The ensuing years in the mansion were happy and busy ones. Umbertina loved the tall trees around the house and the huge, ancient wisteria that coiled over the portico and veranda; she loved the big rooms and the spaces up in the attic where the little girls could disappear for hours at a time and read their books or play with friends who came and went in the easy American manner that first puzzled but finally pleased Umbertina. She loved the great porch where they sat on summer evenings and felt the breeze from the oaks and elms and heard the muted sounds from the canal and railroad. It didn’t bother her that the formerly grand neighborhood was now zoned commercial; she liked it all the more with the sense of purpose and work all about them.

The old house was associated with good things: getting Bessie from the carriage house and hitching her to the wagon for the trip out to Muskieville in the spring for the tilling and planting, with the children in the back coming along to help and to play in the fields; then, later, the weekly weeding and the re-sowing of greens; and finally the fall harvest, when the girls gathered pretty leaves to wax and take to school for their teachers or looked for horse chestnuts or picked the last wild asters or cat-o’-nine-tails in the ditches along the roads while Serafino buried the cabbage and potatoes and carrots for the winter months.

Serafino was like a benevolent old grandfather to his younger children, and they were often with him at home while Umbertina bustled around the store. It had become his special task to make the ricotta, and he had a big copper kettle, jealously excluded from any other use and kept meticulously shining and clean, which he used on the wood-burning stove in the kitchen. It was like his time as a shepherd in the mountains. On days when the milk was delivered in huge quantities he’d start the fire and have the children keep it continuously fed. Then he’d stir, stir the huge amount of milk in the copper kettle with a beautiful constant rhythm that he had to keep just so, he said, so that the ricotta would come smooth and sweet. The harmony fascinated the children, and they would watch the hypnotic stirring until he aroused them shouting for more wood. When the whole process was over and the ricotta put in hole-punched containers for the draining, Sara and Carla and Margherita got the leftover whey with its chunks of good, sweet ricotta to eat on fresh bread. Then the copper kettle was carefully cleaned and put away for the next time.