Up and Down by E.F. Benson

We have had a month of the perfect weather, days and nights of flawless and crystalline brightness, with the sun marching serene all day across the empty blue, and setting at evening unveiled by cloud or vapour into the sea, and a light wind pouring steadily as a stream from the north. But one morning there gathered a cloud on the southern horizon no bigger than a man's hand, which the weather-wise say betokens a change. On that day, too, there appeared in the paper that other cloud which presaged the wild tempest of blood and fire. Here in this secure siren isle we hardly gave a thought to it. We just had it hot at lunch and cold at dinner, and after that we thought of it no more. It seemed to have disappeared, even as the column of smoke above Vesuvius disappeared a few weeks ago.

It had been a very hot clear morning, and since, the evening before, it had been necessary to tell Pasqualino that the wages he received, the food he ate, and the room he occupied were not given him gratis by a beneficent Providence in order that he should have complete leisure to make himself smart and spend his whole time with his Caterina, he had been very busy sweeping and embellishing the house, while it was still scarcely light, in order to put into practice the fervency of his reformed intentions. He had come into my bedroom while dawn was yet grey, on tiptoe, in order not to awaken me, and taken away the step-ladder which he needed. As a matter of fact, I was already awake, and so his falling downstairs or throwing the step-ladder downstairs a moment afterwards with a crash that would have roused the dead did not annoy but only interested me, and I wondered what he wanted the step-ladder for, and whether it was much broken.