amn it!” exclaimed Carmella at seven-thirty o’clock the following Monday morning.
She rose sleepily to her elbow and glared at the busily ringing alarm clock. This clock was a luxury for which she had teased her father. To her surprise, her mother had approved, feeling that it would save her own time in rousing the family after Tommaso had gone to work. For of all the children, only Giuseppe rose at six, with his parents. The others were sleepy-heads.
It still puzzled Maria to think of living in a land where every home had its own clocks, almost one in every room sometimes, instead of relying on the bell of a nearby church for the time. A clock for Carmella, however, she had favored, specifying that the latter must in turn see that her younger sisters were sufficiently roused to get up, a duty which Carmella performed with punctilious and energetic delight.
Her sisters had quickly learned to dread these abrupt attacks, and usually beat Carmella out of bed when the alarm sounded in her room.
[98]
