.MTM5OA.MTIwODUy

to be boys from the home province; the table arrangements were attractive and the big dishes of smoking polenta comforted the saddest hearts.

   By the next day it was time to think

about letter writing. I was stupefied to discover that nobody in second class was able to write except four priests and myself. The priests consorted among themselves and bowed their head simultaneously over their black books, and I found myself settled at one of the large round tables in the dining room, with clients as far as the eye could see.

   Some of them were definite as to what they

wanted to say; others were uncertain and shy. One hovered on the outskirts for days, before she found the courage to ask for her letter, ^having explained that it was to go to her daughter, Maria Pia, who was young and beautiful and as yet unmarried * Maria Pia, it seemed, had had an accident which had spoiled her beauty, and