CHAPTER XXVI.

IDA'S FESTA.

August 12.-This is Ida's birthday; she has eight candles on her cake to-day, that is to say, she is eight years old.

Now Ida's birthdays have hitherto been celebrated with juvenile garden parties, she being the only "summer bird" of the family, and the children's minds have been greatly troubled as to how Ida's festa was to be kept in these mountain wilds. Not a friend or schoolfellow within twenty miles of us, even the dear cousins are half a day's journey distant; the five little faces looked very anxious. How dreadful it would be to have a birthday that wasn't a festa at all! Some of them have serious doubts whether such a birthday would "count."

Mamma comes to the rescue with a "happy thought." We will ask all the village children, and have a picnic.

"Oh, delightful!" cry a chorus of dancing, handclapping little things, and away fly Isa and Ida, hand-in-hand as usual, to give their invitations to the pretty children of the hamlet.

So it came to pass that yesterday we had a grand "oven morning," and a batch of cakes and pies was baked; then the mother and Aunt Louisa were closeted in the room of the latter for an hour or two, and all little people denied admittance. Harry declared he saw the cook carry in a large pentola, so they were certainly cooking. Isa and Ida, with feminine knowledge of the improbability of cooking without fire, scorned this idea, and said they heard a great rustling of paper. But at last, tired of mysteries, the children returned to play, till nurse called them to dress for the feast.

The company are asked for four o'clock, but at three the courtyard is full. There are Isolina the melancholy, and Isolina the gay; there is Assuntina, as motherlike as usual, with her stolid baby sister in her tired arms; there are the little boys in their Sunday trousers, which differ from their week-day ones by the patches being of a brighter colour, and the original material a little more visible in places.

At four o'clock we begin to load ourselves and

depart across the fields to a quiet little glade in the wood opposite the house. Some of us take laden baskets, one bears the white teapot, Harry walks off with a campstool. The pretty housemaid carries a kettle carefully held away from her light print gown. The plump cook, emulous of the grace of the contadini girls, balances a basket of crockery-ware on her head and gaily walks off with it; the mother, with her eyes anxiously fixed on this perilous load, following with an armful of shawls and wraps for the children when evening sets in.

Aunt Louisa has a mysterious pentola, tied down with paper like a jam pot, but nobody is allowed to be curious about this treasure which she guards so carefully.

The children run, dance, skip along merrily, the brown, barefoot little guests hand-in-hand with their entertainers in white frocks.

The glade is soon reached, a few sloping fields where chequered shades lie on the grass from the trees of the wood that skirts them, lichened rocks with ferns at their feet are scattered in picturesque confusion amid the trees. On the left rises a smooth grassy knoll, with rocks and a few young chestnut trees on it ; and here we make our

encampment. The children

are dispersed to pick

up sticks in the wood, and come back, some dragging great branches, others with their little arms full of twigs.

Great excitement reigns while the fire is lighted, the whole party dance round it like infant fire worshippers, Harry, and Isa the gymnast, even taking flying leaps over it.

Meanwhile Aunt Louisa and Rosie, a young friend staying with us, have decorated one of the young trees with the eight candles which mark Ida's age, and "the mother" and others spread the cloth in true picnic fashion on the grass, where in a little time all the party gather round, some reclining like nymphs, some sitting like Turks or tailors, some squatting as only children or savage squaws can do.

The independent baby makes herself a soft nest in the mother's spreading skirts, and forthwith begins to munch bread and butter. The barefoot guests behave with great decorum, and while eating bread and jam with approval, glance doubtfully at the plum cake as at something unknown. It is neither like necci nor polenta, it is not bread or frittata; then what can it be? They are helped to it, but till Isa and Ida eat some before their eyes, cannot be induced to begin. At length laughing, black-eyed Isolina bites a morsel,-she

smiles and nods her head, takes a larger piece, and breaks into a joyous laugh.

Si, è buono," (Yes, it is good) she says, and all the others take heart and try too, except the solemn little Giacomo, who evidently looks on it as an insult to offer him any such outlandish food; and with his finger in his mouth, slowly rises and goes off to his mother, who with the other matrons is watching from behind the hedge.

Meanwhile Ida's candles make a diversion; they are not effective as an illumination, it being still broad daylight, but every now and then one of the pink paper shades catches fire, and a little flame leaps up among the green branches, and by these fairy fires we check off the number of Ida's years.

After tea Aunt Louisa brings out her mysterious pentola, and hangs it up on the branch of a tree. The whole party rush up to play the truly Tuscan game of pentolaccia. They are blindfolded one at a time, and have a stick put into their hand with which to break the pentola if they can. The independent baby begins, but does not do much damage, even though she wields the stick with two fat little hands. She rolls over with the force of the blow, and is picked up heels uppermost, smiling serenely and anxious to return to the