Her mother was sitting by one of the windows talking with Matteo, who had just come up from the Campagna. He had an unsocial habit of eating alone, and, as he ate nothing when down in the vineyard, always wanted his supper as soon as he came up. The table was set for him with snow-white cloth and napkin, silver knife, fork and spoon, a loaf of bread and a decanter of golden-sparkling wine icy cold from the grotto hewn in the rock beneath the house; and he was just eating his _minestra_ of vegetables when his sister came in. At the other end of the long table was a head of crisp white lettuce, lying on a clean linen towel, and two bottles--one of white vinegar, the other of oil as sweet as cream and as bright as sunshine. Monte Compatri had no need to send to Lucca for oil of olives while its own orchards dropped such streams of pure richness. The room was large and dingy. The brick floor had never known other cleansing than sprinkling and sweeping, the yellow-washed walls had become with time a pale, mottled brown, the paint had disappeared under a fixed dinginess which the dusting-brush alone could not remove, and the glass of the windows had never been washed except by the rain. Yet, for all that, the place had an air of cleanliness. For though these people do not clean their houses more than they clean their yards, yet their clothing and tables and beds are clean. Plentiful white linen, stockings like snow, and bright dishes and metals give a look of freshness and show well on the dim background. Heavy walnut presses, carved and black with age, stood against the walls, drinking-glasses and candlesticks sparkled on a dark bureau-top, there was a bright picture or two, and the sunlighted tinware of a house at the other side of the street threw a cluster of tiny rays like a bouquet of light in at the window. Silvia received these sun-blossoms on her head when she placed herself at the lower end of the table. She pushed the sleeves of her white sack back from her slim white arms, and began washing the lettuce-leaves in a bowl of fresh water and breaking them in the towel. The leaves broke with a fine snap and dropped in pieces as stiff as paper into a large dark-blue plate of old Japanese ware. A connoisseur in porcelain would have set such a plate on his drawing-room wall as a picture. "How does Claudio work?" the mother asked of her son. "He works well," Matteo replied. "He is worth two of our common fellows, if he _is_ educated."