"Mamma," said Isabel, as we gathered in the hotel vestibule for the start to Pompeii, "is really not fit to undertake it."

"You\'ll excuse me, Aunt Caroline," remarked the Senator, "but your complexion isn\'t by any means right yet. It\'s a warm day and a long drive. Just as likely as not you\'ll be down sick after it."

"Stuff!" said Mrs. Portheris. "I thank my stars I have got no enfeebled American constitution. I am perfectly equal to it, thank you."

"It\'s most unwise," observed Mr. Mafferton.

"Darned—I mean extremely risky," sighed Dicky.

Mrs. Portheris faced upon them. "And pray what do you know about it?" she demanded.

Then momma put in her oar, taking most unguardedly a privilege of relationship. "Of course, you are the best judge of how you feel yourself, Aunt Caroline, but we are told there are some steps to ascend when we get there—and you know how fleshy you are."

In the instant of ominous silence which occurred while Mrs. Portheris was getting her chin into the angle of its greatest majesty, Mr. Mafferton considerately walked to the door. When it was accomplished she looked at momma sideways and down her nose, precisely in the manner of the late Mr. Du Maurier\'s ladies in Punch, in the same state of mind. She might have sat or stood to him. It was another ideal realised.

"That is the latest, the very latest Americanism which I have observed in your conversation, Augusta. In your native land it may be admissible, but please understand that I cannot permit it to be applied to me personally. To English ears it is offensive, very offensive. It is also quite improper for you to assume any familiarity with my figure. As you say, I may be aware of its corpulence, but nobody else—er—can possibly know anything about it."

Momma was speechless, and, as usual, the Senator came to the rescue. He never will allow momma to be trampled on, and there was distinct retaliation in his manner. "Look here, aunt," he said, "there\'s nothing profane in saying you\'re fleshy when you are, you know, and you don\'t need to remove so much as your bonnet strings for the general public to be aware of it. And when you come to America don\'t you ever insult anybody by calling her corpulent, which is a perfectly indecent expression. Now if you won\'t go back to bed and tranquillise your mind—on a plain soda——"

"I won\'t," said Mrs. Portheris.

"De carriages is already," said the head porter, glistening with an amiability of which we all appreciated the balm. And we entered the carriages—Mrs. Portheris and the downcast Isabel and Mr. Mafferton in one, and momma, poppa, Dicky, and I in the other. For no American would have been safe in Mrs. Portheris\'s carriage for at least two hours, and this came home even to Mr. Dod.

"Never again!" exclaimed momma as we rattled down among the narrow streets that crowd under the Funicular railway. "Never again will I call that woman Aunt Caroline."

"Don\'t call her fleshy, my dear, that\'s what really irritated her," remarked the Senator. The Senator\'s discrimination, I have often noticed, is not the nicest thing about him.

Hours and hours it seemed to take, that drive to Pompeii. Past the ambitious confectioner with his window full of cherry pies, each cherry round and red and shining like a marble, and the plate glass dry-goods store where ready-made costumes were displayed that looked as if they might fit just as badly as those of Westbourne Grove, and so by degrees and always down hill through narrower and shabbier streets where all the women walked bareheaded and the shops were mostly turned out on the pavement for the convenience of customers, and a good many of them went up and down in wheelbarrows. And often through narrow ways so high-walled and many-windowed that it was quite cool and dusky down below, and only a strip of sun showed far up along the roofs of one side. Here and there a wheelbarrow went strolling through these streets too, and we saw at least one family marketing. From a little square window a prodigious way up came, as we passed, a cry with custom in it, and a wheelbarrow paused beneath. Then down from the window by a long, long rope slid a basket from the hands of a young woman leaning out in red, and the vendor took the opportunity of sitting down on his barrow handle till it arrived. Soldi and a piece of paper he took out of the basket and a cabbage and onions he put in, and then it went swinging upwards and he picked up his barrow again, and we rattled on and left him shouting and pushing his hat back—it was not a soft felt but a bowler—to look up at the other windows. In spite of the bowler it was a picturesque and Neapolitan incident, and it left us much divided as to the contents of the piece of paper.

"My idea is," said the Senator, "that the young woman in the red jersey was the hired girl and that note was what you might call a clandestine communication."

"Since we are in Naples," remarked Mr. Dod, "I think, Senator, your deduction is correct. Where we come from a slavey with any self-respect would put her sentiments on a gilt-edged correspondence card in a scented envelope with a stamp on the outside and ask you to kindly drop it into the pillar box on your way to business; but this chimes in with all you read about Naples."

"Perfectly ridiculous!" said momma. "Mark my words, that note was either a list of vegetables wanted, or an intimation that if they weren\'t going to be fresher than the last, that man needn\'t stop for orders in future. And in a country as destitute of elevators as this one is I suppose you couldn\'t keep a servant a week if you didn\'t let her save the stairs somehow. But I must say if I were going to have cabbage and onions the same day I wouldn\'t like the neighbours to know it."

I entirely agreed with momma, and was reflecting, while they talked of something else, on the injustice of considering ours the sentimental sex, when the Senator leaned forward and advised me in an undertone to make a note of the market basket.

"And take my theory to account for the piece of paper," said he; "your mother\'s may be the most likely, but mine is what the public will expect."

And always the shadows of the narrow streets crooked in the end into a little plaza full of sun and beggars, and lemonade stands, and hawkers of wild strawberries, and when the great bank of a flower-stall stood just where the shadow ended sharply and the sun began, it made something to remember. After that our way lay through a suburban parish fête, and we pursued it under strings and strings of little glass lanterns, red, and green, and blue, that swung across the streets; and there were goats and more children, and momma vainly endeavoured to keep off the smells with her parasol. Then a region of docks and masts rising unexpectedly, and many little fish shops, and a glitter of scales on the pavement, and disconnected coils of rope, and lounging men with earrings, and unkempt women with babies, and above and over all the warm scent, standing still in the sun, of hemp, and tar, and the sea.

"The city," said the Senator, casting his practised eye on a piece of dead wall that ran along the pavement, "is evidently in the turmoil of a general election, though you mightn\'t notice it. It\'s the third time I\'ve seen those posters \'Viva il Prefétto!\' and \'Viva L\'opposizione! That seems to be about all they can do, just as if we contented ourselves with yelling \'\'Rah for Bryan!\' \'One more for McKinley!\' I must say if they haven\'t any more notion of business than that they don\'t either of \'em deserve to get there."

"In France," observed Mr. Dod, "they stick up little handbills addressed to their \'chers concitoyens\' as if voters were a lot of baa-lambs and willie-boys. It makes enervating reading."

"Young man," said poppa in a burst of feeling, "they say the American eagle might keep her beak shut with advantage, more than she does; but I tell you," and the Senator\'s hand came down hard on Dicky\'s knee, "a trip around Europe is enough to turn her into a singing bird, sir, a singing bird."

I don\'t get my imagination entirely from momma.

"Viva il Prefétto! Viva L\'opposizione!" poppa repeated pityingly, as another pair of posters came in sight. "Well, it won\'t ever do the Government of Italy any good, but I guess I\'m with the Opposizione."

The road grew emptier and sandy white, and commerce forsook it but for here and there a little shop with fat yellow bags, which were the people\'s cheeses, hanging in bladders at the door. Crumbled gateways began to appear, and we saw through them that the villa gardens inside ran down and dropped their rose leaves into the blue of the Mediterranean. We met the country people going their ways to town; they looked at us with friendly patronage, knowing all about us, what we had come to see, and the foolishness of it, and especially the ridiculous cost of carozza that take people to Pompeii. And at last, just as the sun and the jolting and the powdery white dust combined had instigated us all to suggest to the Senator how much better it would have been to come by rail, the ponies made a glad and jingling sweep under the acacias of the H?tel Diomede, which is at the portals of Pompeii.

It seemed a casual and a cheerful place, full of open doors and proprietary Neapolitans who might have been brothers and sisters-in-law, whose conversation we interrupted coming in. There had been domestic potations; a very fat lady, with a horn comb in her hair, wiped liquid rings off the table with her apron, removing the glasses, while a collarless male person with an agreeable smile and a soft felt hat placed wooden chairs for us in a row. Poppa knows no Italian, but they seemed to understand from what he said that we wanted things to drink, and brought us with surprising accuracy precisely what each of us preferred, lemonade for momma and me, and beverages consisting largely, though not entirely, of soda water for the Senator and Mr. Dod. While we refreshed ourselves, another, elderly, grizzled, and one-eyed, came and took up a position just outside the door opposite and sang a song of adventurous love, boxing his own ears in the chorus with the liveliest effect. A further agreeable person waited upon us and informed us that he was the interpreter, he would everything explain to us, that this was a beggar man who wanted us to give him some small money, but there was no compulsion if we did not wish to do so. I think he gave us that interpretation for nothing. The fat lady then produced a large fan which she waved over us assiduously, and the collarless man in the soft hat stood by to render aid in any further emergency, smiling upon us as if we were delicacies out of season. Poppa bore it as long as he could, and we all made an unsuccessful effort to appear as if we were quite accustomed to as much attention and more in the hotels of America; but in a very few minutes we knew all the disadvantages of being of too much importance. Presently the one-eyed man gave way to a pair of players on the flute and mandolin.

"Look here," said poppa at this, to the interpreter, "you folks are putting yourselves out on our account a great deal more than is necessary. We are just ordinary travelling public, and you don\'t need to entertain us with side shows that we haven\'t ordered any more than if we belonged to your own town. See?" But the interpreter did not see. He beckoned instead to an engaging daughter of the fat lady, who app............