Adriano laughed as he looked after them. “How queer these _forestieri_ are!” he said. “They want to see everything and know the name of everything. The signorine here ask me the name of every tree and flower in the garden, and every bird and bug that moves. How should I know? My niece, Giovannina, says there’s an English-woman going about getting the poor old women to tell her fables, and ghost-stories, and all sorts of nonsense; and they say that she prints it in a book. They must be in great need of books to read. Then the _padrona_ will stand and look at the moon as if she never saw nor heard of it before, and expected it to drop down into the garden and break into golden _scudi_. I saw her one day this spring, on _Monte Cavallo_, stand half an hour and stare at the sky, just because it was red where the sun went down. The sky is always red when the sun sets in clouds. Two or three _signori_ thought she was stopping to be noticed, and they walked about her, and one of them leaned on the railing close to her, staring at her all the time, and by and by spoke to her. I went up behind her, but she didn’t know I was there. She hadn’t seen any one till she heard the man say good-evening to her. You should have seen the way she looked at him. Then she caught sight of me. 'Adriano,’ she said, 'I’ll give you a hundred lire to fling that fellow over the terrace head first.’ I told her that it would cost me more than a hundred lire to do it. She put out her lips—I suppose she thought I was a coward—and muttered a word in English. Then she said to me, as she turned her back on the man, loud enough for him to hear: 'How dare such rascals come up when the sun shines!’ But she wouldn’t let me walk beside her, but made me follow her all the way home. And she was so mad that, when I started to say something as we reached the door, she stopped me. 'When I want you to speak, I shall ask you a question,’ she said.” “The Signora is very kind,” Annunciata said. “I didn’t say she wasn’t,” the man replied dogmatically. “But it doesn’t become ladies to go into the street alone, nor to stop to look at anything, nor to glance about them.”