In the passage outside stood four sad-faced young men of the card tribe, bearing two large and extraordinary implements. One looked like a couple of kitchen chairs lashed together foot to foot, to make a cage, or frame, the space between being lined with sheets of metal. The other was a great copper dish with big enough holes pricked in the cover to show the red glow from a quantity of acrid smelling wood-ashes. All four came into the room, solemn and silent, while we watched them, struck dumb with amazement. They set down the things on the floor, turned open the larger bed of the two, which Mamma and I were to share, put in the huge frame, shoved the copper bowl inside it, as a cook would shove a dish into the oven, and replaced the covering. Then they stood and gravely waited for ten or fifteen minutes, till they thought that the dampness had been cooked out. We stood by also, momentarily expecting to see the bed break into flames; but nothing happened, except rather a nice, hot smell. At last, with one accord they flew at the blankets, turned them down, took out dish and frame, and repeated the same process with Maida's narrow bunk. It took us nearly an hour afterwards to get ready for bed, but when we crept in at last it was like cuddling down in a hot bird's-nest, odorous of cooked moss. In the daytime we hadn't noticed that the hotel was particularly noisy, though it apparently had most other vices; but ten o'clock seemed the hour when all the activities of the house and town began. Church bells boomed; electric bells rang; myriads of heavy carts rolled through the stone-paved square; people sang, whistled, laughed, gossipped, quarrelled, and even danced in the street under our windows, while those in the hotel had apparently been advised by their physicians to run up and down stairs for hours without stopping, for the good of their livers. It was a busy night for everybody, and my one consolation was in planning the dreadful tortures I would inflict on the whole population of Cuneo if I were King of Italy. I thought of some very original things, but the worst of it was, when I did finally fall asleep I dreamed that they were being tried on me. XIII A CHAPTER OF WILD BEASTS "The dear thing! How nice to see it again! I could kiss it," I heard Maida saying. Something was snorting dreadfully, too. I'm not sure which waked me. But I sleepily asked Maida what it was she could kiss. "Why, the automobile, of course," she replied. "Now, Beechy, _don't_ drop off again. It's down there in the courtyard. Can't you hear it calling? This is the third time I've tried to wake you up." "Oh, I thought it was the Ten of Clubs roaring, while I dipped him repeatedly into boiling cod-liver oil," I murmured; but I jumped out of bed and dressed myself as if the house were on fire.