," which used to worry you so in the old days of music lessons, have not improved with advancing years. Perhaps I shall take to work in my old age. Isn't it George Sand who says (and I don't believe she ever took a needle in her hand), "Don't despise our less ambitious sisters who work. Many great resolutions and silent abnegations have been woven into the bright flowers and delicate tracings of the embroidery in the long hours spent over the frame." Monday Night, February 22, 1880.