PAPPINA
THE LITTLE WANDERER

THE PUNCHINELLOS

CHAPTER I

Pappina Pierno

It was away up in that part of Naples called San Lucia, where clothes seem forever hanging out to dry, that Pappina lived with the rest of the Pierno family, a tribe too large to enumerate.

Pappina was only seven years of age, but she was different from every other child living in dingy, dirty San Lucia. Few even of the grown people of the neighborhood cared to be clean, and as for their hair—why, they paid no attention to that, but let it go as it found itself. But Pappina took delight in combing her silky black hair and in washing her beautiful face and dimpled hands.

This was a wonder to all who lived near.

"The one who washes! Per bacco [Great heavens]!" they said when they saw her. But their amazement did not disturb Pappina. She went about her play in the sordid old tenement–court like a sunbeam astray.

Doing the family washing in Italy

Only when she sang and danced and the people gathered around her did she seem to take much notice of her neighbors.

"Such a voice in one so small! It is from the angels!" the women would say, as, charmed by her singing and her grace, they would toss her un soldo (a half–penny).

The other children would run with every soldo to buy macaroni, for the children were always hungry in San Lucia, where even soldi are scarce; but Pappina, a true little Neapolitan, loved dress and display. She spent her money for trinkets with which to adorn her bewitching, graceful self.

Pappina's love of beauty sprang from her eager little heart like a sweet flower from a patch of rich earth on a rocky hillside.

It grew with very little nourishment from without, for in all her seven