The silver river, brimming from a recent flood, lay sleepily like a gorged serpent between the hay meadows on either side.

Flowers of the edge, meadow-sweet, ragged-robin and yellow flags, dipped into the water; willows spread their thin green over the embattled white and blue of the sky; here and there a rat plunged or a bird fled shrieking; bushes of wild roses flung out their branches, and everywhere the heat and the odours of a rich open land proclaimed the fulness of the midland summer.
Connie made the life of the leading boat.

Something had roused her, and she began to reveal some of the "parlour-tricks," with which she had amused the Palazzo Barberini in her Roman days.

A question from Pryce stirred her into quoting some of the folk-songs of the Campagna, some comic, some tragic, fitting an action to them so lively and true that even those of her hearers who could not follow the dialect sat entranced.

Then some one said--"But they ought to be sung!" And suddenly, though rather shyly, she broke into a popular _canzone_ of the Garibaldian time, describing the day of Villa Gloria; the march of the morning, the wild hopes, the fanfaronade; and in the evening, a girl hiding a wounded lover and weeping both for him and "Italia" undone.
The sweet low sounds floated along the river.
"Delicious!" said Sorell, holding his oar suspended to listen.