I will put up the awning, signorina, the sun shall not touch you." She continued to shake her head and her eyes wandered suggestively to the hydrangeas, but Giuseppe still made a feint of preoccupation.

Not being a cruel mistress, she dropped the subject, and turned back to her conversation with the washer-girls.

They were discussing--a pleasant topic for a sultry summer afternoon--the probable content of Paradise.
The three girls were of the opinion that it was made up of warm sunshine and cool shade, of flowers and singing birds and sparkling waters, of blue skies and cloud-capped mountains--not unlike, it will be observed, the very scene which at the moment stretched before them.

In so much they were all agreed, but there were several debatable points.

Whether the stones were made of gold, and whether the houses were not gold too, and, that being the case, whether it would not hurt your eyes to look at them.
Marietta declared, blasphemously, as the others thought, that she preferred a simple gray stone villa or at most one of pink stucco, to all the golden edifices that Paradise contained.
It was by now fifteen minutes past four, and a spectator had arrived, though none of the five were aware of his presence.