Momma wishes me to state that the word Italy, in any language, will for ever be associated in her mind with the journey from Genoa to Pisa. We had our own lunch basket, so no baneful anticipation of cutlets fried in olive oil marred the perfect satisfaction with which we looked out of the windows. One window, almost the whole way, opened on a low embankment which seemed a garden wall. Olives and lemon trees grew beyond it and dropped over, and it was always dipping in the sunlight to show us the roses and the shady walks of the villas inside, white and remote; now and then we saw the pillared end of a verandah or a plaster Neptune ruling a restricted fountain area. Out of the other window stretched the blue Gulf of Genoa all becalmed and smiling, with freakish little points and headlines, and here and there the white blossom of a sail. The Senator counted eighty tunnels—he wants that fact mentioned too—some of them so short that it was like shutting one\'s eyes for an instant on the olives and the sea. Nevertheless it was an idyllic journey, and at four o\'clock in the afternoon we saw the Leaning Tower from afar, describing the precise angle that it does in the illustrated geographies. Momma was charmed to recognise it, she blew it a kiss of adulation and acclaim, while we yet wound about among the environs, and hailed it "Pisa!" It was as if she bowed to a celebrity, with the homage due.

What the Senator called our attention to as we drove to the hotel was the conspicuous part in municipal politics played by that little old brown river Arno. In most places the riparian feature of the landscape is not insisted on—you have usually to go to the suburbs to find it, but in Pisa it is a sort of main street, with the town sitting comfortably and equally on each side of it looking on. Momma and I both liked the idea of a river in town scenery, and thought it might be copied with advantage in America, it afforded such a good excuse for bridges. Pisa\'s three arched stone ones made a reason for settling there in themselves in our opinion. The Senator, however, was against it on conservancy grounds, and asked us what we thought of the population of Pisa. And we had to admit that for the size of the houses there weren\'t very many people about. The Lungarno was almost empty except for desolate cabmen, and they were just as eager and hospitable to us and our trunks as they had been in Genoa.

In the Piazza del Duomo we expected the Cathedral, the Leaning Tower, the Baptistry, and the Campo Santo. We did not expect Mrs. Portheris; at least, neither of my parents did—I knew enough about Dicky Dod not to be surprised at any combination he might effect. There they all were in the middle of the square bit of meadow, apparently waiting for us, but really, I have no doubt, getting an impression of the architecture as a whole. I could tell from Mrs. Portheris\'s attitude that she had acknowledged herself to be gratified. Strange to relate, her gratification did not disappear when she saw that these medi?val circumstances would inconsistently compel her to recognise very modern American connections. She approached us quite blandly, and I saw at once that Dicky Dod had been telling her that poppa\'s chances for the Presidency were considered certain, that the Spanish Infanta had stayed with us while she was in Chicago at the Exhibition, and that we fed her from gold plate. It was all in Mrs. Portheris\'s manner.

"Another unexpected meeting!" she exclaimed. "My dear Mrs. Wick, you are looking worn out! Try my sal volatile—I insist!" and in the general greeting momma was seen to back violently away from a long silver bottle in every direction. Poppa had to interfere. "If it\'s all the same to you, Aunt Caroline," he said, "Mrs. Wick is quite as usual, though I think the Middle Agedness of this country is a little trying for her at this time of year. She\'s just a little upset this morning by seeing the cook plucking a rooster down in the backyard before he\'d killed it. The rooster was in great affliction, you see, and the way he crowed got on momma\'s nerves. She\'s been telling us about it ever since. But we hope it will pass off."

Mrs. Portheris expanded into that inevitable British story of the officer who reported of certain tribes that they had no manners and their customs were abominable, and I, at a mute invitation from Dicky, stepped aside to get the angle of the Tower from a better point of view.

Mr. Dod was depressed, so much so that he came to the point at once. "I hope you had a good time in Genoa," he said. "We should have been there now, only I knew we should never catch up to you if we didn\'t skip something. So I heard of a case of cholera there, and didn\'t mention that it was last year. Quite enough for Her Ex. I say, though—it\'s no use."

"Isn\'t it?" said I. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty confoundedly certain. The British lion\'s getting there, in great shape—the brute. All the widow\'s arranging. With the widow it\'s \'Mr. Dod, you will take care of me, won\'t you?\' or \'Come now, Mr. Dod, and tell me all about buffalo shooting on your native prairies\'—and Mr. Dod is a rattled jay. There\'s something about the mandate of a middle-aged British female."

"I should think there was!" I said.

"Then Maffy, you see, walks in. They don\'t seem to have much conversation—she regularly brightens up when I come along and say something cheerful—but he\'s gradually making up his mind that the best isn\'t any too good for him."

"Perhaps we don\'t begin so well in America," I interrupted thoughtfully. "But then, we don\'t develop into Mrs. P.\'s either."

Dicky seemed unable to follow my line of thought. "I must say," he went on resentfully, "I like—well, just a smell of constancy about a man. A fellow that\'s thrown over ought to be in about the same shape as a widower. But not much Maffy. I tried to work up his feelings over the American girl the other night—he was as calm!"

"Dicky," said I, "there are subjects a man must keep sacred. You must not speak to Mr. Mafferton of his first—attachment again. They never do it in England, except for purposes of fiction."

"Well, I worked that racket all I knew. I even told him that American girls as often as not changed their minds."

"Richard! He will think I—what will he think of American girls! It was excessively wrong of you to say that—I might almost call it criminal!"

Dicky looked at me in pained surprise. "Look here, Mamie," he said, "a fellow in my fix, you know! Don\'t get excited. How am I going to confide in you unless you keep your hair on!"

"What, may I ask, did Mr. Mafferton say when you told him that?" I asked............