Meanwhile Assunta, the old servant, glanced at Gianbattista, rolled up her eyes with an air of resignation, and spread out her withered hands for a moment with a gesture of despair, instantly drawing them in again beneath the folds of her grey woollen shawl.
"Gadding!" muttered Marzio, as he entered the narrow door from which the dark steps led abruptly upwards.

"Gadding--always gadding! And who minds the soup-kettle when you are gadding, I should like to know?
The cat, I suppose! Oh, these women and their priests! These priests and these women!" "Lucia is minding the soup-kettle," gasped Maria Luisa, as she puffed up stairs behind her thin and active husband.
"Lucia!" cried Marzio angrily, a flight of steps higher.

"I suppose you will bring her up to be woman of all work?
Well, she could earn her living then, which is more than you do! After all, it is better to mind a soup-kettle than to thump a piano and to squeal so that I can hear her in the shop opposite, and it is better than hanging about the church all the morning, or listening to Paolo's drivelling talk.

By all means keep her in the kitchen." It was hard to say whether Signora Pandolfi was puffing or sighing as she paused for breath upon the landing, but there was probably something of both in the labour of her lungs.

She was used to Marzio.