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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/8995-8.txt b/8995-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..89e396d --- /dev/null +++ b/8995-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6114 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of What Katy Did Next, by Susan Coolidge + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: What Katy Did Next + +Author: Susan Coolidge + +Posting Date: January 31, 2012 [EBook #8995] +Release Date: September, 2005 +First Posted: August 31, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT KATY DID NEXT *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles +Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: She paid a visit to the little garden. +FRONTISPIECE.] + + +WHAT KATY DID NEXT + +BY + +SUSAN COOLIDGE + + + +This Story is Dedicated + +TO + +THE MANY LITTLE GIRLS + +(SOME OF THEM GROWN TO BE GREAT GIRLS NOW), + +_Who, during the last twelve years, have begged that something +more might be told them about KATY CARR, and what she did after +leaving school._ + + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + +I. AN UNEXPECTED GUEST + +II. AN INVITATION + +III. ROSE AND ROSEBUD + +IV. ON THE "SPARTACUS" + +V. STORY-BOOK ENGLAND + +VI. ACROSS THE CHANNEL + +VII. THE PENSION SUISSE + +VIII. ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES + +IX. A ROMAN HOLIDAY + +X. CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN + +XI. NEXT + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +SHE PAID A VISIT TO THE LITTLE GARDEN + +"SHE WAS HAVING THE MEASLES ON THE +BACK SHELF OF THE CLOSET, YOU KNOW" + +KATY WAS FEEDING GRETCHEN OUT OF A BIG +BOWL FULL OF BREAD AND MILK + +AMY WAS LEFT IN PEACE WITH HER FAWN + + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +AN UNEXPECTED GUEST. + + +The September sun was glinting cheerfully into a pretty bedroom +furnished with blue. It danced on the glossy hair and bright eyes of two +girls, who sat together hemming ruffles for a white muslin dress. The +half-finished skirt of the dress lay on the bed; and as each crisp +ruffle was completed, the girls added it to the snowy heap, which looked +like a drift of transparent clouds or a pile of foamy white-of-egg +beaten stiff enough to stand alone. + +These girls were Clover and Elsie Carr, and it was Clover's first +evening dress for which they were hemming ruffles. It was nearly two +years since a certain visit made by Johnnie to Inches Mills, of which +some of you have read in "Nine Little Goslings;" and more than three +since Clover and Katy had returned home from the boarding-school at +Hillsover. + +Clover was now eighteen. She was a very small Clover still, but it would +have been hard to find anywhere a prettier little maiden than she had +grown to be. Her skin was so exquisitely fair that her arms and wrists +and shoulders, which were round and dimpled like a baby's, seemed cut +out of daisies or white rose leaves. Her thick, brown hair waved and +coiled gracefully about her head. Her smile was peculiarly sweet; and +the eyes, always Clover's chief beauty, had still that pathetic look +which made them irresistible to tender-hearted people. + +Elsie, who adored Clover, considered her as beautiful as girls in +books, and was proud to be permitted to hem ruffles for the dress in +which she was to burst upon the world. Though, as for that, not much +"bursting" was possible in Burnet, where tea-parties of a middle-aged +description, and now and then a mild little dance, represented "gayety" +and "society." Girls "came out" very much, as the sun comes out in the +morning,--by slow degrees and gradual approaches, with no particular +one moment which could be fixed upon as having been the crisis of the +joyful event. + +"There," said Elsie, adding another ruffle to the pile on the +bed,--"there's the fifth done. It's going to be ever so pretty, I think. +I'm glad you had it all white; it's a great deal nicer." + +"Cecy wanted me to have a blue bodice and sash," said Clover, "but I +wouldn't. Then she tried to persuade me to get a long spray of pink +roses for the skirt." + +"I'm so glad you didn't! Cecy was always crazy about pink roses. I only +wonder she didn't wear them when she was married!" + +Yes; the excellent Cecy, who at thirteen had announced her intention to +devote her whole life to teaching Sunday School, visiting the poor, and +setting a good example to her more worldly contemporaries, had actually +forgotten these fine resolutions, and before she was twenty had become +the wife of Sylvester Slack, a young lawyer in a neighboring town! +Cecy's wedding and wedding-clothes, and Cecy's house-furnishing had been +the great excitement of the preceding year in Burnet; and a fresh +excitement had come since in the shape of Cecy's baby, now about two +months old, and named "Katherine Clover," after her two friends. This +made it natural that Cecy and her affairs should still be of interest in +the Carr household; and Johnnie, at the time we write of, was making her +a week's visit. + +"She _was_ rather wedded to them," went on Clover, pursuing the subject +of the pink roses. "She was almost vexed when I wouldn't buy the spray. +But it cost lots, and I didn't want it in the least, so I stood firm. +Besides, I always said that my first party dress should be plain white. +Girls in novels always wear white to their first balls; and fresh +flowers are a great deal prettier, any way, than artificial. Katy says +she'll give me some violets to wear." + +"Oh, will she? That will be lovely!" cried the adoring Elsie. "Violets +look just like you, somehow. Oh, Clover, what sort of a dress do you +think I shall have when I grow up and go to parties and things? Won't it +be awfully interesting when you and I go out to choose it?" + +Just then the noise of some one running upstairs quickly made the +sisters look up from their work. Footsteps are very significant at +times, and these footsteps suggested haste and excitement. + +Another moment, the door opened, and Katy dashed in, calling out, +"Papa!--Elsie, Clover, where's papa?" + +"He went over the river to see that son of Mr. White's who broke his +leg. Why, what's the matter?" asked Clover. + +"Is somebody hurt?" inquired Elsie, startled at Katy's agitated looks. + +"No, not hurt, but poor Mrs. Ashe is in such trouble." + +Mrs. Ashe, it should be explained, was a widow who had come to Burnet +some months previously, and had taken a pleasant house not far from the +Carrs'. She was a pretty, lady-like woman, with a particularly graceful, +appealing manner, and very fond of her one child, a little girl. Katy +and papa both took a fancy to her at once; and the families had grown +neighborly and intimate in a short time, as people occasionally do when +circumstances are favorable. + +"I'll tell you all about it in a minute," went on Katy. "But first I +must find Alexander, and send him off to meet papa and beg him to hurry +home." She went to the head of the stairs as she spoke, and called +"Debby! Debby!" Debby answered. Katy gave her direction, and then came +back again to the room where the other two were sitting. + +"Now," she said, speaking more collectedly, "I must explain as fast as I +can, for I have got to go back. You know that Mrs. Ashe's little nephew +is here for a visit, don't you?" + +"Yes, he came on Saturday." + +"Well, he was ailing all day yesterday, and to-day he is worse, and she +is afraid it is scarlet-fever. Luckily, Amy was spending the day with +the Uphams yesterday, so she scarcely saw the boy at all; and as soon +as her mother became alarmed, she sent her out into the garden to play, +and hasn't let her come indoors since, so she can't have been exposed +to any particular danger yet. I went by the house on my way down +street, and there sat the poor little thing all alone in the arbor, +with her dolly in her lap, looking so disconsolate. I spoke to her over +the fence, and Mrs. Ashe heard my voice, and opened the upstairs window +and called to me. She said Amy had never had the fever, and that the +very idea of her having it frightened her to death. She is such a +delicate child, you know." + +"Oh, poor Mrs. Ashe!" cried Clover; "I am so sorry for her! Well, Katy, +what did you do?" + +"I hope I didn't do wrong, but I offered to bring Amy here. Papa won't +object, I am almost sure." + +"Why, of course he won't. Well?" + +"I am going back now to fetch Amy. Mrs. Ashe is to let Ellen, who hasn't +been in the room with the little boy, pack a bagful of clothes and put +it out on the steps, and I shall send Alexander for it by and by. You +can't think how troubled poor Mrs. Ashe was. She couldn't help crying +when she said that Amy was all she had left in the world. And I nearly +cried too, I was so sorry for her. She was so relieved when I said that +we would take Amy. You know she has a great deal of confidence in papa." + +"Yes, and in you too. Where will you put Amy to sleep, Katy?" + +"What do you think would be best? In Dorry's room?" + +"I think she'd better come in here with you, and I'll go into Dorry's +room. She is used to sleeping with her mother, you know, and she would +be lonely if she were left to herself." + +"Perhaps that will be better, only it is a great bother for you, +Clovy dear." + +"I don't mind," responded Clover, cheerfully. "I rather like to change +about and try a new room once in a while. It's as good as going on a +journey--almost." + +She pushed aside the half-finished dress as she spoke, opened a drawer, +took out its contents, and began to carry them across the entry to +Dorry's room, doing everything with the orderly deliberation that was +characteristic of whatever Clover did. Her preparations were almost +complete before Katy returned, bringing with her little Amy Ashe. + +Amy was a tall child of eight, with a frank, happy face, and long light +hair hanging down her back. She looked like the pictures of "Alice in +Wonderland;" but just at that moment it was a very woful little Alice +indeed that she resembled, for her cheeks were stained with tears and +her eyes swollen with recent crying. + +"Why, what is the matter?" cried kind little Clover, taking Amy in her +arms, and giving her a great hug. "Aren't you glad that you are coming +to make us a visit? We are." + +"Mamma didn't kiss me for good-by," sobbed the little girl. "She didn't +come downstairs at all. She just put her head out of the window and +said, 'Good-by; Amy, be very good, and don't make Miss Carr any +trouble,' and then she went away. I never went anywhere before without +kissing mamma for good-by." + +"Mamma was afraid to kiss you for fear she might give you the fever," +explained Katy, taking her turn as a comforter. "It wasn't because she +forgot. She felt worse about it than you did, I imagine. You know the +thing she cares most for is that you shall not be ill as your cousin +Walter is. She would rather do anything than have that happen. As soon +as he gets well she will kiss you dozens of times, see if she doesn't. +Meanwhile, she says in this note that you must write her a little letter +every day, and she will hang a basket by a string out of the window, and +you and I will go and drop the letters into the basket, and stand by the +gate and see her pull it up. That will be funny, won't it? We will play +that you are my little girl, and that you have a real mamma and a +make-believe mamma." + +"Shall I sleep with you?" demanded Amy, + +"Yes, in that bed over there." + +"It's a pretty bed," pronounced Amy after examining it gravely for a +moment. "Will you tell me a story every morning?" + +[Illustration: "She was having the measles on the back shelf of the +closet, you know."] + +"If you don't wake me up too early. My stories are always sleepy +till seven o'clock. Let us see what Ellen has packed in that bag, +and then I'll give you some drawers of your own, and we will put the +things away." + +The bag was full of neat little frocks and underclothes stuffed hastily +in all together. Katy took them out, smoothing the folds, and crimping +the tumbled ruffles with her fingers. As she lifted the last skirt, Amy, +with a cry of joy, pounced on something that lay beneath it. + +"It is Maria Matilda," she said, "I'm glad of that. I thought Ellen +would forget her, and the poor child wouldn't know what to do with me +and her little sister not coming to see her for so long. She was having +the measles on the back shelf of the closet, you know, and nobody would +have heard her if she had cried ever so loud." + +"What a pretty face she has!" said Katy, taking the doll out of +Amy's hands. + +"Yes, but not so pretty as Mabel. Miss Upham says that Mabel is the +prettiest child she ever saw. Look, Miss Clover," lifting the other doll +from the table where she had laid it; "hasn't she got _sweet_ eyes? +She's older than Maria Matilda, and she knows a great deal more. She's +begun on French verbs!" + +"Not really! Which ones?" + +"Oh, only 'J'aime, tu aimes, il aime,' you know,--the same that our +class is learning at school. She hasn't tried any but that. Sometimes +she says it quite nicely, but sometimes she's very stupid, and I have to +scold her." Amy had quite recovered her spirits by this time. + +"Are these the only dolls you have?" + +"Oh, please don't call them _that!_" urged Amy. "It hurts their feelings +dreadfully. I never let them know that they are dolls. They think that +they are real children, only sometimes when they are very bad I use the +word for a punishment. I've got several other children. There's old +Ragazza. My uncle named her, and she's made of rag, but she has such bad +rheumatism that I don't play with her any longer; I just give her +medicine. Then there's Effie Deans, she's only got one leg; and Mopsa +the Fairy, she's a tiny one made out of china; and Peg of +Linkinvaddy,--but she don't count, for she's all come to pieces." + +"What very queer names your children have!" said Elsie, who had come in +during the enumeration. + +"Yes; Uncle Ned named them. He's a very funny uncle, but he's nice. He's +always so much interested in my children." + +"There's papa now!" cried Katy; and she ran downstairs to meet him. + +"Did I do right?" she asked anxiously after she had told her story. + +"Yes, my dear, perfectly right," replied Dr. Carr. "I only hope Amy was +taken away in time. I will go round at once to see Mrs. Ashe and the +boy; and, Katy, keep away from me when I come back, and keep the others +away, till I have changed my coat." + +It is odd how soon and how easily human beings accustom themselves to a +new condition of things. When sudden illness comes, or sudden sorrow, or +a house is burned up, or blown down by a tornado, there are a few hours +or days of confusion and bewilderment, and then people gather up their +wits and their courage and set to work to repair damages. They clear +away ruins, plant, rebuild, very much as ants whose hill has been +trodden upon, after running wildly about for a little while, begin all +together to reconstruct the tiny cone of sand which is so important in +their eyes. In a very short time the changes which at first seem so sad +and strange become accustomed and matter-of-course things which no +longer surprise us. + +It seemed to the Carrs after a few days as if they had always had Amy in +the house with them. Papa's daily visit to the sick-room, their +avoidance of him till after he had "changed his coat," Amy's lessons and +games of play, her dressing and undressing, the walks with the +make-believe mamma, the dropping of notes into the little basket, seemed +part of a system of things which had been going on for a long, long +time, and which everybody would miss should they suddenly stop. + +But they by no means suddenly stopped. Little Walter Ashe's case proved +to be rather a severe one; and after he had begun to mend, he caught +cold somehow and was taken worse again. There were some serious +symptoms, and for a few days Dr. Carr did not feel sure how things would +turn. He did not speak of his anxiety at home, but kept silence and a +cheerful face, as doctors know how to do. Only Katy, who was more +intimate with her father than the rest, guessed that things were going +gravely at the other house, and she was too well trained to ask +questions. The threatening symptoms passed off, however, and little +Walter slowly got better; but it was a long convalescence, and Mrs. Ashe +grew thin and pale before he began to look rosy. There was no one on +whom she could devolve the charge of the child. His mother was dead; his +father, an overworked business man, had barely time to run up once a +week to see about him; there was no one at his home but a housekeeper, +in whom Mrs. Ashe had not full confidence. So the good aunt denied +herself the sight of her own child, and devoted her strength and time to +Walter; and nearly two months passed, and still little Amy remained at +Dr. Carr's. + +She was entirely happy there. She had grown very fond of Katy, and was +perfectly at home with the others. Phil and Johnnie, who had returned +from her visit to Cecy, were by no means too old or too proud to be +play-fellows to a child of eight; and with all the older members of the +family Amy was a chosen pet. Debby baked turnovers, and twisted cinnamon +cakes into all sorts of fantastic shapes to please her; Alexander would +let her drive if she happened to sit on the front seat of the carryall; +Dr. Carr was seldom so tired that he could not tell her a story,--and +nobody told such nice stories as Dr. Carr, Amy thought; Elsie invented +all manner of charming games for the hour before bedtime; Clover made +wonderful capes and bonnets for Mabel and Maria Matilda; and Katy--Katy +did all sorts of things. + +Katy had a peculiar gift with children which is not easy to define. Some +people possess it, and some do not; it cannot be learned, it comes by +nature. She was bright and firm and equable all at once. She both amused +and influenced them. There was something about her which excited the +childish imagination, and always they felt her sympathy. Amy was a +tractable child, and intelligent beyond her age, but she was never quite +so good with any one as with Katy. She followed her about like a little +lover; she lavished upon her certain special words and caresses which +she gave to no one else; and would kneel on her lap, patting Katy's +shoulders with her soft hand, and cooing up into her face like a happy +dove, for a half-hour together. Katy laughed at these demonstrations, +but they pleased her very much. She loved to be loved, as all +affectionate people do, but most of all to be loved by a child. + +At last, the long convalescence ended, Walter was carried away to his +father, with every possible precaution against fatigue and exposure, and +an army of workpeople was turned into Mrs. Ashe's house. Plaster was +scraped and painted, wall-papers torn down, mattresses made over, and +clothing burned. At last Dr. Carr pronounced the premises in a sanitary +condition, and Mrs. Ashe sent for her little girl to come home again. + +Amy was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing her mother; but at the last +moment she clung to Katy and cried as if her heart would break. + +"I want you too," she said. "Oh, if Dr. Carr would only let you come and +live with me and mamma, I should be so happy! I shall be so lone-ly!" + +"Nonsense!" cried Clover. "Lonely with mamma, and those poor children of +yours who have been wondering all these weeks what has become of you! +They'll want a great deal of attention at first, I am sure; medicine and +new clothes and whippings,--all manner of things. You remember I +promised to make a dress for Effie Deans out of that blue and brown +plaid like Johnnie's balmoral. I mean to begin it to-morrow." + +"Oh, will you?"--forgetting her grief--"that will be lovely. The skirt +needn't be _very_ full, you know. Effie doesn't walk much, because of +only having one leg. She will be _so_ pleased, for she hasn't had a new +dress I don't know when." + +Consoled by the prospect of Effie's satisfaction, Amy departed quite +cheerfully, and Mrs. Ashe was spared the pain of seeing her only child +in tears on the first evening of their reunion. But Amy talked so +constantly of Katy, and seemed to love her so much, that it put a plan +into her mother's head which led to important results, as the next +chapter will show. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +AN INVITATION. + + +It is a curious fact, and makes life very interesting, that, generally +speaking, none of us have any expectation that things are going to +happen till the very moment when they do happen. We wake up some morning +with no idea that a great happiness is at hand, and before night it has +come, and all the world is changed for us; or we wake bright and +cheerful, with never a guess that clouds of sorrow are lowering in our +sky, to put all the sunshine out for a while, and before noon all is +dark. Nothing whispers of either the joy or the grief. No instinct bids +us to delay or to hasten the opening of the letter or telegram, or the +lifting of the latch of the door at which stands the messenger of good +or ill. And because it may be, and often is, happy tidings that come, +and joyful things which happen, each fresh day as it dawns upon us is +like an unread story, full of possible interest and adventure, to be +made ours as soon as we have cut the pages and begun to read. + +Nothing whispered to Katy Carr, as she sat at the window mending a long +rent in Johnnie's school coat, and saw Mrs. Ashe come in at the side +gate and ring the office bell, that the visit had any special +significance for her. Mrs. Ashe often did come to the office to consult +Dr. Carr. Amy might not be quite well, Katy thought, or there might be a +letter with something about Walter in it, or perhaps matters had gone +wrong at the house, where paperers and painters were still at work. So +she went calmly on with her darning, drawing the "ravelling," with which +her needle was threaded, carefully in and out, and taking nice even +stitches without one prophetic thrill or tremor; while, if only she +could have looked through the two walls and two doors which separated +the room in which she sat from the office, and have heard what Mrs. Ashe +was saying, the school coat would have been thrown to the winds, and for +all her tall stature and propriety, she would have been skipping with +delight and astonishment. For Mrs. Ashe was asking papa to let her do +the very thing of all others that she most longed to do; she was asking +him to let Katy go with her to Europe! + +"I am not very well," she told the Doctor. "I got tired and run down +while Walter was ill, and I don't seem to throw it off as I hoped I +should. I feel as if a change would do me good. Don't you think so +yourself?" + +"Yes, I do," Dr. Carr admitted. + +"This idea of Europe is not altogether a new one," continued Mrs. Ashe. +"I have always meant to go some time, and have put it off, partly +because I dreaded going alone, and didn't know anybody whom I exactly +wanted to take with me. But if you will let me have Katy, Dr. Carr, it +will settle all my difficulties. Amy loves her dearly, and so do I; she +is just the companion I need; if I have her with me, I sha'n't be afraid +of anything. I do hope you will consent." + +"How long do you mean to be away?" asked Dr. Carr, divided between +pleasure at these compliments to Katy and dismay at the idea of +losing her. + +"About a year, I think. My plans are rather vague as yet; but my idea +was to spend a few weeks in Scotland and England first,--I have some +cousins in London who will be good to us; and an old friend of mine +married a gentleman who lives on the Isle of Wight; perhaps we might go +there. Then we could cross over to France and visit Paris and a few +other places; and before it gets cold go down to Nice, and from there to +Italy. Katy would like to see Italy. Don't you think so?" + +"I dare say she would," said Dr. Carr, with a smile. "She would be a +queer girl if she didn't." + +"There is one reason why I thought Italy would be particularly pleasant +this winter for me and for her too," went on Mrs. Ashe; "and that is, +because my brother will be there. He is a lieutenant in the navy, you +know, and his ship, the 'Natchitoches,' is one of the Mediterranean +squadron. They will be in Naples by and by, and if we were there at the +same time we should have Ned to go about with; and he would take us to +the receptions on the frigate, and all that, which would be a nice +chance for Katy. Then toward spring I should like to go to Florence and +Venice, and visit the Italian lakes and Switzerland in the early summer. +But all this depends on your letting Katy go. If you decide against it, +I shall give the whole thing up. But you won't decide against +it,"--coaxingly,--"you will be kinder than that. I will take the best +possible care of her, and do all I can to make her happy, if only you +will consent to lend her to me; and I shall consider it _such_ a favor. +And it is to cost you nothing. You understand, Doctor, she is to be my +guest all through. That is a point I want to make clear in the outset; +for she goes for my sake, and I cannot take her on any other conditions. +Now, Dr. Carr, please, please! I am sure you won't deny me, when I have +so set my heart upon having her." + +Mrs. Ashe was very pretty and persuasive, but still Dr. Carr hesitated. +To send Katy for a year's pleasuring in Europe was a thing that had +never occurred to his mind as possible. The cost alone would have +prevented; for country doctors with six children are not apt to be rich +men, even in the limited and old-fashioned construction of the word +"wealth." It seemed equally impossible to let her go at Mrs. Ashe's +expense; at the same time, the chance was such a good one, and Mrs. Ashe +so much in earnest and so urgent, that it was difficult to refuse point +blank. He finally consented to take time for consideration before making +his decision. + +"I will talk it over with Katy," he said. "The child ought to have a say +in the matter; and whatever we decide, you must let me thank you in her +name as well as my own for your great kindness in proposing it." + +"Doctor, I'm not kind at all, and I don't want to be thanked. My desire +to take Katy with me to Europe is purely selfish. I am a lonely person," +she went on; "I have no mother or sister, and no cousins of my own age. +My brother's profession keeps him at sea; I scarcely ever see him. I +have no one but a couple of old aunts, too feeble in health to travel +with me or to be counted on in case of any emergency. You see, I am a +real case for pity." + +Mrs. Ashe spoke gayly, but her brown eyes were dim with tears as she +ended her little appeal. Dr. Carr, who was soft-hearted where women were +concerned, was touched. Perhaps his face showed it, for Mrs. Ashe added +in a more hopeful tone,-- + +"But I won't tease any more. I know you will not refuse me unless you +think it right and necessary; and," she continued mischievously, "I have +great faith in Katy as an ally. I am pretty sure that she will say that +she wants to go." + +And indeed Katy's cry of delight when the plan was proposed to her said +that sufficiently, without need of further explanation. To go to Europe +for a year with Mrs. Ashe and Amy seemed simply too delightful to be +true. All the things she had heard about and read about--cathedrals, +pictures, Alpine peaks, famous places, famous people--came rushing into +her mind in a sort of bewildering tide as dazzling as it was +overwhelming. Dr. Carr's objections, his reluctance to part with her, +melted before the radiance of her satisfaction. He had no idea that +Katy would care so much about it. After all, it was a great +chance,--perhaps the only one of the sort that she would ever have. +Mrs. Ashe could well afford to give Katy this treat, he knew; and it +was quite true what she said, that it was a favor to her as well as to +Katy. This train of reasoning led to its natural results. Dr. Carr +began to waver in his mind. + +But, the first excitement over, Katy's second thoughts were more sober +ones. How could papa manage without her for a whole year, she asked +herself. He would miss her, she well knew, and might not the charge of +the house be too much for Clover? The preserves were almost all made, +that was one comfort; but there were the winter clothes to be seen to; +Dorry needed new flannels, Elsie's dresses must be altered over for +Johnnie,--there were cucumbers to pickle, the coal to order! A host of +housewifely cares began to troop through Katy's mind, and a little +pucker came into her forehead, and a worried look across the face which +had been so bright a few minutes before. Strange to say, it was that +little pucker and the look of worry which decided Dr. Carr. + +"She is only twenty-one," he reflected; "hardly out of childhood. I +don't want her to settle into an anxious, drudging state and lose her +youth with caring for us all. She shall go; though how we are to manage +without her I don't see. Little Clover will have to come to the fore, +and show what sort of stuff there is in her." + +"Little Clover" came gallantly "to the fore" when the first shock of +surprise was over, and she had relieved her mind with one long private +cry over having to do without Katy for a year. Then she wiped her eyes, +and began to revel unselfishly in the idea of her sister's having so +great a treat. Anything and everything seemed possible to secure it for +her; and she made light of all Katy's many anxieties and apprehensions. + +"My dear child, I know a flannel undershirt when I see one, just as well +as you do," she declared. "Tucks in Johnnie's dress, forsooth! why, of +course. Ripping out a tuck doesn't require any superhuman ingenuity! +Give me your scissors, and I'll show you at once. Quince marmalade? +Debby can make that. Hers is about as good as yours; and if it wasn't, +what should we care, as long as you are ascending Mont Blanc, and +hob-nobbing with Michael Angelo and the crowned heads of Europe? I'll +make the spiced peaches! I'll order the kindling! And if there ever +comes a time when I feel lost and can't manage without advice, I'll go +across to Mrs. Hall. Don't worry about us. We shall get on happily and +easily; in fact, I shouldn't be surprised if I developed such a turn for +housekeeping, that when you come back the family refused to change, and +you had just to sit for the rest of your life and twirl your thumbs and +watch me do it! Wouldn't that be fine?" and Clover laughed merrily. "So, +Katy darling, cast that shadow from your brow, and look as a girl ought +to look who's going to Europe. Why, if it were I who were going, I +should simply stand on my head every moment of the time!" + +"Not a very convenient position for packing," said Katy, smiling. + +"Yes, it is, if you just turn your trunk upside down! When I think of +all the delightful things you are going to do, I can hardly sit still. I +_love_ Mrs. Ashe for inviting you." + +"So do I," said Katy, soberly. "It was the kindest thing! I can't think +why she did it." + +"Well, I can," replied Clover, always ready to defend Katy even against +herself. "She did it because she wanted you, and she wanted you because +you are the dearest old thing in the world, and the nicest to have +about. You needn't say you're not, for you are! Now, Katy, don't waste +another thought on such miserable things as pickles and undershirts. We +shall get along perfectly well, I do assure you. Just fix your mind +instead on the dome of St. Peter's, or try to fancy how you'll feel the +first time you step into a gondola or see the Mediterranean. There will +be a moment! I feel a forty-horse power of housekeeping developing +within me; and what fun it will be to get your letters! We shall fetch +out the Encyclopaedia and the big Atlas and the 'History of Modern +Europe,' and read all about everything you see and all the places you +go to; and it will be as good as a lesson in geography and history and +political economy all combined, only a great deal more interesting! We +shall stick out all over with knowledge before you come back; and this +makes it a plain duty to go, if it were only for our sakes." With these +zealous promises, Katy was forced to be content. Indeed, contentment +was not difficult with such a prospect of delight before her. When once +her little anxieties had been laid aside, the idea of the coming +journey grew in pleasantness every moment. Night after night she and +papa and the children pored over maps and made out schemes for travel +and sight-seeing, every one of which was likely to be discarded as soon +as the real journey began. But they didn't know that, and it made no +real difference. Such schemes are the preliminary joys of travel, and +it doesn't signify that they come to nothing after they have served +their purpose. + +Katy learned a great deal while thus talking over what she was to see +and do. She read every scrap she could lay her hand on which related to +Rome or Florence or Venice or London. The driest details had a charm for +her now that she was likely to see the real places. She went about with +scraps of paper in her pocket, on which were written such things as +these: "Forum. When built? By whom built? More than one?" "What does +_Cenacola_ mean?" "Cecilia Metella. Who was she?" "Find out about Saint +Catherine of Siena." "Who was Beatrice Cenci?" How she wished that she +had studied harder and more carefully before this wonderful chance came +to her. People always wish this when they are starting for Europe; and +they wish it more and more after they get there, and realize of what +value exact ideas and information and a fuller knowledge of the foreign +languages are to all travellers; how they add to the charm of everything +seen, and enhance the ease of everything done. + +All Burnet took an interest in Katy's plans, and almost everybody had +some sort of advice or help, or some little gift to offer. Old Mrs. +Worrett, who, though fatter than ever, still retained the power of +locomotion, drove in from Conic Section in her roomy carryall with the +present of a rather obsolete copy of "Murray's Guide," in faded red +covers, which her father had used in his youth, and which she was sure +Katy would find convenient; also a bottle of Brown's Jamaica Ginger, in +case of sea-sickness. Debby's sister-in-law brought a bundle of dried +chamomile for the same purpose. Some one had told her it was the +"handiest thing in the world to take along with you on them steamboats." +Cecy sent a wonderful old-gold and scarlet contrivance to hang on the +wall of the stateroom. There were pockets for watches, and pockets for +medicines, and pockets for handkerchief and hairpins,--in short, there +were pockets for everything; besides a pincushion with "Bon Voyage" in +rows of shining pins, a bottle of eau-de-cologne, a cake of soap, and a +hammer and tacks to nail the whole up with. Mrs. Hall's gift was a warm +and very pretty woollen wrapper of dark blue flannel, with a pair of +soft knitted slippers to match. Old Mr. Worrett sent a note of advice, +recommending Katy to take a quinine pill every day that she was away, +never to stay out late, because the dews "over there" were said to be +unwholesome, and on no account to drink a drop of water which had not +been boiled. + +From Cousin Helen came a delightful travelling-bag, light and strong at +once, and fitted up with all manner of nice little conveniences. Miss +Inches sent a "History of Europe" in five fat volumes, which was so +heavy that it had to be left at home. In fact, a good many of Katy's +presents had to be left at home, including a bronze paper-weight in the +shape of a griffin, a large pair of brass screw candlesticks, and an +ormolu inkstand with a pen-rest attached, which weighed at least a pound +and a half. These Katy laid aside to enjoy after her return. Mrs. Ashe +and Cousin Helen had both warned her of the inconvenient consequences of +weight in baggage; and by their advice she had limited herself to a +single trunk of moderate size, besides a little flat valise for use in +her stateroom. + +Clover's gift was a set of blank books for notes, journals, etc. In one +of these, Katy made out a list of "Things I must see," "Things I must +do," "Things I would like to see," "Things I would like to do." Another +she devoted to various good shopping addresses which had been given her; +for though she did not expect to do any shopping herself, she thought +Mrs. Ashe might find them useful. Katy's ideas were still so simple and +unworldly, and her experience of life so small, that it had not occurred +to her how very tantalizing it might be to stand in front of shop +windows full of delightful things and not be able to buy any of them. +She was accordingly overpowered with surprise, gratitude, and the sense +of sudden wealth, when about a week before the start her father gave her +three little thin strips of paper, which he told her were circular +notes, and worth a hundred dollars apiece. He also gave her five English +sovereigns. + +"Those are for immediate use," he said. "Put the notes away carefully, +and don't lose them. You had better have them cashed one at a time as +you require them. Mrs. Ashe will explain how. You will need a gown or so +before you come back, and you'll want to buy some photographs and so on, +and there will be fees--" + +"But, papa," protested Katy, opening wide her candid eyes, "I didn't +expect you to give me any money, and I'm afraid you are giving me too +much. Do you think you can afford it? Really and truly, I don't want to +buy things. I shall see everything, you know, and that's enough." + +Her father only laughed. + +"You'll be wiser and greedier before the year is out, my dear," he +replied. "Three hundred dollars won't go far, as you'll find. But it's +all I can spare, and I trust you to keep within it, and not come home +with any long bills for me to pay." + +"Papa! I should think not!" cried Katy, with unsophisticated horror. + +One very interesting thing was to happen before they sailed, the thought +of which helped both Katy and Clover through the last hard days, when +the preparations were nearly complete, and the family had leisure to +feel dull and out of spirits. Katy was to make Rose Red a visit. + +Rose had by no means been idle during the three years and a half which +had elapsed since they all parted at Hillsover, and during which the +girls had not seen her. In fact, she had made more out of the time than +any of the rest of them, for she had been engaged for eighteen months, +had been married, and was now keeping house near Boston with a little +Rose of her own, who, she wrote to Clover, was a perfect angel, and more +delicious than words could say! Mrs. Ashe had taken passage in the +"Spartacus," sailing from Boston; and it was arranged that Katy should +spend the last two days before sailing, with Rose, while Mrs. Ashe and +Amy visited an old aunt in Hingham. To see Rose in her own home, and +Rose's husband, and Rose's baby, was only next in interest to seeing +Europe. None of the changes in her lot seemed to have changed her +particularly, to judge by the letter she sent in reply to Katy's +announcing her plans, which letter ran as follows:-- + +"LONGWOOD, September 20. + +"My dearest child,--Your note made me dance with delight. I stood on my +head waving my heels wildly to the breeze till Deniston thought I must +be taken suddenly mad; but when I explained he did the same. It is too +enchanting, the whole of it. I put it at the head of all the nice things +that ever happened, except my baby. Write the moment you get this by +what train you expect to reach Boston, and when you roll into the +station you will behold two forms, one tall and stalwart, the other +short and fatsome, waiting for you. They will be those of Deniston and +myself. Deniston is not beautiful, but he is good, and he is prepared to +_adore_ you. The baby is both good and beautiful, and you will adore +her. I am neither; but you know all about me, and I always did adore you +and always shall. I am going out this moment to the butcher's to order a +calf fatted for your special behoof; and he shall be slain and made into +cutlets the moment I hear from you. My funny little house, which is +quite a dear little house too, assumes a new interest in my eyes from +the fact that you so soon are to see it. It is somewhat queer, as you +might know my house would be; but I think you will like it. + +"I saw Silvery Mary the other day and told her you were coming. She is +the same mouse as ever. I shall ask her and some of the other girls to +come out to lunch on one of your days. Good-by, with a hundred and fifty +kisses to Clovy and the rest. + +"Your loving + +"ROSE RED." + +"She never signs herself Browne, I observe," said Clover, as she +finished the letter. + +"Oh, Rose Red Browne would sound too funny. Rose Red she must stay till +the end of the chapter; no other name could suit her half so well, and I +can't imagine her being called anything else. What fun it will be to see +her and little Rose!" + +"And Deniston Browne," put in Clover. + +"Somehow I find it rather hard to take in the fact that there is a +Deniston Browne," observed Katy. + +"It will be easier after you have seen him, perhaps." + +The last day came, as last days will. Katy's trunk, most carefully +and exactly packed by the united efforts of the family, stood in the +hall, locked and strapped, not to be opened again till the party +reached London. This fact gave it a certain awful interest in the +eyes of Phil and Johnnie, and even Elsie gazed upon it with respect. +The little valise was also ready; and Dorry, the neat-handed, had +painted a red star on both ends of both it and the trunk, that they +might be easily picked from among a heap of luggage. He now proceeded +to prepare and paste on two square cards, labelled respectively, +"Hold" and "State-room." Mrs. Hall had told them that this was the +correct thing to do. + +Mrs. Ashe had been full of business likewise in putting her house to +rights for a family who had rented it for the time of her absence, and +Katy and Clover had taken a good many hours from their own preparations +to help her. All was done at last; and one bright morning in October, +Katy stood on the wharf with her family about her, and a lump in her +throat which made it difficult to speak to any of them. She stood so +very still and said so very little, that a bystander not acquainted with +the circumstances might have dubbed her "unfeeling;" while the fact was +that she was feeling too much! + +The first bell rang. Katy kissed everybody quietly and went on board +with her father. Her parting from him, hardest of all, took place in the +midst of a crowd of people; then he had to leave her, and as the wheels +began to revolve she went out on the side deck to have a last glimpse of +the home faces. There they were: Elsie crying tumultuously, with her +head on papa's coat-sleeve; John laughing, or trying to laugh, with big +tears running down her cheeks the while; and brave little Clover waving +her handkerchief encouragingly, but with a very sober look on her face. +Katy's heart went out to the little group with a sudden passion of +regret and yearning. Why had she said she would go? What was all Europe +in comparison with what she was leaving? Life was so short, how could +she take a whole year out of it to spend away from the people she loved +best? If it had been left to her to choose, I think she would have flown +back to the shore then and there, and given up the journey, I also think +she would have been heartily sorry a little later, had she done so. + +But it was not left for her to choose. Already the throb of the engines +was growing more regular and the distance widening between the great +boat and the wharf. Gradually the dear faces faded into distance; and +after watching till the flutter of Clover's handkerchief became an +undistinguishable speck, Katy went to the cabin with a heavy heart. But +there were Mrs. Ashe and Amy, inclined to be homesick also, and in need +of cheering; and Katy, as she tried to brighten them, gradually grew +bright herself, and recovered her hopeful spirits. Burnet pulled less +strongly as it got farther away, and Europe beckoned more brilliantly +now that they were fairly embarked on their journey. The sun shone, the +lake was a beautiful, dazzling blue, and Katy said to herself, "After +all, a year is not very long, and how happy I am going to be!" + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +ROSE AND ROSEBUD. + + +Thirty-six hours later the Albany train, running smoothly across the +green levels beyond the Mill Dam, brought the travellers to Boston. + +Katy looked eagerly from the window for her first glimpse of the city of +which she had heard so much. "Dear little Boston! How nice it is to see +it again!" she heard a lady behind her say; but why it should be called +"little Boston" she could not imagine. Seen from the train, it looked +large, imposing, and very picturesque, after flat Burnet with its one +bank down to the edge of the lake. She studied the towers, steeples, and +red roofs crowding each other up the slopes of the Tri-Mountain, and the +big State House dome crowning all, and made up her mind that she liked +the looks of it better than any other city she had ever seen. + +The train slackened its speed, ran for a few moments between rows of +tall, shabby brick walls, and with a long, final screech of its whistle +came to halt in the station-house. Every one made a simultaneous rush +for the door; and Katy and Mrs. Ashe, waiting to collect their books and +bags, found themselves wedged into their seats and unable to get out. It +was a confusing moment, and not comfortable; such moments never are. + +But the discomfort brightened into a sense of relief as, looking out of +the window, Katy caught sight of a face exactly opposite, which had +evidently caught sight of her,--a fresh, pretty face, with light, waving +hair, pink cheeks all a-dimple, and eyes which shone with laughter and +welcome. It was Rose herself, not a bit changed during the years since +they parted. A tall young man stood beside her, who must, of course, be +her husband, Deniston Browne. + +"There is Rose Red," cried Katy to Mrs. Ashe. "Oh, doesn't she look dear +and natural? Do wait and let me introduce you. I want you to know her." + +But the train had come in a little behind time, and Mrs. Ashe was +afraid of missing the Hingham boat; so she only took a hasty peep +from the window at Rose, pronounced her to be charming-looking, +kissed Katy hurriedly, reminded her that they must be on the steamer +punctually at twelve o'clock the following Saturday, and was gone, +with Amy beside her; so that Katy, following last of all the +slow-moving line of passengers, stepped all alone down from the +platform into the arms of Rose Red. + +"You darling!" was Rose's first greeting. "I began to think you meant +to spend the night in the car, you were so long in getting out. Well, +how perfectly lovely this is! Deniston, here is Katy; Katy, this is +my husband." + +Rose looked about fifteen as she spoke, and so absurdly young to have a +"husband," that Katy could not help laughing as she shook hands with +"Deniston;" and his own eyes twinkled with fun and evident recognition +of the same joke. He was a tall young man, with a pleasant, "steady" +face, and seemed to be infinitely amused, in a quiet way, with +everything which his wife said and did. + +"Let us make haste and get out of this hole," went on Rose. "I can +scarcely see for the smoke. Deniston, dear, please find the cab, and +have Katy's luggage put on it. I am wild to get her home, and exhibit +baby before she chews up her new sash or does something else that is +dreadful, to spoil her looks. I left her sitting in state, Katy, with +all her best clothes on, waiting to be made known to you." + +"My large trunk is to go straight to the steamer," explained Katy, as +she gave her checks to Mr. Browne. "I only want the little one taken out +to Longwood, please." + +"Now, this is cosey," remarked Rose, when they were seated in the cab +with Katy's bag at their feet. "Deniston, my love, I wish you were going +out with us. There's a nice little bench here all ready and vacant, +which is just suited to a man of your inches. You won't? Well, come in +the early train, then. Don't forget.--Now, isn't he just as nice as I +told you he was?" she demanded, the moment the cab began to move. + +"He looks very nice indeed, as far as I can judge in three minutes and +a quarter." + +"My dear, it ought not to take anybody of ordinary discernment a minute +and a quarter to perceive that he is simply the dearest fellow that ever +lived," said Rose. "I discovered it three seconds after I first beheld +him, and was desperately in love with him before he had fairly finished +his first bow after introduction." + +"And was he equally prompt?" asked Katy. + +"He says so," replied Rose, with a pretty blush. "But then, you know, he +could hardly say less after such a frank confession on my part. It is no +more than decent of him to make believe, even if it is not true. Now, +Katy, look at Boston, and see if you don't _love_ it!" + +The cab had now turned into Boylston Street; and on the right hand lay +the Common, green as summer after the autumn rains, with the elm arches +leafy still. Long, slant beams of afternoon sun were filtering through +the boughs and falling across the turf and the paths, where people were +walking and sitting, and children and babies playing together. It was a +delightful scene; and Katy received an impression of space and cheer and +air and freshness, which ever after was associated with her recollection +of Boston. + +Rose was quite satisfied with her raptures as they drove through Charles +Street, between the Common and the Public Garden, all ablaze with autumn +flowers, and down the length of Beacon Street with the blue bay shining +between the handsome houses on the water side. Every vestibule and +bay-window was gay with potted plants and flower-boxes; and a concourse +of happy-looking people, on foot, on horseback, and in carriages, was +surging to and fro like an equal, prosperous tide, while the sunlight +glorified all. + +"'Boston shows a soft Venetian side,'" quoted Katy, after a while. "I +know now what Mr. Lowell meant when he wrote that. I don't believe there +is a more beautiful place in the world." + +"Why, of course there isn't," retorted Rose, who was a most devoted +little Bostonian, in spite of the fact that she had lived in Washington +nearly all her life. "I've not seen much beside, to be sure, but that is +no matter; I know it is true. It is the dream of my life to come into +the city to live. I don't care what part I live in,--West End, South +End, North End; it's all one to me, so long as it is Boston!" + +"But don't you like Longwood?" asked Katy, looking out admiringly at the +pretty places set amid vines and shrubberies, which they were now +passing. "It looks so very pretty and pleasant." + +"Yes, it's well enough for any one who has a taste for natural +beauties," replied Rose. "I haven't; I never had. There is nothing I +hate so much as Nature! I'm a born cockney. I'd rather live in one room +over Jordan and Marsh's, and see the world wag past, than be the owner +of the most romantic villa that ever was built, I don't care where it +may be situated." + +The cab now turned in at a gate and followed a curving drive bordered +with trees to a pretty stone house with a porch embowered with Virginia +creepers, before which it stopped. + +"Here we are!" cried Rose, springing out. "Now, Katy, you mustn't even +take time to sit down before I show you the dearest baby that ever was +sent to this sinful earth. Here, let me take your bag; come straight +upstairs, and I will exhibit her to you." + +They ran up accordingly, and Rose took Katy into a large sunny nursery, +where, tied with pink ribbon into a little basket-chair and watched over +by a pretty young nurse, sat a dear, fat, fair baby, so exactly like +Rose in miniature that no one could possibly have mistaken the +relationship. The baby began to laugh and coo as soon as it caught sight +of its gay little mother, and exhibited just such another dimple as +hers, in the middle of a pink cheek. Katy was enchanted. + +"Oh, you darling!" she said. "Would she come to me, do you think, Rose?" + +"Why, of course she shall," replied Rose, picking up the baby as if she +had been a pillow, and stuffing her into Katy's arms head first. "Now, +just look at her, and tell me if ever you saw anything so enchanting in +the whole course of your life before? Isn't she big? Isn't she +beautiful? Isn't she good? Just see her little hands and her hair! She +never cries except when it is clearly her duty to cry. See her turn her +head to look at me! Oh, you angel!" And seizing the long-suffering baby, +she smothered it with kisses. "I never, never, never did see anything so +sweet. Smell her, Katy! Doesn't she smell like heaven?" + +Little Rose was indeed a delicious baby, all dimples and good-humor and +violet-powder, with a skin as soft as a lily's leaf, and a happy +capacity for allowing herself to be petted and cuddled without +remonstrance. Katy wanted to hold her all the time; but this Rose would +by no means permit; in fact, I may as well say at once that the two +girls spent a great part of their time during the visit in fighting for +the possession of the baby, who looked on at the struggle, and smiled on +the victor, whichever it happened to be, with all the philosophic +composure of Helen of Troy. She was so soft and sunny and equable, that +it was no more trouble to care for and amuse her than if she had been a +bird or a kitten; and, as Rose remarked, it was "ten times better fun." + +"I was never allowed as much doll as I wanted in my infancy," she said. +"I suppose I tore them to pieces too soon; and they couldn't give me tin +ones to play with, as they did wash-bowls when I broke the china ones." + +"Were you such a very bad child?" asked Katy. + +"Oh, utterly depraved, I believe. You wouldn't think so now, would you? +I recollect some dreadful occasions at school. Once I had my head pinned +up in my apron because I _would_ make faces at the other scholars, and +they laughed; but I promptly bit a bay-window through the apron, and ran +my tongue out of it till they laughed worse than ever. The teacher used +to send me home with notes fastened to my pinafore with things like this +written in them: 'Little Frisk has been more troublesome than usual +to-day. She has pinched all the younger children, and bent the bonnets +of all the older ones. We hope to see an amendment soon, or we do not +know what we shall do.'" + +"Why did they call you Little Frisk?" inquired Katy, after she had +recovered from the laugh which Rose's reminiscences called forth. + +"It was a term of endearment, I suppose; but somehow my family never +seemed to enjoy it as they ought. I cannot understand," she went on +reflectively, "why I had not sense enough to suppress those awful +little notes. It would have been so easy to lose them on the way home, +but somehow it never occurred to me. Little Rose will be wiser than +that; won't you, my angel? She will tear up the horrid notes--mammy +will show her how!" + +All the time that Katy was washing her face and brushing the dust of the +railway from her dress, Rose sat by with the little Rose in her lap, +entertaining her thus. When she was ready, the droll little mamma tucked +her baby under her arm and led the way downstairs to a large square +parlor with a bay-window, through which the westering sun was shining. +It was a pretty room, and had a flavor about it "just like Rose," Katy +declared. No one else would have hung the pictures or looped back the +curtains in exactly that way, or have hit upon the happy device of +filling the grate with a great bunch of marigolds, pale brown, golden, +and orange, to simulate the fire, which would have been quite too warm +on so mild an evening. Morris papers and chintzes and "artistic" shades +of color were in their infancy at that date; but Rose's taste was in +advance of her time, and with a foreshadowing of the coming "reaction," +she had chosen a "greenery, yallery" paper for her walls, against which +hung various articles which looked a great deal queerer then than they +would to-day. There was a mandolin, picked up at some Eastern sale, a +warming-pan in shining brass from her mother's attic, two old samplers +worked in faded silks, and a quantity of gayly tinted Japanese fans and +embroideries. She had also begged from an old aunt at Beverly Farms a +couple of droll little armchairs in white painted wood, with covers of +antique needle-work. One had "Chit" embroidered on the middle of its +cushion; the other, "Chat." These stood suggestively at the corners of +the hearth. + +"Now, Katy," said Rose, seating herself in "Chit," "pull up 'Chat' and +let us begin." + +So they did begin, and went on, interrupted only by Baby Rose's coos and +splutters, till the dusk fell, till appetizing smells floated through +from the rear of the house, and the click of a latch-key announced Mr. +Browne, come home just in time for dinner. + +The two days' visit went only too quickly. There is nothing more +fascinating to a girl than the menage of a young couple of her own age. +It is a sort of playing at real life without the cares and the sense of +responsibility that real life is sure to bring. Rose was an adventurous +housekeeper. She was still new to the position, she found it very +entertaining, and she delighted in experiments of all sorts. If they +turned out well, it was good fun; if not, that was funnier still! Her +husband, for all his serious manner, had a real boy's love of a lark, +and he aided and abetted her in all sorts of whimsical devices. They +owned a dog who was only less dear than the baby, a cat only less dear +than the dog, a parrot whose education required constant supervision, +and a hutch of ring-doves whose melancholy little "whuddering" coos were +the delight of Rose the less. The house seemed astir with young life all +over. The only elderly thing in it was the cook, who had the reputation +of a dreadful temper; only, unfortunately, Rose made her laugh so much +that she never found time to be cross. + +Katy felt quite an old, experienced person amid all this movement and +liveliness and cheer. It seemed to her that nobody in the world could +possibly be having such a good time as Rose; but Rose did not take the +same view of the situation. + +"It's all very well now," she said, "while the warm weather lasts; but +in winter Longwood is simply grewsome. The wind never stops blowing day +nor night. It howls and it roars and it screams, till I feel as if every +nerve in my body were on the point of snapping in two. And the snow, +ugh! And the wind, ugh! And burglars! Every night of our lives they +come,--or I think they come,--and I lie awake and hear them sharpening +their tools and forcing the locks and murdering the cook and kidnapping +Baby, till I long to die, and have done with them forever! Oh, Nature is +the most unpleasant thing!" + +"Burglars are not Nature," objected Katy. + +"What are they, then? Art? High Art? Well, whatever they are, I do not +like them. Oh, if ever the happy day comes when Deniston consents to +move into town, I never wish to set my eyes on the country again as long +as I live, unless--well, yes, I should like to come out just once more +in the horse-cars and _kick_ that elm-tree by the fence! The number of +times that I have lain awake at night listening to its creaking!" + +"You might kick it without waiting to have a house in town." + +"Oh, I shouldn't dare as long as we are living here! You never know what +Nature may do. She has ways of her own of getting even with people," +remarked her friend, solemnly. + +No time must be lost in showing Boston to Katy, Rose said. So the +morning after her arrival she was taken in bright and early to see the +sights. There were not quite so many sights to be seen then as there are +today. The Art Museum had not got much above its foundations; the new +Trinity Church was still in the future; but the big organ and the bronze +statue of Beethoven were in their glory, and every day at high noon a +small straggling audience wandered into Music Hall to hear the +instrument played. To this extempore concert Katy was taken, and to +Faneuil Hall and the Athenaeum, to Doll and Richards's, where was an +exhibition of pictures, to the Granary Graveyard, and the Old South. +Then the girls did a little shopping; and by that time they were quite +tired enough to make the idea of luncheon agreeable, so they took the +path across the Common to the Joy Street Mall. + +Katy was charmed by all she had seen. The delightful nearness of so many +interesting things surprised her. She perceived what is one of Boston's +chief charms,--that the Common and its surrounding streets make a +natural centre and rallying-point for the whole city; as the heart is +the centre of the body and keeps up a quick correspondence and regulates +the life of all its extremities. The stately old houses on Beacon +Street, with their rounded fronts, deep window-casements, and here and +there a mauve or a lilac pane set in the sashes, took her fancy greatly; +and so did the State House, whose situation made it sufficiently +imposing, even before the gilding of the dome. + +Up the steep steps of the Joy Street Mall they went, to the house on Mt. +Vernon Street which the Reddings had taken on their return from +Washington nearly three years before. Rose had previously shown Katy the +site of the old family house on Summer Street, where she was born, now +given over wholly to warehouses and shops. Their present residence was +one of those wide old-fashioned brick houses on the crest of the hill, +whose upper windows command the view across to the Boston Highlands; in +the rear was a spacious yard, almost large enough to be called a garden, +walled in with ivies and grapevines, under which were long beds full of +roses and chrysanthemums and marigolds and mignonette. + +Rose carried a latch-key in her pocket, which she said had been one of +her wedding-gifts; with this she unlocked the front door and let Katy +into a roomy white-painted hall. + +"We will go straight through to the back steps," she said. "Mamma is +sure to be sitting there; she always sits there till the first frost; +she says it makes her think of the country. How different people are! I +don't want to think of the country, but I'm never allowed to forget it +for a moment. Mamma is so fond of those steps and the garden." + +There, to be sure, Mrs. Redding was found sitting in a wicker-work +chair under the shade of the grapevines, with a big basket of mending +at her side. It looked so homely and country-like to find a person +thus occupied in the middle of a busy city, that Katy's heart warmed +to her at once. + +Mrs. Redding was a fair little woman, scarcely taller than Rose and very +much like her. She gave Katy a kind welcome. + +"You do not seem like a stranger," she said, "Rose has told us so much +about you and your sister. Sylvia will be very disappointed not to see +you. She went off to make some visits when we broke up in the country, +and is not to be home for three weeks yet." + +Katy was disappointed, too, for she had heard a great deal about Sylvia +and had wished very much to meet her. She was shown her picture, from +which she gathered that she did not look in the least like Rose; for +though equally fair, her fairness was of the tall aquiline type, quite +different from Rose's dimpled prettiness. In fact, Rose resembled her +mother, and Sylvia her father; they were only alike in little +peculiarities of voice and manner, of which a portrait did not enable +Katy to judge. + +The two girls had a cosey little luncheon with Mrs. Redding, after which +Rose carried Katy off to see the house and everything in it which was in +any way connected with her own personal history,--the room where she +used to sleep, the high-chair in which she sat as a baby and which was +presently to be made over to little Rose, the sofa where Deniston +offered himself, and the exact spot on the carpet on which she had stood +while they were being married! Last of all,-- + +"Now you shall see the best and dearest thing in the whole house," +she said, opening the door of a room in the second story.-- +"Grandmamma, here is my friend Katy Carr, whom you have so often +heard me tell about." + +It was a large pleasant room, with a little wood-fire blazing in a +grate, by which, in an arm-chair full of cushions, with a +Solitaire-board on a little table beside her, sat a sweet old lady. +This was Rose's father's mother. She was nearly eighty; but she was +beautiful still, and her manner had a gracious old-fashioned courtesy +which was full of charm. She had been thrown from a carriage the year +before, and had never since been able to come downstairs or to mingle +in the family life. + +"They come to me instead," she told Katy. "There is no lack of pleasant +company," she added; "every one is very good to me. I have a reader for +two hours a day, and I read to myself a little, and play Patience and +Solitaire, and never lack entertainment." + +There was something restful in the sight of such a lovely specimen of +old age. Katy realized, as she looked at her, what a loss it had been +to her own life that she had never known either of her grandparents. +She sat and gazed at old Mrs. Redding with a mixture of regret and +fascination. She longed to hold her hand, and kiss her, and play with +her beautiful silvery hair, as Rose did. Rose was evidently the old +lady's peculiar darling. They were on the most intimate terms; and +Rose dimpled and twinkled, and made saucy speeches, and told all her +little adventures and the baby's achievements, and made jests, and +talked nonsense as freely as to a person of her own age. It was a +delightful relation. + +"Grandmamma has taken a fancy to you, I can see," she told Katy, as they +drove back to Longwood. "She always wants to know my friends; and she +has her own opinions about them, I can tell you." + +"Do you really think she liked me?" said Katy, warmly. "I am so glad +if she did, for I _loved_ her. I never saw a really beautiful old +person before." + +"Oh, there's nobody like her," rejoined Rose. "I can't imagine what it +would be not to have her." Her merry little face was quite sad and +serious as she spoke. "I wish she were not so old," she added with a +sigh. "If we could only put her back twenty years! Then, perhaps, she +would live as long as I do." + +But, alas! there is no putting back the hands on the dial of time, no +matter how much we may desire it. + +The second day of Katy's visit was devoted to the luncheon-party of +which Rose had written in her letter, and which was meant to be a +reunion or "side chapter" of the S.S.U.C. Rose had asked every old +Hillsover girl who was within reach. There was Mary Silver, of course, +and Esther Dearborn, both of whom lived in Boston; and by good luck +Alice Gibbons happened to be making Esther a visit, and Ellen Gray came +in from Waltham, where her father had recently been settled over a +parish, so that all together they made six of the original nine of the +society; and Quaker Row itself never heard a merrier confusion of +tongues than resounded through Rose's pretty parlor for the first hour +after the arrival of the guests. + +There was everybody to ask after, and everything to tell. The girls all +seemed wonderfully unchanged to Katy, but they professed to find her +very grown up and dignified. + +"I wonder if I am," she said. "Clover never told me so. But perhaps she +has grown dignified too." + +"Nonsense!" cried Rose; "Clover could no more be dignified than my baby +could. Mary Silver, give me that child this moment! I never saw such a +greedy thing as you are; you have kept her to yourself at least a +quarter of an hour, and it isn't fair." + +"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Mary, laughing and covering her mouth with +her hand exactly in her old, shy, half-frightened way. + +"We only need Mrs. Nipson to make our little party complete," went on +Rose, "or dear Miss Jane! What has become of Miss Jane, by the way? Do +any of you know?" + +"Oh, she is still teaching at Hillsover and waiting for her missionary. +He has never come back. Berry Searles says that when he goes out to walk +he always walks away from the United States, for fear of diminishing the +distance between them." + +"What a shame!" said Katy, though she could not help laughing. "Miss +Jane was really quite nice,--no, not nice exactly, but she had good +things about her." + +"Had she!" remarked Rose, satirically. "I never observed them. It +required eyes like yours, real 'double million magnifying-glasses of +h'extra power,' to find them out. She was all teeth and talons as far +as I was concerned; but I think she really did have a softish spot in +her old heart for you, Katy, and it's the only good thing I ever knew +about her." + +"What has become of Lilly Page?" asked Ellen. + +"She's in Europe with her mother. I dare say you'll meet, Katy, and what +a pleasure that will be! And have you heard about Bella? she's teaching +school in the Indian Territory. Just fancy that scrap teaching school!" + +"Isn't it dangerous?" asked Mary Silver. + +"Dangerous? How? To her scholars, do you mean? Oh, the Indians! Well, +her scalp will be easy to identify if she has adhered to her favorite +pomatum; that's one comfort," put in naughty Rose. + +It was a merry luncheon indeed, as little Rose seemed to think, for she +laughed and cooed incessantly. The girls were enchanted with her, and +voted her by acclamation an honorary member of the S.S.U.C. Her health +was drunk in Apollinaris water with all the honors, and Rose returned +thanks in a droll speech. The friends told each other their histories +for the past three years; but it was curious how little, on the whole, +most of them had to tell. Though, perhaps, that was because they did not +tell all; for Alice Gibbons confided to Katy in a whisper that she +strongly suspected Esther of being engaged, and at the same moment Ellen +Gray was convulsing Rose by the intelligence that a theological student +from Andover was "very attentive" to Mary Silver. + +"My dear, I don't believe it," Rose said, "not even a theological +student would dare! and if he did, I am quite sure Mary would consider +it most improper. You must be mistaken, Ellen." + +"No, I'm not mistaken; for the theological student is my second cousin, +and his sister told me all about it. They are not engaged exactly, but +she hasn't said no; so he hopes she will say yes." + +"Oh, she'll never say no; but then she will never say yes, either. He +would better take silence as consent! Well, I never did think I should +live to see Silvery Mary married. I should as soon have expected to find +the Thirty-nine Articles engaged in a flirtation. She's a dear old +thing, though, and as good as gold; and I shall consider your second +cousin a lucky man if he persuades her." + +"I wonder where we shall all be when you come back, Katy," said Esther +Dearborn as they parted at the gate. "A year is a long time; all sorts +of things may happen in a year." + +These words rang in Katy's ears as she fell asleep that night. "All +sorts of things may happen in a year," she thought, "and they may not be +all happy things, either." Almost she wished that the journey to Europe +had never been thought of! + +But when she waked the next morning to the brightest of October suns +shining out of a clear blue sky, her misgivings fled. There could not +have been a more beautiful day for their start. + +She and Rose went early into town, for old Mrs. Bedding had made Katy +promise to come for a few minutes to say good-by. They found her sitting +by the fire as usual, though her windows were open to admit the +sun-warmed air. A little basket of grapes stood on the table beside her, +with a nosegay of tea-roses on top. These were from Rose's mother, for +Katy to take on board the steamer; and there was something else, a small +parcel twisted up in thin white paper. + +"It is my good-by gift," said the dear old lady. "Don't open it now. +Keep it till you are well out at sea, and get some little thing with it +as a keepsake from me." + +Grateful and wondering, Katy put the little parcel in her pocket. With +kisses and good wishes she parted from these new made friends, and she +and Rose drove to the steamer, stopping for Mr. Browne by the way. They +were a little late, so there was not much time for farewells after they +arrived; but Rose snatched a moment for a private interview with the +stewardess, unnoticed by Katy, who was busy with Mrs. Ashe and Amy. + +The bell rang, and the great steam-vessel slowly backed into the stream. +Then her head was turned to sea, and down the bay she went, leaving Rose +and her husband still waving their handkerchiefs on the pier. Katy +watched them to the last, and when she could no longer distinguish them, +felt that her final link with home was broken. + +It was not till she had settled her things in the little cabin which +was to be her home for the next ten days, had put her bonnet and dress +for safe keeping in the upper berth, nailed up her red and yellow bag, +and donned the woollen gown, ulster, and soft felt hat which were to do +service during the voyage, that she found time to examine the +mysterious parcel. + +Behold, it was a large, beautiful gold-piece, twenty dollars! + +"What a darling old lady!" said Katy; and she gave the gold-piece a +kiss. "How did she come to think of such a thing? I wonder if there is +anything in Europe good enough to buy with it?" + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +ON THE "SPARTACUS." + + +The ulster and the felt hat soon came off again, for a head wind lay +waiting in the offing, and the "Spartacus" began to pitch and toss in a +manner which made all her unseasoned passengers glad to betake +themselves to their berths. Mrs. Ashe and Amy were among the earliest +victims of sea-sickness; and Katy, after helping them to settle in their +staterooms, found herself too dizzy and ill to sit up a moment longer, +and thankfully resorted to her own. + +As the night came on, the wind grew stronger and the motion worse. The +"Spartacus" had the reputation of being a dreadful "roller," and seemed +bound to justify it on this particular voyage. Down, down, down the +great hull would slide till Katy would hold her breath with fear lest it +might never right itself again; then slowly, slowly the turn would be +made, and up, up, up it would go, till the cant on the other side was +equally alarming. On the whole, Katy preferred to have her own side of +the ship, the downward one; for it was less difficult to keep herself in +the berth, from which she was in continual danger of being thrown. The +night seemed endless, for she was too frightened to sleep except in +broken snatches; and when day dawned, and she looked through the little +round pane of glass in the port-hole, only gray sky and gray weltering +waves and flying spray and rain met her view. + +"Oh, dear, why do people ever go to sea, unless they must?" she thought +feebly to herself. She wanted to get up and see how Mrs. Ashe had lived +through the night, but the attempt to move made her so miserably ill +that she was glad to sink again on her pillows. + +The stewardess looked in with offers of tea and toast, the very idea +of which was simply dreadful, and pronounced the other lady "'orridly +ill, worse than you are, Miss," and the little girl "takin' on +dreadful in the h'upper berth." Of this fact Katy soon had audible +proof; for as her dizzy senses rallied a little, she could hear Amy in +the opposite stateroom crying and sobbing pitifully. She seemed to be +angry as well as sick, for she was scolding her poor mother in the +most vehement fashion. + +"I hate being at sea," Katy heard her say. "I won't stay in this nasty +old ship. Mamma! Mamma! do you hear me? I won't stay in this ship! It +wasn't a bit kind of you to bring me to such a horrid place. It was very +unkind; it was cru-el. I want to go back, mamma. Tell the captain to +take me back to the land. Mamma, why don't you speak to me? Oh, I am so +sick and so very un-happy. Don't you wish you were dead? I do!" + +And then came another storm of sobs, but never a sound from Mrs. Ashe, +who, Katy suspected, was too ill to speak. She felt very sorry for poor +little Amy, raging there in her high berth like some imprisoned +creature, but she was powerless to help her. She could only resign +herself to her own discomforts, and try to believe that somehow, +sometime, this state of things must mend,--either they should all get to +land or all go to the bottom and be drowned, and at that moment she +didn't care very much which it turned out to be. + +The gale increased as the day wore on, and the vessel pitched +dreadfully. Twice Katy was thrown out of her berth on the floor; then +the stewardess came and fixed a sort of movable side to the berth, which +held her in, but made her feel like a child fastened into a railed crib. +At intervals she could still hear Amy crying and scolding her mother, +and conjectured that they were having a dreadful time of it in the other +stateroom. It was all like a bad dream. "And they call this travelling +for pleasure!" thought poor Katy. + +One droll thing happened in the course of the second night,--at least it +seemed droll afterward; at the time Katy was too uncomfortable to enjoy +it. Amid the rush of the wind, the creaking of the ship's timbers, and +the shrill buzz of the screw, she heard a sound of queer little +footsteps in the entry outside of her open door, hopping and leaping +together in an odd irregular way, like a regiment of mice or toy +soldiers. Nearer and nearer they came; and Katy opening her eyes saw a +procession of boots and shoes of all sizes and shapes, which had +evidently been left on the floors or at the doors of various staterooms, +and which in obedience to the lurchings of the vessel had collected in +the cabin. They now seemed to be acting in concert with one another, and +really looked alive as they bumped and trotted side by side, and two by +two, in at the door and up close to her bedside. There they remained for +several moments executing what looked like a dance; then the leading +shoe turned on its heel as if giving a signal to the others, and they +all hopped slowly again into the passage-way and disappeared. It was +exactly like one of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tales, Katy wrote to +Clover afterward. She heard them going down the cabin; but how it ended, +or whether the owners of the boots and shoes ever got their own +particular pairs again, she never knew. + +Toward morning the gale abated, the sea became smoother, and she dropped +asleep. When she woke the sun was struggling through the clouds, and she +felt better. + +The stewardess opened the port-hole to freshen the air, and helped her +to wash her face and smooth her tangled hair; then she produced a little +basin of gruel and a triangular bit of toast, and Katy found that her +appetite was come again and she could eat. + +"And 'ere's a letter, ma'am, which has come for you by post this +morning," said the nice old stewardess, producing an envelope from her +pocket, and eying her patient with great satisfaction. + +"By post!" cried Katy, in amazement; "why, how can that be?" Then +catching sight of Rose's handwriting on the envelope, she understood, +and smiled at her own simplicity. + +The stewardess beamed at her as she opened it, then saying again, "Yes, +'m, by post, m'm," withdrew, and left Katy to enjoy the little surprise. + +The letter was not long, but it was very like its writer. Rose drew a +picture of what Katy would probably be doing at the time it reached +her,--a picture so near the truth that Katy felt as if Rose must have +the spirit of prophecy, especially as she kindly illustrated the +situation with a series of pen-and-ink drawings, in which Katy was +depicted as prone in her berth, refusing with horror to go to dinner, +looking longingly backward toward the quarter where the United States +was supposed to be, and fishing out of her port-hole with a crooked pin +in hopes of grappling the submarine cable and sending a message to her +family to come out at once and take her home. It ended with this short +"poem," over which Katy laughed till Mrs. Ashe called feebly across the +entry to ask what _was_ the matter? + + "Break, break, break + And mis-behave, O sea, + And I wish that my tongue could utter + The hatred I feel for thee! + + "Oh, well for the fisherman's child + On the sandy beach at his play; + Oh, well for all sensible folk + Who are safe at home to-day! + + "But this horrible ship keeps on, + And is never a moment still, + And I yearn for the touch of the nice dry land, + Where I needn't feel so ill! + + "Break! break! break! + There is no good left in me; + For the dinner I ate on the shore so late + Has vanished into the sea!" + +Laughter is very restorative after the forlornity of sea-sickness; and +Katy was so stimulated by her letter that she managed to struggle into +her dressing-gown and slippers and across the entry to Mrs. Ashe's +stateroom. Amy had fallen asleep at last and must not be waked up, so +their interview was conducted in whispers. Mrs. Ashe had by no means got +to the tea-and-toast stage yet, and was feeling miserable enough. + +"I have had the most dreadful time with Amy," she said. "All day +yesterday, when she wasn't sick she was raging at me from the upper +berth, and I too ill to say a word in reply. I never knew her so +naughty! And it seemed very neglectful not to come to see after you, +poor dear child! but really I couldn't raise my head." + +"Neither could I, and I felt just as guilty not to be taking care of +you," said Katy. "Well, the worst is over with all of us, I hope. The +vessel doesn't pitch half so much now, and the stewardess says we shall +feel a great deal better as soon as we get on deck. She is coming +presently to help me up; and when Amy wakes, won't you let her be +dressed, and I will take care of her while Mrs. Barrett attends to you." + +"I don't think I can be dressed," sighed poor Mrs. Ashe. "I feel as if I +should just lie here till we get to Liverpool." + +"Oh no, h'indeed, mum,--no, you won't," put in Mrs. Barrett, who at that +moment appeared, gruel-cup in hand. "I don't never let my ladies lie in +their berths a moment longer than there is need of. I h'always gets them +on deck as soon as possible to get the h'air. It's the best medicine you +can 'ave, ma'am, the fresh h'air; h'indeed it h'is." + +Stewardesses are all-powerful on board ship, and Mrs. Barrett was so +persuasive as well as positive that it was not possible to resist her. +She got Katy into her dress and wraps, and seated her on deck in a chair +with a great rug wrapped about her feet, with very little effort on +Katy's part. Then she dived down the companion-way again, and in the +course of an hour appeared escorting a big burly steward, who carried +poor little pale Amy in his arms as easily as though she had been a +kitten. Amy gave a scream of joy at the sight of Katy, and cuddled down +in her lap under the warm rug with a sigh of relief and satisfaction. + +"I thought I was never going to see you again," she said, with a little +squeeze. "Oh, Miss Katy, it has been so horrid! I never thought that +going to Europe meant such dreadful things as this!" + +"This is only the beginning; we shall get across the sea in a few days, +and then we shall find out what going to Europe really means. But what +made you behave so, Amy, and cry and scold poor mamma when she was sick? +I could hear you all the way across the entry." + +"Could you? Then why didn't you come to me?" + +"I wanted to; but I was sick too, so sick that I couldn't move. But why +were you so naughty?--you didn't tell me." + +"I didn't mean to be naughty, but I couldn't help crying. You would have +cried too, and so would Johnnie, if you had been cooped up in a dreadful +old berth at the top of the wall that you couldn't get out of, and +hadn't had anything to eat, and nobody to bring you any water when you +wanted some. And mamma wouldn't answer when I called to her." + +"She couldn't answer; she was too ill," explained Katy. "Well, my pet, +it _was_ pretty hard for you. I hope we sha'n't have any more such days. +The sea is a great deal smoother now." + +"Mabel looks quite pale; she was sick, too," said Amy, regarding the +doll in her arms with an anxious air. "I hope the fresh h'air will do +her good." + +"Is she going to have any fresh hair?" asked Katy, wilfully +misunderstanding. + +"That was what that woman called it,--the fat one who made me come up +here. But I'm glad she did, for I feel heaps better already; only I keep +thinking of poor little Maria Matilda shut up in the trunk in that dark +place, and wondering if she's sick. There's nobody to explain to her +down there." + +"They say that you don't feel the motion half so much in the bottom of +the ship," said Katy. "Perhaps she hasn't noticed it at all. Dear me, +how good something smells! I wish they would bring us something to eat." + +A good many passengers had come up by this time; and Robert, the deck +steward, was going about, tray in hand, taking orders for lunch. Amy and +Katy both felt suddenly ravenous; and when Mrs. Ashe awhile later was +helped up the stairs, she was amazed to find them eating cold beef and +roasted potatoes, with the finest appetites in the world. "They had +served out their apprenticeships," the kindly old captain told them, +"and were made free of the nautical guild from that time on." So it +proved; for after these two bad days none of the party were sick again +during the voyage. + +Amy had a clamorous appetite for stories as well as for cold beef; and +to appease this craving, Katy started a sort of ocean serial, called +"The History of Violet and Emma," which she meant to make last till they +got to Liverpool, but which in reality lasted much longer. It might with +equal propriety have been called "The Adventures of two little Girls who +didn't have any Adventures," for nothing in particular happened to +either Violet or Emma during the whole course of their long-drawn-out +history. Amy, however, found them perfectly enchanting, and was never +weary of hearing how they went to school and came home again, how they +got into scrapes and got out of them, how they made good resolutions and +broke them, about their Christmas presents and birthday treats, and what +they said and how they felt. The first instalment of this un-exciting +romance was given that first afternoon on deck; and after that, Amy +claimed a new chapter daily, and it was a chief ingredient of her +pleasure during the voyage. + +On the third morning Katy woke and dressed so early, that she gained the +deck before the sailors had finished their scrubbing and holystoning. +She took refuge within the companion-way, and sat down on the top step +of the ladder, to wait till the deck was dry enough to venture upon it. +There the Captain found her and drew near for a talk. + +Captain Bryce was exactly the kind of sea-captain that is found in +story-books, but not always in real life. He was stout and grizzled and +brown and kind. He had a bluff weather-beaten face, lit up with a pair +of shrewd blue eyes which twinkled when he was pleased; and his manner, +though it was full of the habit of command, was quiet and pleasant. He +was a Martinet on board his ship. Not a sailor under him would have +dared dispute his orders for a moment; but he was very popular with +them, notwithstanding; they liked him as much as they feared him, for +they knew him to be their best friend if it came to sickness or trouble +with any of them. + +Katy and he grew quite intimate during their long morning talk. The +Captain liked girls. He had one of his own, about Katy's age, and was +fond of talking about her. Lucy was his mainstay at home, he told Katy. +Her mother had been "weakly" now this long time back, and Bess and Nanny +were but children yet, so Lucy had to take command and keep things +ship-shape when he was away. + +"She'll be on the lookout when the steamer comes in," said the Captain. +"There's a signal we've arranged which means 'All's well,' and when we +get up the river a little way I always look to see if it's flying. It's +a bit of a towel hung from a particular window; and when I see it I say +to myself, 'Thank God! another voyage safely done and no harm come of +it.' It's a sad kind of work for a man to go off for a twenty-four days' +cruise leaving a sick wife on shore behind him. If it wasn't that I have +Lucy to look after things, I should have thrown up my command long ago." + +"Indeed, I am glad you have Lucy; she must be a great comfort to you," +said Katy, sympathetically; for the Captain's hearty voice trembled a +little as he spoke. She made him tell her the color of Lucy's hair and +eyes, and exactly how tall she was, and what she had studied, and what +sort of books she liked. She seemed such a very nice girl, and Katy +thought she should like to know her. + +The deck had dried fast in the fresh sea-wind, and the Captain had just +arranged Katy in her chair, and was wrapping the rug about her feet in a +fatherly way, when Mrs. Barrett, all smiles, appeared from below. + +"Oh, 'ere you h'are, Miss. I couldn't think what 'ad come to you so +early; and you're looking ever so well again, I'm pleased to see; and +'ere's a bundle just arrived, Miss, by the Parcels Delivery." + +"What!" cried simple Katy. Then she laughed at her own foolishness, and +took the "bundle," which was directed in Rose's unmistakable hand. + +It contained a pretty little green-bound copy of Emerson's Poems, with +Katy's name and "To be read at sea," written on the flyleaf. Somehow the +little gift seemed to bridge the long misty distance which stretched +between the vessel's stern and Boston Bay, and to bring home and friends +a great deal nearer. With a half-happy, half-tearful pleasure Katy +recognized the fact that distance counts for little if people love one +another, and that hearts have a telegraph of their own whose messages +are as sure and swift as any of those sent over the material lines which +link continent to continent and shore with shore. + +Later in the morning, Katy, going down to her stateroom for something, +came across a pallid, exhausted-looking lady, who lay stretched on one +of the long sofas in the cabin, with a baby in her arms and a little +girl sitting at her feet, quite still, with a pair of small hands folded +in her lap. The little girl did not seem to be more than four years old. +She had two pig-tails of thick flaxen hair hanging over her shoulders, +and at Katy's approach raised a pair of solemn blue eyes, which had so +much appeal in them, though she said nothing, that Katy stopped at once. + +"Can I do anything for you?" she asked. "I am afraid you have been +very ill." + +At the sound of her voice the lady on the sofa opened her eyes. She +tried to speak, but to Katy's dismay began to cry instead; and when the +words came they were strangled with sobs. + +"You are so kin-d to ask," she said. "If you would give my little girl +something to eat! She has had nothing since yesterday, and I have been +so ill; and no-nobody has c-ome near us!" + +"Oh!" cried Katy, with horror, "nothing to eat since yesterday! How did +it happen?" + +"Everybody has been sick on our side the ship," explained the poor lady, +"and I suppose the stewardess thought, as I had a maid with me, that I +needed her less than the others. But my maid has been sick, too; and oh, +so selfish! She wouldn't even take the baby into the berth with her; and +I have had all I could do to manage with him, when I couldn't lift up my +head. Little Gretchen has had to go without anything; and she has been +so good and patient!" + +Katy lost no time, but ran for Mrs. Barrett, whose indignation knew no +bounds when she heard how the helpless party had been neglected. + +"It's a new person that stewardess h'is, ma'am," she explained, "and +most h'inefficient! I told the Captain when she come aboard that I +didn't 'ave much opinion of her, and now he'll see how it h'is. I'm +h'ashamed that such a thing should 'appen on the 'Spartacus,' ma'am,--I +h'am, h'indeed. H'it never would 'ave ben so h'under h'Eliza, +ma'am,--she's the one that went h'off and got herself married the trip +before last, when this person came to take her place." + +All the time that she talked Mrs. Barrett was busy in making Mrs. +Ware--for that, it seemed, was the sick lady's name--more comfortable; +and Katy was feeding Gretchen out of a big bowl full of bread and milk +which one of the stewards had brought. The little uncomplaining thing +was evidently half starved, but with the mouthfuls the pink began to +steal back into her cheeks and lips, and the dark circles lessened under +the blue eyes. By the time the bottom of the bowl was reached she could +smile, but still she said not a word except a whispered _Danke schon_. +Her mother explained that she had been born in Germany, and always till +now had been cared for by a German nurse, so that she knew that language +better than English. + +[Illustration: Katy was feeding Gretchen out of a big bowl full of bread +and milk.] + +Gretchen was a great amusement to Katy and Amy during the rest of the +voyage. They kept her on deck with them a great deal, and she was +perfectly content with them and very good, though always solemn and +quiet. Pleasant people turned up among the passengers, as always happens +on an ocean steamship, and others not so pleasant, perhaps, who were +rather curious and interesting to watch. + +Katy grew to feel as if she knew a great deal about her fellow +travellers as time went on. There was the young girl going out to join +her parents under the care of a severe governess, whom everybody on +board rather pitied. There was the other girl on her way to study art, +who was travelling quite alone, and seemed to have nobody to meet her or +to go to except a fellow student of her own age, already in Paris, but +who seemed quite unconscious of her lonely position and competent to +grapple with anything or anybody. There was the queer old gentleman who +had "crossed" eleven times before, and had advice and experience to +spare for any one who would listen to them; and the other gentleman, not +so old but even more queer, who had "frozen his stomach," eight years +before, by indulging, on a hot summer's day, in sixteen successive +ice-creams, alternated with ten glasses of equally cold soda-water, and +who related this exciting experience in turn to everybody on board. +There was the bad little boy, whose parents were powerless to oppose +him, and who carried terror to the hearts of all beholders whenever he +appeared; and the pretty widow who filled the role of reigning belle; +and the other widow, not quite so pretty or so much a belle, who had a +good deal to say, in a voice made discreetly low, about what a pity it +was that dear Mrs. So-and-so should do this or that, and "Doesn't it +strike you as very unfortunate that she should not consider" the other +thing? A great sea-going steamer is a little world in itself, and gives +one a glimpse of all sorts and conditions of people and characters. + +On the whole, there was no one on the "Spartacus" whom Katy liked so +well as sedate little Gretchen except the dear old Captain, with whom +she was a prime favorite. He gave Mrs. Ashe and herself the seats next +to him at table, looked after their comfort in every possible way, and +each night at dinner sent Katy one of the apple-dumplings made specially +for him by the cook, who had gone many voyages with the Captain and knew +his fancies. Katy did not care particularly for the dumpling, but she +valued it as a mark of regard, and always ate it when she could. + +Meanwhile, every morning brought a fresh surprise from that dear, +painstaking Rose, who had evidently worked hard and thought harder in +contriving pleasures for Katy's first voyage at sea. Mrs. Barrett was +enlisted in the plot, there could be no doubt of that, and enjoyed the +joke as much as any one, as she presented herself each day with the +invariable formula, "A letter for you, ma'am," or "A bundle, Miss, come +by the Parcels Delivery." On the fourth morning it was a photograph of +Baby Rose, in a little flat morocco case. The fifth brought a wonderful +epistle, full of startling pieces of news, none of them true. On the +sixth appeared a long narrow box containing a fountain pen. Then came +Mr. Howells's "A Foregone Conclusion," which Katy had never seen; then a +box of quinine pills; then a sachet for her trunk; then another +burlesque poem; last of all, a cake of delicious violet soap, "to wash +the sea-smell from her hands," the label said. It grew to be one of the +little excitements of ship life to watch for the arrival of these daily +gifts; and "What did the mail bring for you this time, Miss Carr?" was a +question frequently asked. Each arrival Katy thought must be the final +one; but Rose's forethought had gone so far even as to provide an extra +parcel in case the voyage was a day longer than usual, and "Miss Carr's +mail" continued to come in till the very last morning. + +Katy never forgot the thrill that went through her when, after so many +days of sea, her eyes first caught sight of the dim line of the Irish +coast. An exciting and interesting day followed as, after stopping at +Queenstown to leave the mails, they sped northeastward between shores +which grew more distinct and beautiful with every hour,--on one side +Ireland, on the other the bold mountain lines of the Welsh coast. It was +late afternoon when they entered the Mersey, and dusk had fallen before +the Captain got out his glass to look for the white fluttering speck in +his own window which meant so much to him. Long he studied before he +made quite sure that it was there. At last he shut the glass with a +satisfied air. + +"It's all right," he said to Katy, who stood near, almost as much +interested as he. "Lucy never forgets, bless her! Well, there's another +voyage over and done with, thank God, and my Mary is where she was. It's +a load taken from my mind." + +The moon had risen and was shining softly on the river as the +crowded tender landed the passengers from the "Spartacus" at the +Liverpool docks. + +"We shall meet again in London or in Paris," said one to another, and +cards and addresses were exchanged. Then after a brief delay at the +Custom House they separated, each to his own particular destination; +and, as a general thing, none of them ever saw any of the others again. +It is often thus with those who have been fellow voyagers at sea; and it +is always a surprise and perplexity to inexperienced travellers that it +can be so, and that those who have been so much to each other for ten +days can melt away into space and disappear as though the brief intimacy +had never existed. + +"Four-wheeler or hansom, ma'am?" said a porter to Mrs. Ashe. + +"Which, Katy?" + +"Oh, let us have a hansom! I never saw one, and they look so nice +in 'Punch.'" + +So a hansom cab was called, the two ladies got in, Amy cuddled down +between them, the folding-doors were shut over their knees like a +lap-robe, and away they drove up the solidly paved streets to the hotel +where they were to pass the night. It was too late to see or do anything +but enjoy the sense of being on firm land once more. + +"How lovely it will be to sleep in a bed that doesn't tip or roll from +side to side!" said Mrs. Ashe. + +"Yes, and that is wide enough and long enough and soft enough to be +comfortable!" replied Katy. "I feel as if I could sleep for a fortnight +to make up for the bad nights at sea." + +Everything seemed delightful to her,--the space for undressing, the +great tub of fresh water which stood beside the English-looking +washstand with its ample basin and ewer, the chintz-curtained bed, the +coolness, the silence,--and she closed her eyes with the pleasant +thought in her mind, "It is really England and we are really here!" + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +STORYBOOK ENGLAND. + + +"Oh, is it raining?" was Katy's first question next morning, when the +maid came to call her. The pretty room, with its gayly flowered chintz, +and china, and its brass bedstead, did not look half so bright as when +lit with gas the night before; and a dim gray light struggled in at the +window, which in America would certainly have meant bad weather coming +or already come. + +"Oh no, h'indeed, ma'am, it's a very fine day,--not bright, ma'am, but +very dry," was the answer. + +Katy couldn't imagine what the maid meant, when she peeped between the +curtains and saw a thick dull mist lying over everything, and the +pavements opposite her window shining with wet. Afterwards, when she +understood better the peculiarities of the English climate, she too +learned to call days not absolutely rainy "fine," and to be grateful for +them; but on that first morning her sensations were of bewildered +surprise, almost vexation. + +Mrs. Ashe and Amy were waiting in the coffee-room when she went in +search of them. + +"What shall we have for breakfast," asked Mrs. Ashe,--"our first meal in +England? Katy, you order it." + +"Let's have all the things we have read about in books and don't have at +home," said Katy, eagerly. But when she came to look over the bill of +fare there didn't seem to be many such things. Soles and muffins she +finally decided upon, and, as an after-thought, gooseberry jam. + +"Muffins sound so very good in Dickens, you know," she explained to Mrs. +Ashe; "and I never saw a sole." + +The soles when they came proved to be nice little pan-fish, not unlike +what in New England are called "scup." All the party took kindly to +them; but the muffins were a great disappointment, tough and tasteless, +with a flavor about them as of scorched flannel. + +"How queer and disagreeable they are!" said Katy. "I feel as if I were +eating rounds cut from an old ironing-blanket and buttered! Dear me! +what did Dickens mean by making such a fuss about them, I wonder? And I +don't care for gooseberry jam, either; it isn't half as good as the jams +we have at home. Books are very deceptive." + +"I am afraid they are. We must make up our minds to find a great many +things not quite so nice as they sound when we read about them," replied +Mrs. Ashe. + +Mabel was breakfasting with them, of course, and was heard to remark at +this juncture that she didn't like muffins, either, and would a great +deal rather have waffles; whereupon Amy reproved her, and explained that +nobody in England knew what waffles were, they were such a stupid +nation, and that Mabel must learn to eat whatever was given her and not +find fault with it! + +After this moral lesson it was found to be dangerously near train-time; +and they all hurried to the railroad station, which, fortunately, was +close by. There was rather a scramble and confusion for a few moments; +for Katy, who had undertaken to buy the tickets, was puzzled by the +unaccustomed coinage; and Mrs. Ashe, whose part was to see after the +luggage, found herself perplexed and worried by the absence of checks, +and by no means disposed to accept the porter's statement, that if she'd +only bear in mind that the trunks were in the second van from the +engine, and get out to see that they were safe once or twice during the +journey, and call for them as soon as they reached London, she'd have no +trouble,--"please remember the porter, ma'am!" However all was happily +settled at last; and without any serious inconveniences they found +themselves established in a first-class carriage, and presently after +running smoothly at full speed across the rich English midlands toward +London and the eastern coast. + +The extreme greenness of the October landscape was what struck them +first, and the wonderfully orderly and trim aspect of the country, with +no ragged, stump-dotted fields or reaches of wild untended woods. Late +in October as it was, the hedgerows and meadows were still almost +summer-like in color, though the trees were leafless. The +delightful-looking old manor-houses and farm-houses, of which they had +glimpses now and again, were a constant pleasure to Katy, with their +mullioned windows, twisted chimney-stacks, porches of quaint build, and +thick-growing ivy. She contrasted them with the uncompromising ugliness +of farm-houses which she remembered at home, and wondered whether it +could be that at the end of another thousand years or so, America would +have picturesque buildings like these to show in addition to her +picturesque scenery. + +Suddenly into the midst of these reflections there glanced a picture so +vivid that it almost took away her breath, as the train steamed past a +pack of hounds in full cry, followed by a galloping throng of +scarlet-coated huntsmen. One horse and rider were in the air, going over +a wall. Another was just rising to the leap. A string of others, headed +by a lady, were tearing across a meadow bounded by a little brook, and +beyond that streamed the hounds following the invisible fox. It was like +one of Muybridge's instantaneous photographs of "The Horse in Motion," +for the moment that it lasted; and Katy put it away in her memory, +distinct and brilliant, as she might a real picture. + +Their destination in London was Batt's Hotel in Dover Street. The old +gentleman on the "Spartacus," who had "crossed" so many times, had +furnished Mrs. Ashe with a number of addresses of hotels and +lodging-houses, from among which Katy had chosen Batt's for the reason +that it was mentioned in Miss Edgeworth's "Patronage." "It was the +place," she explained, "where Godfrey Percy didn't stay when Lord +Oldborough sent him the letter." It seemed an odd enough reason for +going anywhere that a person in a novel didn't stay there. But Mrs. Ashe +knew nothing of London, and had no preference of her own; so she was +perfectly willing to give Katy hers, and Batt's was decided upon. + +"It is just like a dream or a story," said Katy, as they drove away from +the London station in a four-wheeler. "It is really ourselves, and this +is really London! Can you imagine it?" + +She looked out. Nothing met her eyes but dingy weather, muddy streets, +long rows of ordinary brick or stone houses. It might very well have +been New York or Boston on a foggy day, yet to her eyes all things had a +subtle difference which made them unlike similar objects at home. + +"Wimpole Street!" she cried suddenly, as she caught sight of the name on +the corner; "that is the street where Maria Crawford in Mansfield Park, +you know, 'opened one of the best houses' after she married Mr. +Rushworth. Think of seeing Wimpole Street! What fun!" She looked eagerly +out after the "best houses," but the whole street looked uninteresting +and old-fashioned; the best house to be seen was not of a kind, Katy +thought, to reconcile an ambitious young woman to a dull husband. Katy +had to remind herself that Miss Austen wrote her novels nearly a century +ago, that London was a "growing" place, and that things were probably +much changed since that day. + +More "fun" awaited them when they arrived at Batt's, and exactly such a +landlady sailed forth to welcome them as they had often met with in +books,--an old landlady, smiling and rubicund, with a towering lace cap +on her head, a flowered silk gown, a gold chain, and a pair of fat +mittened hands demurely crossed over a black brocade apron. She alone +would have been worth crossing the ocean to see, they all declared. +Their telegram had been received, and rooms were ready, with a bright, +smoky fire of soft coals; the dinner-table was set, and a nice, formal, +white-cravated old waiter, who seemed to have stepped out of the same +book with the landlady, was waiting to serve it. Everything was dingy +and old-fashioned, but very clean and comfortable; and Katy concluded +that on the whole Godfrey Percy would have done wisely to go to Batt's, +and could have fared no better at the other hotel where he did stay. + +The first of Katy's "London sights" came to her next morning before she +was out of her bedroom. She heard a bell ring and a queer squeaking +little voice utter a speech of which she could not make out a single +word. Then came a laugh and a shout, as if several boys were amused at +something or other; and altogether her curiosity was roused, so that she +finished dressing as fast as she could, and ran to the drawing-room +window which commanded a view of the street. Quite a little crowd was +collected under the window, and in their midst was a queer box raised +high on poles, with little red curtains tied back on either side to form +a miniature stage, on which puppets were moving and vociferating. Katy +knew in a moment that she was seeing her first Punch and Judy! + +The box and the crowd began to move away. Katy in despair ran to +Wilkins, the old waiter who was setting the breakfast-table. + +"Oh, please stop that man!" she said. "I want to see him." + +"What man is it, Miss?" said Wilkins. + +When he reached the window and realized what Katy meant, his sense of +propriety seemed to receive a severe shock. He even ventured on +remonstrance. + +"H'I wouldn't, Miss, h'if h'I was you. Them Punches are a low lot, Miss; +they h'ought to be put down, really they h'ought. Gentlefolks, h'as a +general thing, pays no h'attention to them." + +But Katy didn't care what "gentlefolks" did or did not do, and insisted +upon having Punch called back. So Wilkins was forced to swallow his +remonstrances and his dignity, and go in pursuit of the objectionable +object. Amy came rushing out, with her hair flying and Mabel in her +arms; and she and Katy had a real treat of Punch and Judy, with all the +well-known scenes, and perhaps a few new ones thrown in for their +especial behoof; for the showman seemed to be inspired by the rapturous +enjoyment of his little audience of three at the first-floor windows. +Punch beat Judy and stole the baby, and Judy banged Punch in return, and +the constable came in and Punch outwitted him, and the hangman and the +devil made their appearance duly; and it was all perfectly satisfactory, +and "just exactly what she hoped it would be, and it quite made up for +the muffins," Katy declared. + +Then, when Punch had gone away, the question arose as to what they +should choose, out of the many delightful things in London, for their +first morning. + +Like ninety-nine Americans out of a hundred, they decided on Westminster +Abbey; and indeed there is nothing in England better worth seeing, or +more impressive, in its dim, rich antiquity, to eyes fresh from the +world which still calls itself "new." So to the Abbey they went, and +lingered there till Mrs. Ashe declared herself to be absolutely dropping +with fatigue. + +"If you don't take me home and give me something to eat," she said, "I +shall drop down on one of these pedestals and stay there and be +exhibited forever after as an 'h'effigy' of somebody belonging to +ancient English history." + +So Katy tore herself away from Henry the Seventh and the Poets' Corner, +and tore Amy away from a quaint little tomb shaped like a cradle, with +the marble image of a baby in it, which had greatly taken her fancy. She +could only be consoled by the promise that she should soon come again +and stay as long as she liked. She reminded Katy of this promise the +very next morning. + +"Mamma has waked up with rather a bad headache, and she thinks she +will lie still and not come to breakfast," she reported. "And she +sends her love, and says will you please have a cab and go where you +like; and if I won't be a trouble, she would be glad if you would take +me with you. And I won't be a trouble, Miss Katy, and I know where I +wish you would go." + +"Where is that!" + +"To see that cunning little baby again that we saw yesterday. I want to +show her to Mabel,--she didn't go with us, you know, and I don't like to +have her mind not improved; and, darling Miss Katy, mayn't I buy some +flowers and put them on the Baby? She's so dusty and so old that I don't +believe anybody has put any flowers for her for ever so long." + +Katy found this idea rather pretty, and willingly stopped at Covent +Garden, where they bought a bunch of late roses for eighteen pence, +which entirely satisfied Amy. With them in her hand, and Mabel in her +arms, she led the way through the dim aisles of the Abbey, through +grates and doors and up and down steps; the guide following, but not at +all needed, for Amy seemed to have a perfectly clear recollection of +every turn and winding. When the chapel was reached, she laid the roses +on the tomb with gentle fingers, and a pitiful, reverent look in her +gray eyes. Then she lifted Mabel up to kiss the odd little baby effigy +above the marble quilt; whereupon the guide seemed altogether surprised +out of his composure, and remarked to Katy,-- + +"Little Miss is an h'American, as is plain to see; no h'English child +would be likely to think of doing such a thing." + +"Do not English children take any interest in the tombs of the Abbey?" +asked Katy. + +"Oh yes, m'm,--h'interest; but they don't take no special notice of one +tomb above h'another." + +Katy could scarcely keep from laughing, especially as she heard Amy, who +had been listening to the conversation, give an audible sniff, and +inform Mabel that she was glad _she_ was not an English child, who +didn't notice things and liked grown-up graves as much as she did dear +little cunning ones like this! + +Later in the day, when Mrs. Ashe was better, they all drove together to +the quaint old keep which has been the scene of so many tragedies, and +is known as the Tower of London. Here they were shown various rooms and +chapels and prisons; and among the rest the apartments where Queen +Elizabeth, when a friendless young Princess, was shut up for many months +by her sister, Queen Mary. Katy had read somewhere, and now told Amy, +the pretty legend of the four little children who lived with their +parents in the Tower, and used to play with the royal captive; and how +one little boy brought her a key which he had picked up on the ground, +and said, "Now you can go out when you will, lady;" and how the Lords of +the Council, getting wind of it, sent for the children to question them, +and frightened them and their friends almost to death, and forbade them +to go near the Princess again. + +A story about children always brings the past much nearer to a child, +and Amy's imagination was so excited by this tale, that when they got to +the darksome closet which is said to have been the prison of Sir Walter +Raleigh, she marched out of it with a pale and wrathful face. + +"If this is English history, I never mean to learn any more of it, and +neither shall Mabel," she declared. + +But it is not possible for Amy or any one else not to learn a great deal +of history simply by going about London. So many places are associated +with people or events, and seeing the places makes one care so much more +for the people or the events, that one insensibly questions and wonders. +Katy, who had "browsed" all through her childhood in a good +old-fashioned library, had her memory stuffed with all manner of little +scraps of information and literary allusions, which now came into use. +It was like owning the disjointed bits of a puzzle, and suddenly +discovering that properly put together they make a pattern. Mrs. Ashe, +who had never been much of a reader, considered her young friend a +prodigy of intelligence; but Katy herself realized how inadequate and +inexact her knowledge was, and how many bits were missing from the +pattern of her puzzle. She wished with all her heart, as every one +wishes under such circumstances, that she had studied harder and more +wisely while the chance was in her power. On a journey you cannot read +to advantage. Remember that, dear girls, who are looking forward to +travelling some day, and be industrious in time. + +October is not a favorable month in which to see England. Water, water +is everywhere; you breathe it, you absorb it; it wets your clothes and +it dampens your spirits. Mrs. Ashe's friends advised her not to think of +Scotland at that time of the year. One by one their little intended +excursions were given up. A single day and night in Oxford and +Stratford-on-Avon; a short visit to the Isle of Wight, where, in a +country-place which seemed provokingly pretty as far as they could see +it for the rain, lived that friend of Mrs. Ashe who had married an +Englishman and in so doing had, as Katy privately thought, "renounced +the sun;" a peep at Stonehenge from under the shelter of an umbrella, +and an hour or two in Salisbury Cathedral,--was all that they +accomplished, except a brief halt at Winchester, that Katy might have +the privilege of seeing the grave of her beloved Miss Austen. Katy had +come abroad with a terribly long list of graves to visit, Mrs. Ashe +declared. They laid a few rain-washed flowers upon the tomb, and +listened with edification to the verger, who inquired,-- + +"Whatever was it, ma'am, that lady did which brings so many h'Americans +to h'ask about her? Our h'English people don't seem to take the same +h'interest." + +"She wrote such delightful stories," explained Katy; but the old verger +shook his head. + +"I think h'it must be some other party, Miss, you've confused with this +here. It stands to reason, Miss, that we'd have heard of 'em h'over 'ere +in England sooner than you would h'over there in h'America, if the books +'ad been h'anything so h'extraordinary." + +The night after their return to London they were dining for the second +time with the cousins of whom Mrs. Ashe had spoken to Dr. Carr; and as +it happened Katy sat next to a quaint elderly American, who had lived +for twenty years in London and knew it much better than most Londoners +do. This gentleman, Mr. Allen Beach, had a hobby for antiquities, old +books especially, and passed half his time at the British Museum, and +the other half in sales rooms and the old shops in Wardour Street. + +Katy was lamenting over the bad weather which stood in the way of +their plans. + +"It is so vexatious," she said. "Mrs. Ashe meant to go to York and +Lincoln and all the cathedral towns and to Scotland; and we have had to +give it all up because of the rains. We shall go away having seen hardly +anything." + +"You can see London." + +"We have,--that is, we have seen the things that everybody sees." + +"But there are so many things that people in general do not see. How +much longer are you to stay, Miss Carr?" + +"A week, I believe." + +"Why don't you make out a list of old buildings which are connected with +famous people in history, and visit them in turn? I did that the second +year after I came. I gave up three months to it, and it was most +interesting. I unearthed all manner of curious stories and traditions." + +"Or," cried Katy, struck with a sudden bright thought, "why mightn't +I put into the list some of the places I know about in books,--novels +as well as history,--and the places where the people who wrote the +books lived?" + +"You might do that, and it wouldn't be a bad idea, either," said Mr. +Beach, pleased with her enthusiasm. "I will get a pencil after dinner +and help you with your list if you will allow me." + +Mr. Beach was better than his word. He not only suggested places and +traced a plan of sight-seeing, but on two different mornings he went +with them himself; and his intelligent knowledge of London added very +much to the interest of the excursions. Under his guidance the little +party of four--for Mabel was never left out; it was _such_ a chance for +her to improve her mind, Amy declared--visited the Charter-House, where +Thackeray went to school, and the Home of the Poor Brothers connected +with it, in which Colonel Newcome answered "Adsum" to the roll-call of +the angels. They took a look at the small house in Curzon Street, which +is supposed to have been in Thackeray's mind when he described the +residence of Becky Sharpe; and the other house in Russell Square which +is unmistakably that where George Osborne courted Amelia Sedley. They +went to service in the delightful old church of St. Mary in the Temple, +and thought of Ivanhoe and Brian de Bois-Guilbert and Rebecca the +Jewess. From there Mr. Beach took them to Lamb's Court, where Pendennis +and George Warrington dwelt in chambers together; and to Brick Court, +where Oliver Goldsmith passed so much of his life, and the little rooms +in which Charles and Mary Lamb spent so many sadly happy years. On +another day they drove to Whitefriars, for the sake of Lord Glenvarloch +and the old privilege of Sanctuary in the "Fortunes of Nigel;" and took +a peep at Bethnal Green, where the Blind Beggar and his "Pretty Bessee" +lived, and at the old Prison of the Marshalsea, made interesting by its +associations with "Little Dorrit." They also went to see Milton's house +and St. Giles Church, in which he is buried; and stood a long time +before St. James Palace, trying to make out which could have been Miss +Burney's windows when she was dresser to Queen Charlotte of bitter +memory. And they saw Paternoster Row and No. 5 Cheyne Walk, sacred +forevermore to the memory of Thomas Carlyle, and Whitehall, where Queen +Elizabeth lay in state and King Charles was beheaded, and the state +rooms of Holland House; and by great good luck had a glimpse of George +Eliot getting out of a cab. She stood for a moment while she gave her +fare to the cabman, and Katy looked as one who might not look again, and +carried away a distinct picture of the unbeautiful, interesting, +remarkable face. + +With all this to see and to do, the last week sped all too swiftly, and +the last day came before they were at all ready to leave what Katy +called "Story-book England." Mrs. Ashe had decided to cross by Newhaven +and Dieppe, because some one had told her of the beautiful old town of +Rouen, and it seemed easy and convenient to take it on the way to Paris. +Just landed from the long voyage across the Atlantic, the little passage +of the Channel seemed nothing to our travellers, and they made ready for +their night on the Dieppe steamer with the philosophy which is born of +ignorance. They were speedily undeceived! + +The English Channel has a character of its own, which distinguishes it +from other seas and straits. It seems made fractious and difficult by +Nature, and set as on purpose to be barrier between two nations who are +too unlike to easily understand each other, and are the safer neighbors +for this wholesome difficulty of communication between them. The "chop" +was worse than usual on the night when our travellers crossed; the +steamer had to fight her way inch by inch. And oh, such a little +steamer! and oh, such a long night! + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +ACROSS THE CHANNEL. + + +Dawn had given place to day, and day was well advanced toward noon, +before the stout little steamer gained her port. It was hours after +the usual time for arrival; the train for Paris must long since have +started, and Katy felt dejected and forlorn as, making her way out of +the terrible ladies'-cabin, she crept on deck for her first glimpse +of France. + +The sun was struggling through the fog with a watery smile, and his +faint beams shone on a confusion of stone piers, higher than the +vessel's deck, intersected with canal-like waterways, through whose +intricate windings the steamer was slowly threading her course to the +landing-place. Looking up, Katy could see crowds of people assembled to +watch the boat come in,--workmen, peasants, women, children, soldiers, +custom-house officers, moving to and fro,--and all this crowd were +talking all at once and all were talking French! + +I don't know why this should have startled her as it did. She knew, of +course, that people of different countries were liable to be found +speaking their own languages; but somehow the spectacle of the +chattering multitude, all seeming so perfectly at ease with their +preterits and subjunctives and never once having to refer to Ollendorf +or a dictionary, filled her with a sense of dismayed surprise. + +"Good gracious!" she said to herself, "even the babies understand it!" +She racked her brains to recall what she had once known of French, but +very little seemed to have survived the horrors of the night! + +"Oh dear! what is the word for trunk-key?" she asked herself. "They will +all begin to ask questions, and I shall not have a word to say; and Mrs. +Ashe will be even worse off, I know." She saw the red-trousered +custom-house officers pounce upon the passengers as they landed one by +one, and she felt her heart sink within her. + +But after all, when the time came it did not prove so very bad. Katy's +pleasant looks and courteous manner stood her in good stead. She did not +trust herself to say much; but the officials seemed to understand +without saying. They bowed and gestured, whisked the keys in and out, +and in a surprisingly short time all was pronounced right, the baggage +had "passed," and it and its owners were free to proceed to the +railway-station, which fortunately was close at hand. + +Inquiry revealed the fact that no train for Paris left till four in the +afternoon. + +"I am rather glad," declared poor Mrs. Ashe, "for I feel too used up to +move. I will lie here on this sofa; and, Katy dear, please see if there +is an eating-place, and get some breakfast for yourself and Amy, and +send me a cup of tea." + +"I don't like to leave you alone," Katy was beginning; but at that +moment a nice old woman who seemed to be in charge of the waiting-room +appeared, and with a flood of French which none of them could follow, +but which was evidently sympathetic in its nature, flew at Mrs. Ashe and +began to make her comfortable. From a cupboard in the wall she produced +a pillow, from another cupboard a blanket; in a trice she had one under +Mrs. Ashe's head and the other wrapped round her feet. + +"Pauvre madame," she said, "si pâle! si souffrante! Il faut avoir +quelque chose à boire et à manger tout de suite." She trotted across the +room and into the restaurant which opened out of it, while Mrs. Ashe +smiled at Katy and said, "You see you can leave me quite safely; I am to +be taken care of." And Katy and Amy passed through the same door into +the _buffet_, and sat down at a little table. + +It was a particularly pleasant-looking place to breakfast in. There were +many windows with bright polished panes and very clean short muslin +curtains, and on the window-sills stood rows of thrifty potted plants in +full bloom,--marigolds, balsams, nasturtiums, and many colored +geraniums. Two birds in cages were singing loudly; the floor was waxed +to a glass-like polish; nothing could have been whiter than the marble +of the tables except the napkins laid over them. And such a good +breakfast as was presently brought to them,--delicious coffee in +bowl-like cups, crisp rolls and rusks, an omelette with a delicate +flavor of fine herbs, stewed chicken, little pats of freshly churned +butter without salt, shaped like shells and tasting like solidified +cream, and a pot of some sort of nice preserve. Amy made great delighted +eyes at Katy, and remarking, "I think France is heaps nicer than that +old England," began to eat with a will; and Katy herself felt that if +this railroad meal was a specimen of what they had to expect in the +future, they had indeed come to a land of plenty. + +Fortified with the satisfactory breakfast, she felt equal to a walk; and +after they had made sure that Mrs. Ashe had all she needed, she and Amy +(and Mabel) set off by themselves to see the sights of Dieppe. I don't +know that travellers generally have considered Dieppe an interesting +place, but Katy found it so. There was a really old church and some +quaint buildings of the style of two centuries back, and even the more +modern streets had a novel look to her unaccustomed eyes. At first they +only ventured a timid turn or two, marking each corner, and going back +now and then to reassure themselves by a look at the station; but after +a while, growing bolder, Katy ventured to ask a question or two in +French, and was surprised and charmed to find herself understood. After +that she grew adventurous, and, no longer fearful of being lost, led Amy +straight down a long street lined with shops, almost all of which were +for the sale of articles in ivory. + +Ivory wares are one of the chief industries of Dieppe. There were cases +full, windows full, counters full, of the most exquisite combs and +brushes, some with elaborate monograms in silver and colors, others +plain; there were boxes and caskets of every size and shape, ornaments, +fans, parasol handles, looking-glasses, frames for pictures large and +small, napkin-rings. + +Katy was particularly smitten with a paper-knife in the form of an angel +with long slender wings raised over its head and meeting to form a +point. Its price was twenty francs, and she was strongly tempted to buy +it for Clover or Rose Red. But she said to herself sensibly, "This is +the first shop I have been into and the first thing I have really wanted +to buy, and very likely as we go on I shall see things I like better and +want more, so it would be foolish to do it. No, I won't." And she +resolutely turned her back on the ivory angel, and walked away. + +The next turn brought them to a gay-looking little market-place, where +old women in white caps were sitting on the ground beside baskets and +panniers full of apples, pears, and various queer and curly vegetables, +none of which Katy recognized as familiar; fish of all shapes and colors +were flapping in shallow tubs of sea-water; there were piles of +stockings, muffetees, and comforters in vivid blue and red worsted, and +coarse pottery glazed in bright patterns. The faces of the women were +brown and wrinkled; there were no pretty ones among them, but their +black eyes were full of life and quickness, and their fingers one and +all clicked with knitting-needles, as their tongues flew equally fast in +the chatter and the chaffer, which went on without stop or stay, though +customers did not seem to be many and sales were few. + +Returning to the station they found that Mrs. Ashe had been asleep +during their absence, and seemed so much better that it was with greatly +amended spirits that they took their places in the late afternoon train +which was to set them down at Rouen. Katy said they were like the Wise +Men of the East, "following a star," in their choice of a hotel; for, +having no better advice, they had decided upon one of those thus +distinguished in Baedeker's Guide-book. + +The star did not betray their confidence; for the Hôtel de la Cloche, to +which it led them, proved to be quaint and old, and very pleasant of +aspect. The lofty chambers, with their dimly frescoed ceilings, and beds +curtained with faded patch, might to all appearances have been furnished +about the time when "Columbus crossed the ocean blue;" but everything +was clean, and had an air of old-time respectability. The dining-room, +which was evidently of more modern build, opened into a square courtyard +where oleanders and lemon trees in boxes stood round the basin of a +little fountain, whose tinkle and plash blended agreeably with the +rattle of the knives and forks. In one corner of the room was a raised +and railed platform, where behind a desk sat the mistress of the house, +busy with her account-books, but keeping an eye the while on all that +went forward. + +Mrs. Ashe walked past this personage without taking any notice of her, +as Americans are wont to do under such circumstances; but presently the +observant Katy noticed that every one else, as they went in or out of +the room, addressed a bow or a civil remark to this lady. She quite +blushed at the recollection afterward, as she made ready for bed. + +"How rude we must have seemed!" she thought. "I am afraid the people +here think that Americans have _awful_ manners, everybody is so polite. +They said 'Bon soir' and 'Merci' and 'Voulez-vous avoir la bonté,' to +the waiters even! Well, there is one thing,--I am going to reform. +To-morrow I will be as polite as anybody. They will think that I am +miraculously improved by one night on French soil; but, never mind! I am +going to do it." + +She kept her resolution, and astonished Mrs. Ashe next morning, by +bowing to the dame on the platform in the most winning manner, and +saying, "Bon jour, madame," as they went by. + +"But, Katy, who is that person? Why do you speak to her?" + +"Don't you see that they all do? She is the landlady, I think; at all +events, everybody bows to her. And just notice how prettily these ladies +at the next table speak to the waiter. They do not order him to do +things as we do at home. I noticed it last night, and I liked it so much +that I made a resolution to get up and be as polite as the French +themselves this morning." + +So all the time that they went about the sumptuous old city, rich in +carvings and sculptures and traditions, while they were looking at the +Cathedral and the wonderful church of St. Ouen, and the Palace of +Justice, and the "Place of the Maid," where poor Jeanne d'Arc was burned +and her ashes scattered to the winds, Katy remembered her manners, and +smiled and bowed, and used courteous prefixes in a soft pleasant voice; +and as Mrs. Ashe and Amy fell in with her example more or less, I think +the guides and coachmen and the old women who showed them over the +buildings felt that the air of France was very civilizing indeed, and +that these strangers from savage countries over the sea were in a fair +way to be as well bred as if they had been born in a more favored part +of the world! + +Paris looked very modern after the peculiar quaint richness and air of +the Middle Ages which distinguish Rouen. Rooms had been engaged for +Mrs. Ashe's party in a _pension_ near the Arc d'Étoile, and there they +drove immediately on arriving. The rooms were not in the _pension_ +itself, but in a house close by,--a sitting-room with six mirrors, +three clocks, and a pinched little grate about a foot wide, a +dining-room just large enough for a table and four chairs, and two +bedrooms. A maid called Amandine had been detailed to take charge of +these rooms and serve their meals. + +Dampness, as Katy afterward wrote to Clover, was the first impression +they received of "gay Paris." The tiny fire in the tiny grate had only +just been lighted, and the walls and the sheets and even the blankets +felt chilly and moist to the touch. They spent their first evening in +hanging the bedclothes round the grate and piling on fuel; they even set +the mattresses up on edge to warm and dry! It was not very enlivening, +it must be confessed. Amy had taken a cold, Mrs. Ashe looked worried, +and Katy thought of Burnet and the safety and comfort of home with a +throb of longing. + +The days that ensued were not brilliant enough to remove this +impression. The November fogs seemed to have followed them across the +Channel, and Paris remained enveloped in a wet blanket which dimmed and +hid its usually brilliant features. Going about in cabs with the windows +drawn up, and now and then making a rush through the drip into shops, +was not exactly delightful, but it seemed pretty much all that they +could do. It was worse for Amy, whose cold kept her indoors and denied +her even the relaxation of the cab. Mrs. Ashe had engaged a +well-recommended elderly English maid to come every morning and take +care of Amy while they were out; and with this respectable functionary, +whose ideas were of a rigidly British type and who did not speak a word +of any language but her own, poor Amy was compelled to spend most of her +time. Her only consolation was in persuading this serene attendant to +take a part in the French lessons which she made a daily point of giving +to Mabel out of her own little phrase-book. + +"Wilkins is getting on, I think," she told Katy one night. "She says +'Biscuit glacé' quite nicely now. But I never will let her look at the +book, though she always wants to; for if once she saw how the words are +spelled, she would never in the world pronounce them right again. They +look so very different, you know." + +Katy looked at Amy's pale little face and eager eyes with a real +heartache. Her rapture when at the end of the long dull afternoons her +mother returned to her was touching. Paris was very _triste_ to poor +Amy, with all her happy facility for amusing herself; and Katy felt that +the sooner they got away from it the better it would be. So, in spite of +the delight which her brief glimpses at the Louvre gave her, and the fun +it was to go about with Mrs. Ashe and see her buy pretty things, and the +real satisfaction she took in the one perfectly made walking-suit to +which she had treated herself, she was glad when the final day came, +when the belated dressmakers and artistes in jackets and wraps had sent +home their last wares, and the trunks were packed. It had been rather +the fault of circumstances than of Paris; but Katy had not learned to +love the beautiful capital as most Americans do, and did not feel at all +as if she wanted that her "reward of virtue" should be to go there when +she died! There must be more interesting places for live people, and +ghosts too, to be found on the map of Europe, she was sure. + +Next morning as they drove slowly down the Champs Élysées, and +looked back for a last glimpse of the famous Arch, a bright object +met their eyes, moving vaguely against the mist. It was the gay red +wagon of the Bon Marché, carrying bundles home to the dwellers of +some up-town street. + +Katy burst out laughing. "It is an emblem of Paris," she said,--"of our +Paris, I mean. It has been all Bon Marché and fog!" + +"Miss Katy," interrupted Amy, "_do_ you like Europe? For my part, I was +never so disgusted with any place in my life!" + +"Poor little bird, her views of 'Europe' are rather dark just now, and +no wonder," said her mother. "Never mind, darling, you shall have +something pleasanter by and by if I can find it for you." + +"Burnet is a great deal pleasanter than Paris," pronounced Amy, +decidedly. "It doesn't keep always raining there, and I can take walks, +and I understand everything that people say." + +All that day they sped southward, and with every hour came a change in +the aspect of their surroundings. Now they made brief stops in large +busy towns which seemed humming with industry. Now they whirled through +grape countries with miles of vineyards, where the brown leaves still +hung on the vines. Then again came glimpses of old Roman ruins, +amphitheatres, viaducts, fragments of wall or arch; or a sudden chill +betokened their approach to mountains, where snowy peaks could be seen +on the far horizon. And when the long night ended and day roused them +from broken slumbers, behold, the world was made over! Autumn had +vanished, and the summer, which they thought fled for good, had taken +his place. Green woods waved about them, fresh leaves were blowing in +the wind, roses and hollyhocks beckoned from white-walled gardens; and +before they had done with exclaiming and rejoicing, the Mediterranean +shot into view, intensely blue, with white fringes of foam, white sails +blowing across, white gulls flying above it, and over all a sky of the +same exquisite blue, whose clouds were white as the drifting sails on +the water below, and they were at Marseilles. + +It was like a glimpse of Paradise to eyes fresh from autumnal grays and +glooms, as they sped along the lovely coast, every curve and turn +showing new combinations of sea and shore, olive-crowned cliff and +shining mountain-peak. With every mile the blue became bluer, the wind +softer, the feathery verdure more dense and summer-like. Hyères and +Cannes and Antibes were passed, and then, as they rounded a long point, +came the view of a sunshiny city lying on a sunlit shore; the train +slackened its speed, and they knew that their journey's end was come and +they were in Nice. + +The place seemed to laugh with gayety as they drove down the Promenade +des Anglais and past the English garden, where the band was playing +beneath the acacias and palm-trees. On one side was a line of +bright-windowed hotels and _pensions_, with balconies and striped +awnings; on the other, the long reach of yellow sand-beach, where ladies +were grouped on shawls and rugs, and children ran up and down in the +sun, while beyond stretched the waveless sea. The December sun felt as +warm as on a late June day at home, and had the same soft caressing +touch. The pavements were thronged with groups of leisurely-looking +people, all wearing an unmistakable holiday aspect; pretty girls in +correct Parisian costumes walked demurely beside their mothers, with +cavaliers in attendance; and among these young men appeared now and +again the well-known uniform of the United States Navy. + +"I wonder," said Mrs. Ashe, struck by a sudden thought, "if by any +chance our squadron is here." She asked the question the moment they +entered the hotel; and the porter, who prided himself on understanding +"zose Eenglesh," replied,-- + +"Mais oui, Madame, ze Americaine fleet it is here; zat is, not here, +but at Villefranche, just a leetle four mile away,--it is ze same +zing exactly." + +"Katy, do you hear that?" cried Mrs. Ashe. "The frigates _are_ here, and +the 'Natchitoches' among them of course; and we shall have Ned to go +about with us everywhere. It is a real piece of good luck for us. Ladies +are at such a loss in a place like this with nobody to escort them. I am +perfectly delighted." + +"So am I," said Katy. "I never saw a frigate, and I always wanted to see +one. Do you suppose they will let us go on board of them?" + +"Why, of course they will." Then to the porter, "Give me a sheet +of paper and an envelope, please.--I must let Ned know that I am +here at once." + +Mrs. Ashe wrote her note and despatched it before they went upstairs to +take off their bonnets. She seemed to have a half-hope that some bird of +the air might carry the news of her arrival to her brother, for she kept +running to the window as if in expectation of seeing him. She was too +restless to lie down or sleep, and after she and Katy had lunched, +proposed that they should go out on the beach for a while. + +"Perhaps we may come across Ned," she remarked. + +They did not come across Ned, but there was no lack of other +delightful objects to engage their attention. The sands were smooth +and hard as a floor. Soft pink lights were beginning to tinge the +western sky. To the north shone the peaks of the maritime Alps, and +the same rosy glow caught them here and there, and warmed their grays +and whites into color. + +"I wonder what that can be?" said Katy, indicating the rocky point which +bounded the beach to the east, where stood a picturesque building of +stone, with massive towers and steep pitches of roof. "It looks half +like a house and half like a castle, but it is quite fascinating, I +think. Do you suppose that people live there?" + +"We might ask," suggested Mrs. Ashe. + +Just then they came to a shallow river spanned by a bridge, beside whose +pebbly bed stood a number of women who seemed to be washing clothes by +the simple and primitive process of laying them in the water on top of +the stones, and pounding them with a flat wooden paddle till they were +white. Katy privately thought that the clothes stood a poor chance of +lasting through these cleansing operations; but she did not say so, and +made the inquiry which Mrs. Ashe had suggested, in her best French. + +"Celle-là?" answered the old woman whom she had addressed. "Mais c'est +la Pension Suisse." + +"A _pension_; why, that means a boarding-house," cried Katy. "What fun +it must be to board there!" + +"Well, why shouldn't we board there!" said her friend. "You know we +meant to look for rooms as soon as we were rested and had found out a +little about the place. Let us walk on and see what the Pension Suisse +is like. If the inside is as pleasant as the outside, we could not do +better, I should think." + +"Oh, I do hope all the rooms are not already taken," said Katy, who had +fallen in love at first sight with the Pension Suisse. She felt quite +oppressed with anxiety as they rang the bell. + +The Pension Suisse proved to be quite as charming inside as out. The +thick stone walls made deep sills and embrasures for the casement +windows, which were furnished with red cushions to serve as seats and +lounging-places. Every window seemed to command a view, for those which +did not look toward the sea looked toward the mountains. The house was +by no means full, either. Several sets of rooms were to be had; and Katy +felt as if she had walked straight into the pages of a romance When Mrs. +Ashe engaged for a month a delightful suite of three, a sitting-room and +two sleeping-chambers, in a round tower, with a balcony overhanging the +water, and a side window, from which a flight of steps led down into a +little walled garden, nestled in among the masonry, where tall +laurestinus and lemon trees grew, and orange and brown wallflowers made +the air sweet. Her contentment knew no bounds. + +"I am so glad that I came," she told Mrs. Ashe. "I never confessed it to +you before; but sometimes.--when we were sick at sea, you know, and when +it would rain all the time, and after Amy caught that cold in Paris--I +have almost wished, just for a minute or two at a time, that we hadn't. +But now I wouldn't not have come for the world! This is perfectly +delicious. I am glad, glad, glad we are here, and we are going to have a +lovely time, I know." + +They were passing out of the rooms into the hall as she said these +words, and two ladies who were walking up a cross passage turned their +heads at the sound of her voice. To her great surprise Katy recognized +Mrs. Page and Lilly. + +"Why, Cousin Olivia, is it you?" she cried, springing forward with +the cordiality one naturally feels in seeing a familiar face in a +foreign land. + +Mrs. Page seemed rather puzzled than cordial. She put up her eyeglass +and did not seem to quite make out who Katy was. + +"It is Katy Carr, mamma," explained Lilly. "Well, Katy, this _is_ a +surprise! Who would have thought of meeting you in Nice!" + +There was a decided absence of rapture in Lilly's manner. She was +prettier than ever, as Katy saw in a moment, and beautifully dressed in +soft brown velvet, which exactly suited her complexion and her +pale-colored wavy hair. + +"Katy Carr! why, so it is," admitted Mrs. Page. "It is a surprise +indeed. We had no idea that you were abroad. What has brought you so far +from Tunket,--Burnet, I mean? Who are you with?" + +"With my friend Mrs. Ashe," explained Katy, rather chilled by this cool +reception. + +"Let me introduce you. Mrs. Ashe, these are my cousins Mrs. Page and +Miss Page. Amy,--why where is Amy?" + +Amy had walked back to the door of the garden staircase, and was +standing there looking down upon the flowers. + +Cousin Olivia bowed rather distantly. Her quick eye took in the details +of Mrs. Ashe's travelling-dress and Katy's dark blue ulster. + +"Some countrified friend from that dreadful Western town where they +live," she said to herself. "How foolish of Philip Carr to try to send +his girls to Europe! He can't afford it, I know." Her voice was rather +rigid as she inquired,-- + +"And what brings you here?--to this house, I mean?" + +"Oh, we are coming to-morrow to stay; we have taken rooms for a month," +explained Katy. "What a delicious-looking old place it is." + +"Have you?" said Lilly, in a voice which did not express any particular +pleasure. "Why, we are staying here too." + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE PENSION SUISSE. + + +"What do you suppose can have brought Katy Carr to Europe?" inquired +Lilly, as she stood in the window watching the three figures walk slowly +down the sands. "She is the last person I expected to turn up here. I +supposed she was stuck in that horrid place--what is the name of +it?--where they live, for the rest of her life." + +"I confess I am surprised at meeting her myself," rejoined Mrs. Page. "I +had no idea that her father could afford so expensive a journey." + +"And who is this woman that she has got along with her?" + +"I have no idea, I'm sure. Some Western friend, I suppose." + +"Dear me, I wish they were going to some other house than this," said +Lilly, discontentedly. "If they were at the Rivoir, for instance, or one +of those places at the far end of the beach, we shouldn't need to see +anything of them, or even know that they were in town! It's a real +nuisance to have people spring upon you this way, people you don't want +to meet; and when they happen to be relations it is all the worse. Katy +will be hanging on us all the time, I'm afraid." + +"Oh, my dear, there is no fear of that. A little repression on our part +will prevent her from being any trouble, I'm quite certain. But we +_must_ treat her politely, you know, Lilly; her father is my cousin." + +"That's the saddest part of it! Well, there's one thing, I shall _not_ +take her with me every time we go to the frigates," said Lilly, +decisively. "I am not going to inflict a country cousin on Lieutenant +Worthington, and spoil all my own fun beside. So I give you fair +warning, mamma, and you must manage it somehow." + +"Certainly, dear, I will. It would be a great pity to have your visit to +Nice spoiled in any way, with the squadron here too, and that pleasant +Mr. Worthington so very attentive." + +Unconscious of these plans for her suppression, Katy walked back to the +hotel in a mood of pensive pleasure. Europe at last promised to be as +delightful as it had seemed when she only knew it from maps and books, +and Nice so far appeared to her the most charming place in the world. + +Somebody was waiting for them at the Hotel des Anglais,--a tall, +bronzed, good-looking somebody in uniform, with pleasant brown eyes +beaming from beneath a gold-banded cap; at the sight of whom Amy rushed +forward with her long locks flying, and Mrs. Ashe uttered an exclamation +of pleasure. It was Ned Worthington, Mrs. Ashe's only brother, whom she +had not met for two years and a half; and you can easily imagine how +glad she was to see him. + +"You got my note then?" she said after the first eager greetings were +over and she had introduced him to Katy. + +"Note? No. Did you write me a note?" + +"Yes; to Villefranche." + +"To the ship? I shan't get that till tomorrow. No; finding out that you +were here is just a bit of good fortune. I came over to call on some +friends who are staying down the beach a little way, and dropping in to +look over the list of arrivals, as I generally do, I saw your names; and +the porter not being able to say which way you had gone, I waited for +you to come in." + +"We have been looking at such a delightful old place, the Pension +Suisse, and have taken rooms." + +"The Pension Suisse, eh? Why, that was where I was going to call. I know +some people who are staying there. It seems a pleasant house; I'm glad +you are going there, Polly. It's first-rate luck that the ships happen +to be here just now. I can see you every day." + +"But, Ned, surely you are not leaving me so soon? Surely you will stay +and dine with us?" urged his sister, as he took up his cap. + +"I wish I could, but I can't to-night, Polly. You see I had engaged to +take some ladies out to drive, and they will expect me. I had no idea +that you would be here, or I should have kept myself free," +apologetically. "Tomorrow I will come over early, and be at your service +for whatever you like to do." + +"That's right, dear boy. We shall expect you." Then, the moment he was +gone, "Now, Katy, isn't he nice?" + +"Very nice, I should think," said Katy, who had watched the brief +interview with interest. "I like his face so much, and how fond he +is of you!" + +"Dear fellow! so he is. I am seven years older than he, but we have +always been intimate. Brothers and sisters are not always intimate, you +know,--or perhaps you don't know, for all of yours are." + +"Yes, indeed," said Katy, with a happy smile. "There is nobody like +Clover and Elsie, except perhaps Johnnie and Dorry and Phil," she added +with a laugh. + +The remove to the Pension Suisse was made early the next morning. Mrs. +Page and Lilly did not appear to welcome them. Katy rather rejoiced in +their absence, for she wanted the chance to get into order without +interruptions. + +There was something comfortable in the thought that they were to stay a +whole month in these new quarters; for so long a time, it seemed worth +while to make them pretty and homelike. So, while Mrs. Ashe unpacked her +own belongings and Amy's, Katy, who had a natural turn for arranging +rooms, took possession of the little parlor, pulled the furniture into +new positions, laid out portfolios and work-cases and their few books, +pinned various photographs which they had bought in Oxford and London on +the walls, and tied back the curtains to admit the sunshine. Then she +paid a visit to the little garden, and came back with a long branch of +laurestinus, which she trained across the mantelpiece, and a bunch of +wallflowers for their one little vase. The maid, by her orders, laid a +fire of wood and pine cones ready for lighting; and when all was done +she called Mrs. Ashe to pronounce upon the effect. + +"It is lovely," she said, sinking into a great velvet arm-chair which +Katy had drawn close to the seaward window. "I haven't seen anything so +pleasant since we left home. You are a witch, Katy, and the comfort of +my life. I am so glad I brought you! Now, pray go and unpack your own +things, and make yourself look nice for the second breakfast. We have +been a shabby set enough since we arrived. I saw those cousins of yours +looking askance at our old travelling-dresses yesterday. Let us try to +make a more respectable impression to-day." + +So they went down to breakfast, Mrs. Ashe in one of her new Paris gowns, +Katy in a pretty dress of olive serge, and Amy all smiles and ruffled +pinafore, walking hand in hand with her uncle Ned, who had just arrived +and whose great ally she was; and Mrs. Page and Lilly, who were already +seated at table, had much ado to conceal their somewhat unflattering +surprise at the conjunction. For one moment Lilly's eyes opened into a +wide stare of incredulous astonishment; then she remembered herself, +nodded as pleasantly as she could to Mrs. Ashe and Katy, and favored +Lieutenant Worthington with a pretty blushing smile as he went by, while +she murmured,-- + +"Mamma, do you see that? What does it mean?" + +"Why, Ned, do you know those people?" asked Mrs. Ashe at the same +moment. + +"Do _you_ know them!" + +"Yes; we met yesterday. They are connections of my friend Miss Carr." + +"Really? There is not the least family likeness between them." And Mr. +Worthington's eyes travelled deliberately from Lilly's delicate, golden +prettiness to Katy, who, truth to say, did not shine by the contrast. + +"She has a nice, sensible sort of face," he thought, "and she looks like +a lady, but for beauty there is no comparison between the two." Then he +turned to listen to his sister as she replied,-- + +"No, indeed, not the least; no two girls could be less like." Mrs. Ashe +had made the same comparison, but with quite a different result. Katy's +face was grown dear to her, and she had not taken the smallest fancy to +Lilly Page. + +Her relationship to the young naval officer, however, made a wonderful +difference in the attitude of Mrs. Page and Lilly toward the party. Katy +became a person to be cultivated rather than repressed, and +thenceforward there was no lack of cordiality on their part. + +"I want to come in and have a good talk," said Lilly, slipping her arm +through Katy's as they left the dining-room. "Mayn't I come now while +mamma is calling on Mrs. Ashe?" This arrangement brought her to the side +of Lieutenant Worthington, and she walked between him and Katy down the +hall and into the little drawing-room. + +"Oh, how perfectly charming! You have been fixing up ever since you +came, haven't you? It looks like home. I wish we had a _salon_, but +mamma thought it wasn't worth while, as we were only to be here such a +little time. What a delicious balcony over the water, too! May I go out +on it? Oh, Mr. Worthington, do see this!" + +She pushed open the half-closed window and stepped out as she spoke. Mr. +Worthington, after hesitating a moment, followed. Katy paused uncertain. +There was hardly room for three in the balcony, yet she did not quite +like to leave them. But Lilly had turned her back, and was talking in a +low tone; it was nothing more in reality than the lightest chit-chat, +but it had the air of being something confidential; so Katy, after +waiting a little while, retreated to the sofa, and took up her work, +joining now and then in the conversation which Mrs. Ashe was keeping up +with Cousin Olivia. She did not mind Lilly's ill-breeding, nor was she +surprised at it. Mrs. Ashe was less tolerant. + +"Isn't it rather damp out there, Ned?" she called to her brother; "you +had better throw my shawl round Miss Page's shoulders." + +"Oh, it isn't a bit damp," said Lilly, recalled to herself by this broad +hint. "Thank you so much for thinking of it, Mrs. Ashe, but I am just +coming in." She seated herself beside Katy, and began to question her +rather languidly. + +"When did you leave home, and how were they all when you came away?" + +"All well, thank you. We sailed from Boston on the 14th of October; and +before that I spent two days with Rose Red,--you remember her? She is +married now, and has the dearest little home and such a darling baby." + +"Yes, I heard of her marriage. It didn't seem much of a match for Mr. +Redding's daughter to make, did it? I never supposed she would be +satisfied with anything less than a member of Congress or a Secretary of +Legation." + +"Rose isn't particularly ambitious, I think, and she seems perfectly +happy," replied Katy, flushing. + +"Oh, you needn't fire up in her defence; you and Clover always did adore +Rose Red, I know, but I never could see what there was about her that +was so wonderfully fascinating. She never had the least style, and she +was always just as rude to me as she could be." + +"You were not intimate at school, but I am sure Rose was never rude," +said Katy, with spirit. + +"Well, we won't fight about her at this late day. Tell me where you have +been, and where you are going, and how long you are to stay in Europe." + +Katy, glad to change the subject, complied, and the conversation +diverged into comparison of plans and experiences. Lilly had been in +Europe nearly a year, and had seen "almost everything," as she phrased +it. She and her mother had spent the previous winter in Italy, had taken +a run into Russia, "done" Switzerland and the Tyrol thoroughly, and +France and Germany, and were soon going into Spain, and from there to +Paris, to shop in preparation for their return home in the spring. + +"Of course we shall want quantities of things," she said. "No one will +believe that we have been abroad unless we bring home a lot of clothes. +The _lingerie_ and all that is ordered already; but the dresses must be +made at the last moment, and we shall have a horrid time of it, I +suppose. Worth has promised to make me two walking-suits and two +ball-dresses, but he's very bad about keeping his word. Did you do much +when you were in Paris, Katy?" + +"We went to the Louvre three times, and to Versailles and St. Cloud," +said Katy, wilfully misunderstanding her. + +"Oh, I didn't mean that kind of stupid thing; I meant gowns. What +did you buy?" + +"One tailor-made suit of dark blue cloth." + +"My! what moderation!" + +Shopping played a large part in Lilly's reminiscences. She recollected +places, not from their situation or beauty or historical associations, +or because of the works of art which they contained, but as the places +where she bought this or that. + +"Oh, that dear Piazza di Spagna!" she would say; "that was where I +found my rococo necklace, the loveliest thing you ever saw, Katy." Or, +"Prague--oh yes, mother got the most enchanting old silver chatelaine +there, with all kinds of things hanging to it,--needlecases and watches +and scent-bottles, all solid, and so beautifully chased." Or again, +"Berlin was horrid, we thought; but the amber is better and cheaper +than anywhere else,--great strings of beads, of the largest size and +that beautiful pale yellow, for a hundred francs. You must get yourself +one, Katy." + +Poor Lilly! Europe to her was all "things." She had collected trunks +full of objects to carry home, but of the other collections which do not +go into trunks, she had little or none. Her mind was as empty, her heart +as untouched as ever; the beauty and the glory and the pathos of art and +history and Nature had been poured out in vain before her closed and +indifferent eyes. + +Life soon dropped into a peaceful routine at the Pension Suisse, which +was at the same time restful and stimulating. Katy's first act in the +morning, as soon as she opened her eyes, was to hurry to the window in +hopes of getting a glimpse of Corsica. She had discovered that this +elusive island could almost always be seen from Nice at the dawning, but +that as soon as the sun was fairly up, it vanished to appear no more for +the rest of the day. There was something fascinating to her imagination +in the hovering mountain outline between sea and sky. She felt as if she +were under an engagement to be there to meet it, and she rarely missed +the appointment. Then, after Corsica had pulled the bright mists over +its face and melted from view, she would hurry with her dressing, and as +soon as was practicable set to work to make the _salon_ look bright +before the coffee and rolls should appear, a little after eight o'clock. +Mrs. Ashe always found the fire lit, the little meal cosily set out +beside it, and Katy's happy untroubled face to welcome her when she +emerged from her room; and the cheer of these morning repasts made a +good beginning for the day. + +Then came walking and a French lesson, and a long sitting on the beach, +while Katy worked at her home letters and Amy raced up and down in the +sun; and then toward noon Lieutenant Ned generally appeared, and some +scheme of pleasure was set on foot. Mrs. Ashe ignored his evident +_penchant_ for Lilly Page, and claimed his time and attentions as hers +by right. Young Worthington was a good deal "taken" with the pretty +Lilly; still, he had an old-time devotion for his sister and the habit +of doing what she desired, and he yielded to her behests with no audible +objections. He made a fourth in the carriage while they drove over the +lovely hills which encircle Nice toward the north, to Cimiers and the +Val de St. André, or down the coast toward Ventimiglia. He went with +them to Monte-Carlo and Mentone, and was their escort again and again +when they visited the great war-ships as they lay at anchor in a bay +which in its translucent blue was like an enormous sapphire. + +Mrs. Page and her daughter were included in these parties more than +once; but there was something in Mrs. Ashe's cool appropriation of her +brother which was infinitely vexatious to Lilly, who before her +arrival had rather looked upon Lieutenant Worthington as her own +especial property. + +"I wish _that_ Mrs. Ashe had stayed at home," she told her mother. "She +quite spoils everything. Mr. Worthington isn't half so nice as he was +before she came. I do believe she has a plan for making him fall in love +with Katy; but there she makes a miss of it, for he doesn't seem to care +anything about her." + +"Katy is a nice girl enough," pronounced her mother, "but not of the +sort to attract a gay young man, I should fancy. I don't believe _she_ +is thinking of any such thing. You needn't be afraid, Lilly." + +"I'm not afraid," said Lilly, with a pout; "only it's so provoking." + +Mrs. Page was quite right. Katy was not thinking of any such thing. She +liked Ned Worthington's frank manners; she owned, quite honestly, that +she thought him handsome, and she particularly admired the sort of +deferential affection which he showed to Mrs. Ashe, and his nice ways +with Amy. For herself, she was aware that he scarcely noticed her except +as politeness demanded that he should be civil to his sister's friend; +but the knowledge did not trouble her particularly. Her head was full of +interesting things, plans, ideas. She was not accustomed to being made +the object of admiration, and experienced none of the vexations of a +neglected belle. If Lieutenant Worthington happened to talk to her, she +responded frankly and freely; if he did not, she occupied herself with +something else; in either case she was quite unembarrassed both in +feeling and manner, and had none of the awkwardness which comes from +disappointed vanity and baffled expectations, and the need for +concealing them. + +Toward the close of December the officers of the flag-ship gave a ball, +which was the great event of the season to the gay world of Nice. +Americans were naturally in the ascendant on an American frigate; and of +all the American girls present, Lilly Page was unquestionably the +prettiest. Exquisitely dressed in white lace, with bands of turquoises +on her neck and arms and in her hair, she had more partners than she +knew what to do with, more bouquets than she could well carry, and +compliments enough to turn any girl's head. Thrown off her guard by her +triumphs, she indulged a little vindictive feeling which had been +growing in her mind of late on account of what she chose to consider +certain derelictions of duty on the part of Lieutenant Worthington, and +treated him to a taste of neglect. She was engaged three deep when he +asked her to dance; she did not hear when he invited her to walk; she +turned a cold shoulder when he tried to talk, and seemed absorbed by the +other cavaliers, naval and otherwise, who crowded about her. + +Piqued and surprised, Ned Worthington turned to Katy. She did not dance, +saying frankly that she did not know how and was too tall; and she was +rather simply dressed in a pearl-gray silk, which had been her best gown +the winter before in Burnet, with a bunch of red roses in the white lace +of the tucker, and another in her hand, both the gifts of little Amy; +but she looked pleasant and serene, and there was something about her +which somehow soothed his disturbed mind, as he offered her his arm for +a walk on the decks. + +For a while they said little, and Katy was quite content to pace up and +down in silence, enjoying the really beautiful scene,--the moonlight on +the Bay, the deep wavering reflections of the dark hulls and slender +spars, the fairy effect of the colored lamps and lanterns, and the +brilliant moving maze of the dancers. + +"Do you care for this sort of thing?" he suddenly asked. + +"What sort of thing do you mean?" + +"Oh, all this jigging and waltzing and amusement." + +"I don't know how to 'jig,' but it's delightful to look on," she +answered merrily. "I never saw anything so pretty in my life." + +The happy tone of her voice and the unruffled face which she turned upon +him quieted his irritation. + +"I really believe you mean it," he said; "and yet, if you won't think me +rude to say so, most girls would consider the thing dull enough if they +were only getting out of it what you are,--if they were not dancing, I +mean, and nobody in particular was trying to entertain them." + +"But everything _is_ being done to entertain me," cried Katy. "I can't +imagine what makes you think that it could seem dull. I am in it all, +don't you see,--I have my share--. Oh, I am stupid, I can't make you +understand." + +"Yes, you do. I understand perfectly, I think; only it is such a +different point of view from what girls in general would take." (By +girls he meant Lilly!) "Please do not think me uncivil." + +"You are not uncivil at all; but don't let us talk any more about me. +Look at the lights between the shadows of the masts on the water. How +they quiver! I never saw anything so beautiful, I think. And how warm it +is! I can't believe that we are in December and that it is nearly +Christmas." + +"How is Polly going to celebrate her Christmas? Have you decided?" + +"Amy is to have a Christmas-tree for her dolls, and two other dolls are +coming. We went out this morning to buy things for it,--tiny little toys +and candles fit for Lilliput. And that reminds me, do you suppose one +can get any Christmas greens here?" + +"Why not? The place seems full of green." + +"That's just it; the summer look makes it unnatural. But I should like +some to dress the parlor with if they could be had." + +"I'll see what I can find, and send you a load." + +I don't know why this very simple little talk should have made an +impression on Lieutenant Worthington's mind, but somehow he did not +forget it. + +"'Don't let us talk any more about me,'" he said to himself that night +when alone in his cabin. "I wonder how long it would be before the other +one did anything to divert the talk from herself. Some time, I fancy." +He smiled rather grimly as he unbuckled his sword-belt. It is unlucky +for a girl when she starts a train of reflection like this. Lilly's +little attempt to pique her admirer had somehow missed its mark. + +The next afternoon Katy in her favorite place on the beach was at work +on the long weekly letter which she never failed to send home to Burnet. +She held her portfolio in her lap, and her pen ran rapidly over the +paper, as rapidly almost as her tongue would have run could her +correspondents have been brought nearer. + + + "Nice, December 22. + + "Dear Papa and everybody,--Amy and I are sitting on my old purple + cloak, which is spread over the sand just where it was spread the + last time I wrote you. We are playing the following game: I am a + fairy and she is a little girl. Another fairy--not sitting on the + cloak at present--has enchanted the little girl, and I am telling + her various ways by which she can work out her deliverance. At + present the task is to find twenty-four dull red pebbles of the same + color, failing to do which she is to be changed into an owl. When we + began to play, I was the wicked fairy; but Amy objected to that + because I am 'so nice,' so we changed the characters. I wish you + could see the glee in her pretty gray eyes over this infantile game, + into which she has thrown herself so thoroughly that she half + believes in it. 'But I needn't really be changed into an owl! 'she + says, with a good deal of anxiety in her voice. + + "To think that you are shivering in the first snow-storm, or sending + the children out with their sleds and india-rubbers to slide! How I + wish instead that you were sharing the purple cloak with Amy and me, + and could sit all this warm balmy afternoon close to the surf-line + which fringes this bluest of blue seas! There is plenty of room for + you all. Not many people come down to this end of the beach, and if + you were very good we would let you play. + + "Our life here goes on as delightfully as ever. Nice is very full of + people, and there seem to be some pleasant ones among them. Here at + the Pension Suisse we do not see a great many Americans. The + fellow-boarders are principally Germans and Austrians with a + sprinkling of French. (Amy has found her twenty-four red pebbles, so + she is let off from being an owl. She is now engaged in throwing + them one by one into the sea. Each must hit the water under penalty + of her being turned into a Muscovy duck. She doesn't know exactly + what a Muscovy duck is, which makes her all the more particular + about her shots.) But, as I was saying, our little _suite_ in the + round tower is so on one side of the rest of the Pension that it is + as good as having a house of our own. The _salon_ is very bright and + sunny; we have two sofas and a square table and a round table and a + sort of what-not and two easy-chairs and two uneasy chairs and a + lamp of our own and a clock. There is also a sofa-pillow. There's + richness for you! We have pinned up all our photographs on the + walls, including Papa's and Clovy's and that bad one of Phil and + Johnnie making faces at each other, and three lovely red and yellow + Japanese pictures on muslin which Rose Red put in my trunk the last + thing, for a spot of color. There are some autumn leaves too; and we + always have flowers and in the mornings and evenings a fire. + + "Amy is now finding fifty snow-white pebbles, which when found are + to be interred in one common grave among the shingle. If she fails + to do this, she is to be changed to an electrical eel. The chief + difficulty is that she loses her heart to particular pebbles. 'I + can't bury you,' I hear her saying. + + "To return,--we have jolly little breakfasts together in the + _salon_. They consist of coffee and rolls, and are served by a + droll, snappish little _garçon_ with no teeth, and an Italian-French + patois which is very hard to understand when he sputters. He told me + the other day that he had been a _garçon_ for forty-six years, which + seemed rather a long boyhood. + + "The company, as we meet them at table, are rather entertaining. + Cousin Olivia and Lilly are on their best behavior to me because I + am travelling with Mrs. Ashe, and Mrs. Ashe is Lieutenant + Worthington's sister, and Lieutenant Worthington is Lilly's admirer, + and they like him very much. In fact, Lilly has intimated + confidentially that she is all but engaged to him; but I am not sure + about it, or if that was what she meant; and I fear, if it proves + true, that dear Polly will not like it at all. She is quite + unmanageable, and snubs Lilly continually in a polite way, which + makes me fidgety for fear Lilly will be offended, but she never + seems to notice it. Cousin Olivia looks very handsome and gorgeous. + She quite takes the color out of the little Russian Countess who + sits next to her, and who is as dowdy and meek as if she came from + Akron or Binghampton, or any other place where countesses are + unknown. Then there are two charming, well-bred young Austrians. The + one who sits nearest to me is a 'Candidat' for a Doctorate of Laws, + and speaks eight languages well. He has only studied English for the + past six weeks, but has made wonderful progress. I wish my French + were half as good as his English is already. + + "There is a very gossiping young woman on the story beneath ours, + whom I meet sometimes in the garden, and from her I hear all manner + of romantic tales about people in the house. One little French girl + is dying of consumption and a broken heart, because of a quarrel + with her lover, who is a courier; and the _padrona_, who is young + and pretty, and has only been married a few months to our elderly + landlord, has a story also. I forget some of the details; but there + was a stern parent and an admirer, and a cup of cold poison, and now + she says she wishes she were dying of consumption like poor + Alphonsine. For all that, she looks quite fat and rosy, and I often + see her in her best gown with a great deal of Roman scarf and mosaic + jewelry, stationed in the doorway, 'making the Pension look + attractive to the passers-by.' So she has a sense of duty, though + she is unhappy. + + "Amy has buried all her pebbles, and says she is tired of playing + fairy. She is now sitting with her head on my shoulder, and + professedly studying her French verb for to-morrow, but in reality, + I am sorry to say, she is conversing with me about be-headings,--a + subject which, since her visit to the Tower, has exercised a + horrible fascination over her mind. 'Do people die right away?' she + asks. 'Don't they feel one minute, and doesn't it feel awfully?' + There is a good deal of blood, she supposes, because there was so + much straw laid about the block in the picture of Lady Jane Gray's + execution, which enlivened our walls in Paris. On the whole, I am + rather glad that a fat little white dog has come waddling down the + beach and taken off her attention. + + "Speaking of Paris seems to renew the sense of fog which we had + there. Oh, how enchanting sunshine is after weeks of gloom! I shall + never forget how the Mediterranean looked when we saw it first,--all + blue, and such a lovely color. There ought, according to Morse's + Atlas, to have been a big red letter T on the water about where we + were, but I didn't see any. Perhaps they letter it so far out from + shore that only people in boats notice it. + + "Now the dusk is fading, and the odd chill which hides under these + warm afternoons begins to be felt. Amy has received a message + written on a mysterious white pebble to the effect--" + +Katy was interrupted at this point by a crunching step on the gravel +behind her. + +"Good afternoon," said a voice. "Polly has sent me to fetch you and Amy +in. She says it is growing cool." + +"We were just coming," said Katy, beginning to put away her papers. + +Ned Worthington sat down on the cloak beside her. The distance was now +steel gray against the sky; then came a stripe of violet, and then a +broad sheet of the vivid iridescent blue which one sees on the necks of +peacocks, which again melted into the long line of flashing surf. + +"See that gull," he said, "how it drops plumb into the sea, as if bound +to go through to China!" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne calls skylarks 'little raptures,'" replied Katy. +"Sea-gulls seem to me like grown-up raptures." + +"Are you going?" said Lieutenant Worthington in a tone of surprise, +as she rose. + +"Didn't you say that Polly wanted us to come in?" + +"Why, yes; but it seems too good to leave, doesn't it? Oh, by the way, +Miss Carr, I came across a man to-day and ordered your greens. They will +be sent on Christmas Eve. Is that right?" + +"Quite right, and we are ever so much obliged to you." She turned for a +last look at the sea, and, unseen by Ned Worthington, formed her lips +into a "good-night." Katy had made great friends with the Mediterranean. + +The promised "greens" appeared on the afternoon before Christmas Day, in +the shape of an enormous fagot of laurel and laurestinus and holly and +box; orange and lemon boughs with ripe fruit hanging from them, thick +ivy tendrils whole yards long, arbutus, pepper tree, and great branches +of acacia, covered with feathery yellow bloom. The man apologized for +bringing so little. The gentleman had ordered two francs worth, he said, +but this was all he could carry; he would fetch some more if the young +lady wished! But Katy, exclaiming with delight over her wealth, wished +no more; so the man departed, and the three friends proceeded to turn +the little _salon_ into a fairy bower. Every photograph and picture was +wreathed in ivy, long garlands hung on either side the windows, and the +chimney-piece and door-frames became clustering banks of leaf and +blossom. A great box of flowers had come with the greens, and bowls of +fresh roses and heliotrope and carnations were set everywhere; violets +and primroses, gold-hearted brown auriculas, spikes of veronica, all the +zones and all the seasons, combining to make the Christmas-tide sweet, +and to turn winter topsy-turvy in the little parlor. + +Mabel and Mary Matilda, with their two doll visitors, sat gravely round +the table, in the laps of their little mistresses; and Katy, putting on +an apron and an improvised cap, and speaking Irish very fast, served +them with a repast of rolls and cocoa, raspberry jam, and delicious +little almond cakes. The fun waxed fast and furious; and Lieutenant +Worthington, coming in with his hands full of parcels for the +Christmas-tree, was just in time to hear Katy remark in a strong County +Kerry brogue,-- + +"Och, thin indade, Miss Amy, and it's no more cake you'll be getting out +of me the night. That's four pieces you've ate, and it's little slape +your poor mother'll git with you a tossin' and tumblin' forenenst her +all night long because of your big appetite." + +"Oh, Miss Katy, talk Irish some more!" cried the delighted children. + +"Is it Irish you'd be afther having me talk, when it's me own langwidge, +and sorrow a bit of another do I know?" demanded Katy. Then she caught +sight of the new arrival and stopped short with a blush and a laugh. + +"Come in, Mr. Worthington," she said; "we're at supper, as you see, and +I am acting as waitress." + +"Oh, Uncle Ned, please go away," pleaded Amy, "or Katy will be polite, +and not talk Irish any more." + +"Indade, and the less ye say about politeness the betther, when ye're +afther ordering the jantleman out of the room in that fashion!" said the +waitress. Then she pulled off her cap and untied her apron. + +"Now for the Christmas-tree," she said. + +It was a very little tree, but it bore some remarkable fruits; for in +addition to the "tiny toys and candles fit for Lilliput," various +parcels were found to have been hastily added at the last moment for +various people. The "Natchitoches" had lately come from the Levant, and +delightful Oriental confections now appeared for Amy and Mrs. Ashe; +Turkish slippers, all gold embroidery; towels, with richly decorated +ends in silks and tinsel;--all the pretty superfluities which the East +holds out to charm gold from the pockets of her Western visitors. A +pretty little dagger in agate and silver fell to Katy's share out of +what Lieutenant Worthington called his "loot;" and beside, a most +beautiful specimen of the inlaid work for which Nice is famous,--a +looking-glass, with a stand and little doors to close it in,--which was +a present from Mrs. Ashe. It was quite unlike a Christmas Eve at home, +but altogether delightful; and as Katy sat next morning on the sand, +after the service in the English church, to finish her home letter, and +felt the sun warm on her cheek, and the perfumed air blow past as softly +as in June, she had to remind herself that Christmas is not necessarily +synonymous with snow and winter, but means the great central heat and +warmth, the advent of Him who came to lighten the whole earth. + +A few days after this pleasant Christmas they left Nice. All of them +felt a reluctance to move, and Amy loudly bewailed the necessity. + +"If I could stay here till it is time to go home, I shouldn't be +homesick at all," she declared. + +"But what a pity it would be not to see Italy!" said her mother. "Think +of Naples and Rome and Venice." + +"I don't want to think about them. It makes me feel as if I was studying +a great long geography lesson, and it tires me so to learn it." + +"Amy, dear, you're not well." + +"Yes, I am,--quite well; only I don't want to go away from Nice." + +"You only have to learn a little bit at a time of your geography lesson, +you know," suggested Katy; "and it's a great deal nicer way to study it +than out of a book." But though she spoke cheerfully she was conscious +that she shared Amy's reluctance. + +"It's all laziness," she told herself. "Nice has been so pleasant that +it has spoiled me." + +It was a consolation and made going easier that they were to drive over +the famous Cornice Road as far as San Remo, instead of going to Genoa +by rail as most travellers now-a-days do. They departed from the +Pension Suisse early on an exquisite morning, fair and balmy as June, +but with a little zest and sparkle of coolness in the air which made it +additionally delightful. The Mediterranean was of the deepest +violet-blue; a sort of bloom of color seemed to lie upon it. The sky +was like an arch of turquoise; every cape and headland shone jewel-like +in the golden sunshine. The carriage, as it followed the windings of +the road cut shelf-like on the cliffs, seemed poised between earth and +heaven; the sea below, the mountain summits above, with a fairy world +of verdure between. The journey was like a dream of enchantment and +rapidly changing surprises; and when it ended in a quaint hostelry at +San Remo, with palm-trees feathering the Bordighera Point and Corsica, +for once seen by day, lying in bold, clear outlines against the sunset, +Katy had to admit to herself that Nice, much as she loved it, was not +the only, not even the most beautiful place in Europe. Already she felt +her horizon growing, her convictions changing; and who should say what +lay beyond? + +The next day brought them to Genoa, to a hotel once the stately palace +of an archbishop, where they were lodged, all three together, in an +enormous room, so high and broad and long that their three little +curtained beds set behind a screen of carved wood made no impression on +the space. There were not less than four sofas and double that number of +arm-chairs in the room, besides a couple of monumental wardrobes; but, +as Katy remarked, several grand pianos could still have been moved in +without anybody's feeling crowded. On one side of them lay the port of +Genoa, filled with craft from all parts of the world, and flying the +flags of a dozen different nations. From the other they caught glimpses +of the magnificent old city, rising in tier over tier of churches and +palaces and gardens; while nearer still were narrow streets, which +glittered with gold filigree and the shops of jewel-workers. And while +they went in and out and gazed and wondered, Lilly Page, at the Pension +Suisse, was saying,-- + +"I am so glad that Katy and _that_ Mrs. Ashe are gone. Nothing has been +so pleasant since they came. Lieutenant Worthington is dreadfully stiff +and stupid, and seems quite different from what he used to be. But now +that we have got rid of them it will all come right again." + +"I really don't think that Katy was to blame," said Mrs. Page. "She +never seemed to me to be making any effort to attract him." + +"Oh, Katy is sly," responded Lilly, vindictively. "She never _seems_ to +do anything, but somehow she always gets her own way. I suppose she +thought I didn't see her keeping him down there on the beach the other +day when he was coming in to call on us, but I did. It was just out of +spite, and because she wanted to vex me; I know it was." + +"Well, dear, she's gone now, and you won't be worried with her again," +said her mother, soothingly. "Don't pout so, Lilly, and wrinkle up your +forehead. It's very unbecoming." + +"Yes, she's gone," snapped Lilly; "and as she's bound for the East, and +we for the West, we are not likely to meet again, for which I am +devoutly thankful." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. + + +"We are going to follow the track of Ulysses," said Katy, with her eyes +fixed on the little travelling-map in her guide-book. "Do you realize +that, Polly dear? He and his companions sailed these very seas before +us, and we shall see the sights they saw,--Circe's Cape and the Isles of +the Sirens, and Polyphemus himself, perhaps, who knows?" + +The "Marco Polo" had just cast off her moorings, and was slowly steaming +out of the crowded port of Genoa into the heart of a still rosy sunset. +The water was perfectly smooth; no motion could be felt but the engine's +throb. The trembling foam of the long wake showed glancing points of +phosphorescence here and there, while low on the eastern sky a great +silver planet burned like a signal lamp. + +"Polyphemus was a horrible giant. I read about him once, and I don't +want to see him," observed Amy, from her safe protected perch in her +mother's lap. + +"He may not be so bad now as he was in those old times. Some missionary +may have come across him and converted him. If he were good, you +wouldn't mind his being big, would you?" suggested Katy. + +"N-o," replied Amy, doubtfully; "but it would take a great lot of +missionaries to make _him_ good, I should think. One all alone would be +afraid to speak to him. We shan't really see him, shall we?" + +"I don't believe we shall; and if we stuff cotton in our ears and look +the other way, we need not hear the sirens sing," said Katy, who was in +the highest spirits.--"And oh, Polly dear, there is one delightful thing +I forgot to tell you about. The captain says he shall stay in Leghorn +all day to-morrow taking on freight, and we shall have plenty of time to +run up to Pisa and see the Cathedral and the Leaning Tower and +everything else. Now, that is something Ulysses didn't do! I am so glad +I didn't die of measles when I was little, as Rose Red used to say." She +gave her book a toss into the air as she spoke, and caught it again as +it fell, very much as the Katy Carr of twelve years ago might have done. + +"What a child you are!" said Mrs. Ashe, approvingly; "you never seem out +of sorts or tired of things." + +"Out of sorts? I should think not! And pray why should I be, +Polly dear?" + +Katy had taken to calling her friend "Polly dear" of late,--a trick +picked up half unconsciously from Lieutenant Ned. Mrs. Ashe liked it; +it was sisterly and intimate, she said, and made her feel nearer +Katy's age. + +"Does the tower really lean?" questioned Amy,--"far over, I mean, so +that we can see it?" + +"We shall know to-morrow," replied Katy. "If it doesn't, I shall lose +all my confidence in human nature." + +Katy's confidence in human nature was not doomed to be impaired. There +stood the famous tower, when they reached the Place del Duomo in Pisa, +next morning, looking all aslant, exactly as it does in the pictures and +the alabaster models, and seeming as if in another moment it must topple +over, from its own weight, upon their heads. Mrs. Ashe declared that it +was so unnatural that it made her flesh creep; and when she was coaxed +up the winding staircase to the top, she turned so giddy that they were +all thankful to get her safely down to firm ground again. She turned her +back upon the tower, as they crossed the grassy space to the majestic +old Cathedral, saying that if she thought about it any more, she should +become a disbeliever in the attraction of gravitation, which she had +always been told all respectable people _must_ believe in. + +The guide showed them the lamp swinging by a long slender chain, before +which Galileo is said to have sat and pondered while he worked out his +theory of the pendulum. This lamp seemed a sort of own cousin to the +attraction of gravitation, and they gazed upon it with respect. Then +they went to the Baptistery to see Niccolo Pisano's magnificent pulpit +of creamy marble, a mass of sculpture supported on the backs of lions, +and the equally lovely font, and to admire the extraordinary sound +which their guide evoked from a mysterious echo, with which he seemed +to be on intimate terms, for he made it say whatever he would and +almost "answer back." + +It was in coming out of the Baptistery that they met with an adventure +which Amy could never quite forget. Pisa is the mendicant city of Italy, +and her streets are infested with a band of religious beggars who call +themselves the Brethren of the Order of Mercy. They wear loose black +gowns, sandals laced over their bare feet, and black cambric masks with +holes, through which their eyes glare awfully; and they carry tin cups +for the reception of offerings, which they thrust into the faces of all +strangers visiting the city, whom they look upon as their lawful prey. + +As our party emerged from the Baptistery, two of these Brethren espied +them, and like great human bats came swooping down upon them with long +strides, their black garments flying in the wind, their eyes rolling +strangely behind their masks, and brandishing their alms-cups, which had +"Pour les Pauvres" lettered upon them, and gave forth a clapping sound +like a watchman's rattle. There was something terrible in their +appearance and the rushing speed of their movements. Amy screamed and +ran behind her mother, who visibly shrank. Katy stood her ground; but +the bat-winged fiends in Doré's illustrations to Dante occurred to her, +and her fingers trembled as she dropped some money in the cups. + +Even mendicant friars are human. Katy ceased to tremble as she observed +that one of them, as he retreated, walked backward for some distance in +order to gaze longer at Mrs. Ashe, whose cheeks were flushed with bright +pink and who was looking particularly handsome. She began to laugh +instead, and Mrs. Ashe laughed too; but Amy could not get over the +impression of having been attacked by demons, and often afterward +recurred with a shudder to the time when those awful black _things_ flew +at her and she hid behind mamma. The ghastly pictures of the Triumph of +Death, which were presently exhibited to them on the walls of the Campo +Santo, did not tend to reassure her, and it was with quite a pale, +scared little face that she walked toward the hotel where they were to +lunch, and she held fast to Katy's hand. + +Their way led them through a narrow street inhabited by the poorer +classes,--a dusty street with high shabby buildings on either side and +wide doorways giving glimpses of interior courtyards, where empty +hogsheads and barrels and rusty caldrons lay, and great wooden trays of +macaroni were spread out in the sun to dry. Some of the macaroni was +gray, some white, some yellow; none of it looked at all desirable to +eat, as it lay exposed to the dust, with long lines of ill-washed +clothes flapping above on wires stretched from one house to another. As +is usual in poor streets, there were swarms of children; and the +appearance of little Amy with her long bright hair falling over her +shoulders and Mabel clasped in her arms created a great sensation. The +children in the street shouted and exclaimed, and other children within +the houses heard the sounds and came trooping out, while mothers and +older sisters peeped from the doorways. The very air seemed full of +eager faces and little brown and curly heads bobbing up and down with +excitement, and black eyes all fixed upon big beautiful Mabel, who with +her thick wig of flaxen hair, her blue velvet dress and jacket, +feathered hat, and little muff, seemed to them like some strange small +marvel from another world. They could not decide whether she was a +living child or a make-believe one, and they dared not come near enough +to find out; so they clustered at a little distance, pointed with their +fingers, and whispered and giggled, while Amy, much pleased with the +admiration shown for her darling, lifted Mabel up to view. + +At last one droll little girl with a white cap on her round head seemed +to make up _her_ mind, and darting indoors returned with her doll,--a +poor little image of wood, its only garment a coarse shirt of red +cotton. This she held out for Amy to see. Amy smiled for the first time +since her encounter with the bat-like friars; and Katy, taking Mabel +from her, made signs that the two dolls should kiss each other. But +though the little Italian screamed with laughter at the idea of a +_bacio_ between two dolls, she would by no means allow it, and hid her +treasure behind her back, blushing and giggling, and saying something +very fast which none of them understood, while she waved two fingers at +them with a curious gesture. + +"I do believe she is afraid Mabel will cast the evil eye on her doll," +said Katy at last, with a sudden understanding as to what this +pantomime meant. + +"Why, you silly thing!" cried the outraged Amy; "do you suppose for one +moment that my child could hurt your dirty old dolly? You ought to be +glad to have her noticed at all by anybody that's clean." + +The sound of the foreign tongue completed the discomfiture of the +little Italian. With a shriek she fled, and all the other children +after her; pausing at a distance to look back at the alarming creatures +who didn't speak the familiar language. Katy, wishing to leave a +pleasant impression, made Mabel kiss her waxen fingers toward them. +This sent the children off into another fit of laughter and chatter, +and they followed our friends for quite a distance as they proceeded on +their way to the hotel. + +All that night, over a sea as smooth as glass, the "Marco Polo" slipped +along the coasts past which the ships of Ulysses sailed in those old +legendary days which wear so charmed a light to our modern eyes. Katy +roused at three in the morning, and looking from her cabin window had a +glimpse of an island, which her map showed her must be Elba, where that +war-eagle Napoleon was chained for a while. Then she fell asleep again, +and when she roused in full daylight the steamer was off the coast of +Ostia and nearing the mouth of the Tiber. Dreamy mountain-shapes rose +beyond the far-away Campagna, and every curve and indentation of the +coast bore a name which recalled some interesting thing. + +About eleven a dim-drawn bubble appeared on the horizon, which the +captain assured them was the dome of St. Peter's, nearly thirty miles +distant. This was one of the "moments" which Clover had been fond of +speculating about; and Katy, contrasting the real with the imaginary +moment, could not help smiling. Neither she nor Clover had ever supposed +that her first glimpse of the great dome was to be so little impressive. + +On and on they went till the air-hung bubble disappeared; and Amy, grown +very tired of scenery with which she had no associations, and grown-up +raptures which she did not comprehend, squeezed herself into the end of +the long wooden settee on which Katy sat, and began to beg for another +story concerning Violet and Emma. + +"Just a little tiny chapter, you know, Miss Katy, about what they did on +New Year's Day or something. It's so dull to keep sailing and sailing +all day and have nothing to do, and it's ever so long since you told me +anything about them, really and truly it is!" + +Now, Violet and Emma, if the truth is to be told, had grown to be the +bane of Katy's existence. She had rung the changes on their uneventful +adventures, and racked her brains to invent more and more details, till +her imagination felt like a dry sponge from which every possible drop of +moisture had been squeezed. Amy was insatiable. Her interest in the tale +never flagged; and when her exhausted friend explained that she really +could not think of another word to say on the subject, she would turn +the tables by asking, "Then, Miss Katy, mayn't I tell _you_ a chapter?" +whereupon she would proceed somewhat in this fashion:-- + +"It was the day before Christmas--no, we won't have it the day before +Christmas; it shall be three days before Thanksgiving. Violet and Emma +got up in the morning, and--well, they didn't do anything in particular +that day. They just had their breakfasts and dinners, and played and +studied a little, and went to bed early, you know, and the next morning +--well, there didn't much happen that day, either; they just had their +breakfasts and dinners, and played." + +Listening to Amy's stories was so much worse than telling them to her, +that Katy in self-defence was driven to recommence her narrations, but +she had grown to hate Violet and Emma with a deadly hatred. So when Amy +made this appeal on the steamer's deck, a sudden resolution took +possession of her, and she decided to put an end to these dreadful +children once for all. + +"Yes, Amy," she said, "I will tell you one more story about Violet and +Emma; but this is positively the last." + +So Amy cuddled close to her friend, and listened with rapt attention as +Katy told how on a certain day just before the New Year, Violet and Emma +started by themselves in a little sleigh drawn by a pony, to carry to a +poor woman who lived in a lonely house high up on a mountain slope a +basket containing a turkey, a mould of cranberry jelly, a bunch of +celery, and a mince-pie. + +"They were so pleased at having all these nice things to take to poor +widow Simpson and in thinking how glad she would be to see them," +proceeded the naughty Katy, "that they never noticed how black the sky +was getting to be, or how the wind howled through the bare boughs of the +trees. They had to go slowly, for the road was up hill all the way, and +it was hard work for the poor pony. But he was a stout little fellow, +and tugged away up the slippery track, and Violet and Emma talked and +laughed, and never thought what was going to happen. Just half-way up +the mountain there was a rocky cliff which overhung the road, and on +this cliff grew an enormous hemlock tree. The branches were loaded with +snow, which made them much heavier than usual. Just as the sleigh passed +slowly underneath the cliff, a violent blast of wind blew up from the +ravine, struck the hemlock and tore it out of the ground, roots and all. +It fell directly across the sleigh, and Violet and Emma and the pony and +the basket with the turkey and the other things in it were all crushed +as flat as pancakes!" + +"Well," said Amy, as Katy stopped, "go on! what happened then?" + +"Nothing happened then," replied Katy, in a tone of awful solemnity; +"nothing could happen! Violet and Emma were dead, the pony was dead, the +things in the basket were broken all to little bits, and a great +snowstorm began and covered them up, and no one knew where they were or +what had become of them till the snow melted in the spring." + +With a loud shriek Amy jumped up from the bench. + +"No! no! no!" she cried; "they aren't dead! I won't let them be dead!" +Then she burst into tears, ran down the stairs, locked herself into her +mother's stateroom, and did not appear again for several hours. + +Katy laughed heartily at first over this outburst, but presently she +began to repent and to think that she had treated her pet unkindly. She +went down and knocked at the stateroom door; but Amy would not answer. +She called her softly through the key-hole, and coaxed and pleaded, but +it was all in vain. Amy remained invisible till late in the afternoon; +and when she finally crept up again to the deck, her eyes were red with +crying, and her little face as pale and miserable as if she had been +attending the funeral of her dearest friend. + +Katy's heart smote her. + +"Come here, my darling," she said, holding out her hand; "come and sit +in my lap and forgive me. Violet and Emma shall not be dead. They shall +go on living, since you care so much for them, and I will tell stories +about them to the end of the chapter." + +"No," said Amy, shaking her head mournfully; "you can't. They're dead, +and they won't come to life again ever. It's all over, and I'm so +so-o-rry." + +All Katy's apologies and efforts to resuscitate the story were useless. +Violet and Emma were dead to Amy's imagination, and she could not make +herself believe in them any more. + +She was too woe-begone to care for the fables of Circe and her swine +which Katy told as they rounded the magnificent Cape Circello, and the +isles where the sirens used to sing appealed to her in vain. The sun +set, the stars came out; and under the beams of their countless lamps +and the beckonings of a slender new moon, the "Marco Polo" sailed into +the Bay of Naples, past Vesuvius, whose dusky curl of smoke could be +seen outlined against the luminous sky, and brought her passengers to +their landing-place. + +They woke next morning to a summer atmosphere full of yellow sunshine +and true July warmth. Flower-vendors stood on every corner, and pursued +each newcomer with their fragrant wares. Katy could not stop exclaiming +over the cheapness of the flowers, which were thrust in at the carriage +windows as they drove slowly up and down the streets. They were tied +into flat nosegays, whose centre was a white camellia, encircled with +concentric rows of pink tea rosebuds, ring after ring, till the whole +was the size of an ordinary milk-pan; all to be had for the sum of ten +cents! But after they had bought two or three of these enormous +bouquets, and had discovered that not a single rose boasted an inch of +stem, and that all were pierced with long wires through their very +hearts, she ceased to care for them. + +"I would rather have one Souvenir or General Jacqueminot, with a long +stem and plenty of leaves, than a dozen of these stiff platters of +bouquets," Katy told Mrs. Ashe. But when they drove beyond the city +gates, and the coachman came to anchor beneath walls overhung with the +same roses, and she found that she might stand on the seat and pull down +as many branches of the lovely flowers as she desired, and gather +wallflowers for herself out of the clefts in the masonry, she was +entirely satisfied. + +"This is the Italy of my dreams," she said. + +With all its beauty there was an underlying sense of danger about +Naples, which interfered with their enjoyment of it. Evil smells came +in at the windows, or confronted them as they went about the city. +There seemed something deadly in the air. Whispered reports met their +ears of cases of fever, which the landlords of the hotels were doing +their best to hush up. An American gentleman was said to be lying very +ill at one house. A lady had died the week before at another. Mrs. Ashe +grew nervous. + +"We will just take a rapid look at a few of the principal things," she +told Katy, "and then get away as fast as we can. Amy is so on my mind +that I have no peace of my life. I keep feeling her pulse and imagining +that she does not look right; and though I know it is all my fancy, I am +impatient to be off. You won't mind, will you, Katy?" + +After that everything they did was done in a hurry. Katy felt as if she +were being driven about by a cyclone, as they rushed from one sight to +another, filling up all the chinks between with shopping, which was +irresistible where everything was so pretty and so wonderfully cheap. +She herself purchased a tortoise-shell fan and chain for Rose Red, and +had her monogram carved upon it; a coral locket for Elsie; some studs +for Dorry; and for her father a small, beautiful vase of bronze, copied +from one of the Pompeian antiques. + +"How charming it is to have money to spend in such a place as this!" she +said to herself with a sigh of satisfaction as she surveyed these +delightful buyings. "I only wish I could get ten times as many things +and take them to ten times as many people. Papa was so wise about it. I +can't think how it is that he always knows beforehand exactly how people +are going to feel, and what they will want!" + +Mrs. Ashe also bought a great many things for herself and Amy, and to +take home as presents; and it was all very pleasant and satisfactory +except for that subtle sense of danger from which they could not escape +and which made them glad to go. "See Naples and die," says the old +adage; and the saying has proved sadly true in the case of many an +American traveller. + +Beside the talk of fever there was also a good deal of gossip about +brigands going about, as is generally the case in Naples and its +vicinity. Something was said to have happened to a party on one of the +heights above Sorrento; and though nobody knew exactly what the +something was, or was willing to vouch for the story, Mrs. Ashe and +Katy felt a good deal of trepidation as they entered the carriage which +was to take them to the neighborhood where the mysterious "something" +had occurred. + +The drive between Castellamare and Sorrento is in reality as safe as +that between Boston and Brookline; but as our party did not know this +fact till afterward, it did them no good. It is also one of the most +beautiful drives in the world, following the windings of the exquisite +coast mile after mile, in long links of perfectly made road, carved on +the face of sharp cliffs, with groves of oranges and lemons and olive +orchards above, and the Bay of Naples beneath, stretching away like a +solid sheet of lapis-lazuli, and gemmed with islands of the most +picturesque form. + +It is a pity that so much beauty should have been wasted on Mrs. Ashe +and Katy, but they were too frightened to half enjoy it. Their carriage +was driven by a shaggy young savage, who looked quite wild enough to be +a bandit himself. He cracked his whip loudly as they rolled along, and +every now and then gave a long shrill whistle. Mrs. Ashe was sure that +these were signals to his band, who were lurking somewhere on the +olive-hung hillsides. She thought she detected him once or twice making +signs to certain questionable-looking characters as they passed; and she +fancied that the people they met gazed at them with an air of +commiseration, as upon victims who were being carried to execution. Her +fears affected Katy; so, though they talked and laughed, and made jokes +to amuse Amy, who must not be scared or led to suppose that anything was +amiss, and to the outward view seemed a very merry party, they were +privately quaking in their shoes all the way, and enjoying a deal of +highly superfluous misery. And after all they reached Sorrento in +perfect safety; and the driver, who looked so dangerous, turned out to +be a respectable young man enough, with a wife and family to support, +who considered a plateful of macaroni and a glass of sour red wine as +the height of luxury, and was grateful for a small gratuity of thirty +cents or so, which would enable him to purchase these dainties. Mrs. +Ashe had a very bad headache next day, to pay for her fright; but she +and Katy agreed that they had been very foolish, and resolved to pay no +more attention to unaccredited rumors or allow them to spoil their +enjoyment, which was a sensible resolution to make. + +Their hotel was perched directly over the sea. From the balcony of their +sitting-room they looked down a sheer cliff some sixty feet high, into +the water; their bedrooms opened on a garden of roses, with an orange +grove beyond. Not far from them was the great gorge which cuts the +little town of Sorrento almost in two, and whose seaward end makes the +harbor of the place. Katy was never tired of peering down into this +strange and beautiful cleft, whose sides, two hundred feet in depth, are +hung with vines and trailing growths of all sorts, and seem all +a-tremble with the fairy fronds of maiden-hair ferns growing out of +every chink and crevice. She and Amy took walks along the coast toward +Massa, to look off at the lovely island shapes in the bay, and admire +the great clumps of cactus and Spanish bayonet which grew by the +roadside; and they always came back loaded with orange-flowers, which +could be picked as freely as apple-blossoms from New England orchards in +the spring. The oranges themselves at that time of the year were very +sour, but they answered as well for a romantic date, "From an orange +grove," as if they had been the sweetest in the world. + +They made two different excursions to Pompeii, which is within easy +distance of Sorrento. They scrambled on donkeys over the hills, and had +glimpses of the far-away Calabrian shore, of the natural arch, and the +temples of Pæstum shining in the sun many miles distant. On Katy's +birthday, which fell toward the end of January, Mrs. Ashe let her have +her choice of a treat; and she elected to go to the Island of Capri, +which none of them had seen. It turned out a perfect day, with sea and +wind exactly right for the sail, and to allow of getting into the famous +"Blue Grotto," which can only be entered under particular conditions of +tide and weather. And they climbed the great cliff-rise at the island's +end, and saw the ruins of the villa built by the wicked emperor +Tiberius, and the awful place known as his "Leap," down which, it is +said, he made his victims throw themselves; and they lunched at a hotel +which bore his name, and just at sunset pushed off again for the row +home over the charmed sea. This return voyage was almost the pleasantest +thing of all the day. The water was smooth, the moon at its full. It was +larger and more brilliant than American moons are, and seemed to possess +an actual warmth and color. The boatmen timed their oar-strokes to the +cadence of Neapolitan _barcaroles_ and folk-songs, full of rhythmic +movement, which seemed caught from the pulsing tides. And when at last +the bow grated on the sands of the Sorrento landing-place, Katy drew a +long, regretful breath, and declared that this was her best +birthday-gift of all, better than Amy's flowers, or the pretty +tortoise-shell locket that Mrs. Ashe had given her, better even than the +letter from home, which, timed by happy accident, had arrived by the +morning's post to make a bright opening for the day. + +All pleasant things must come to an ending. + +"Katy," said Mrs. Ashe, one afternoon in early February, "I heard some +ladies talking just now in the _salon_, and they said that Rome is +filling up very fast. The Carnival begins in less than two weeks, and +everybody wants to be there then. If we don't make haste, we shall not +be able to get any rooms." + +"Oh dear!" said Katy, "it is very trying not to be able to be in two +places at once. I want to see Rome dreadfully, and yet I cannot bear to +leave Sorrento. We have been very happy here, haven't we?" + +So they took up their wandering staves again, and departed for Rome, +like the Apostle, "not knowing what should befall them there." + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +A ROMAN HOLIDAY. + + +"Oh dear!" said Mrs. Ashe, as she folded her letters and laid them +aside, "I wish those Pages would go away from Nice, or else that the +frigates were not there." + +"Why! what's the matter?" asked Katy, looking up from the many-leaved +journal from Clover over which she was poring. + +"Nothing is the matter except that those everlasting people haven't gone +to Spain yet, as they said they would, and Ned seems to keep on seeing +them," replied Mrs. Ashe, petulantly. + +"But, dear Polly, what difference does it make? And they never did +promise you to go on any particular time, did they?" + +"N-o, they didn't; but I wish they would, all the same. Not that Ned is +such a goose as really to care anything for that foolish Lilly!" Then +she gave a little laugh at her own inconsistency, and added, "But I +oughtn't to abuse her when she is your cousin." + +"Don't mention it," said Katy, cheerfully. "But, really, I don't see why +poor Lilly need worry you so, Polly dear." + +The room in which this conversation took place was on the very topmost +floor of the Hotel del Hondo in Rome. It was large and many-windowed; +and though there was a little bed in one corner half hidden behind a +calico screen, with a bureau and washing-stand, and a sort of stout +mahogany hat-tree on which Katy's dresses and jackets were hanging, the +remaining space, with a sofa and easy-chairs grouped round a fire, and a +round table furnished with books and a lamp, was ample enough to make a +good substitute for the private sitting-room which Mrs. Ashe had not +been able to procure on account of the near approach of the Carnival and +the consequent crowding of strangers to Rome. In fact, she was assured +that under the circumstances she was lucky in finding rooms as good as +these; and she made the most of the assurance as a consolation for the +somewhat unsatisfactory food and service of the hotel, and the four long +flights of stairs which must be passed every time they needed to reach +the dining-room or the street door. + +The party had been in Rome only four days, but already they had seen a +host of interesting things. They had stood in the strange sunken space +with its marble floor and broken columns, which is all that is left of +the great Roman Forum. They had visited the Coliseum, at that period +still overhung with ivy garlands and trailing greeneries, and not, as +now, scraped clean and bare and "tidied" out of much of its +picturesqueness. They had seen the Baths of Caracalla and the Temple of +Janus and St. Peter's and the Vatican marbles, and had driven out on the +Campagna and to the Pamphili-Doria Villa to gather purple and red +anemones, and to the English cemetery to see the grave of Keats. They +had also peeped into certain shops, and attended a reception at the +American Minister's,--in short, like most unwarned travellers, they had +done about twice as much as prudence and experience would have +permitted, had those worthies been consulted. + +All the romance of Katy's nature responded to the fascination of the +ancient city,--the capital of the world, as it may truly be called. The +shortest drive or walk brought them face to face with innumerable and +unexpected delights. Now it was a wonderful fountain, with plunging +horses and colossal nymphs and Tritons, holding cups and horns from +which showers of white foam rose high in air to fall like rushing rain +into an immense marble basin. Now it was an arched doorway with +traceries as fine as lace,--sole-remaining fragment of a heathen temple, +flung and stranded as it were by the waves of time on the squalid shore +of the present. Now it was a shrine at the meeting of three streets, +where a dim lamp burned beneath the effigy of the Madonna, with always a +fresh rose beside it in a vase, and at its foot a peasant woman kneeling +in red bodice and blue petticoat, with a lace-trimmed towel folded over +her hair. Or again it would be a sunlit terrace lifted high on a +hillside, and crowded with carriages full of beautifully dressed people, +while below all Rome seemed spread out like a panorama, dim, mighty, +majestic, and bounded by the blue wavy line of the Campagna and the +Alban hills. Or perhaps it might be a wonderful double flight of steps +with massive balustrades and pillars with urns, on which sat a crowd of +figures in strange costumes and attitudes, who all looked as though they +had stepped out of pictures, but who were in reality models waiting for +artists to come by and engage them. No matter what it was,--a bit of +oddly tinted masonry with a tuft of brown and orange wallflowers hanging +upon it, or a vegetable stall where endive and chiccory and curly +lettuces were arranged in wreaths with tiny orange gourds and scarlet +peppers for points of color,--it was all Rome, and, by virtue of that +word, different from any other place,--more suggestive, more +interesting, ten times more mysterious than any other could possibly be, +so Katy thought. + +This fact consoled her for everything and anything,--for the fleas, the +dirt, for the queer things they had to eat and the still queerer odors +they were forced to smell! Nothing seemed of any particular consequence +except the deep sense of enjoyment, and the newly discovered world of +thought and sensation of which she had become suddenly conscious. + +The only drawback to her happiness, as the days went on, was that +little Amy did not seem quite well or like herself. She had taken a +cold on the journey from Naples, and though it did not seem serious, +that, or something, made her look pale and thin. Her mother said she +was growing fast, but the explanation did not quite account for the +wistful look in the child's eyes and the tired feeling of which she +continually complained. Mrs. Ashe, with vague uneasiness, began to talk +of cutting short their Roman stay and getting Amy off to the more +bracing air of Florence. But meanwhile there was the Carnival close at +hand, which they must by no means lose; and the feeling that their +opportunity might be a brief one made her and Katy all the more anxious +to make the very most of their time. So they filled the days full with +sights to see and things to do, and came and went; sometimes taking Amy +with them, but more often leaving her at the hotel under the care of a +kind German chambermaid, who spoke pretty good English and to whom Amy +had taken a fancy. + +"The marble things are so cold, and the old broken things make me so +sorry," she explained; "and I hate beggars because they are dirty, and +the stairs make my back ache; and I'd a great deal rather stay with +Maria and go up on the roof, if you don't mind, mamma." + +This roof, which Amy had chosen as a playplace, covered the whole of the +great hotel, and had been turned into a sort of upper-air garden by the +simple process of gravelling it all over, placing trellises of ivy here +and there, and setting tubs of oranges and oleanders and boxes of gay +geraniums and stock-gillyflowers on the balustrades. A tame fawn was +tethered there. Amy adopted him as a playmate; and what with his company +and that of the flowers, the times when her mother and Katy were absent +from her passed not unhappily. + +Katy always repaired to the roof as soon as they came in from their long +mornings and afternoons of sight-seeing. Years afterward, she would +remember with contrition how pathetically glad Amy always was to see +her. She would put her little head on Katy's breast and hold her tight +for many minutes without saying a word. When she did speak it was always +about the house and the garden that she talked. She never asked any +questions as to where Katy had been, or what she had done; it seemed to +tire her to think about it. + +"I should be very lonely sometimes if it were not for my dear little +fawn," she told Katy once. "He is so sweet that I don't miss you and +mamma very much while I have him to play with. I call him Florio,--don't +you think that is a pretty name? I like to stay with him a great deal +better than to go about with you to those nasty-smelling old churches, +with fleas hopping all over them!" + +So Amy was left in peace with her fawn, and the others made haste to see +all they could before the time came to go to Florence. + +[Illustration: Amy was left in peace with her fawn.] + +Katy realized one of the "moments" for which she had come to Europe when +she stood for the first time on the balcony overhanging the Corso, which +Mrs. Ashe had hired in company with some acquaintances made at the +hotel, and looked down at the ebb and surge of the just-begun Carnival. +The narrow street seemed humming with people of all sorts and +conditions. Some were masked; some were not. There were ladies and +gentlemen in fashionable clothes, peasants in the gayest costumes, +surprised-looking tourists in tall hats and linen dusters, harlequins, +clowns, devils, nuns, dominoes of every color,--red, white, blue, black; +while above, the balconies bloomed like a rose-garden with pretty faces +framed in lace veils or picturesque hats. Flowers were everywhere, +wreathed along the house-fronts, tied to the horses' ears, in ladies' +hands and gentlemen's button-holes, while venders went up and down the +street bearing great trays of violets and carnations and camellias for +sale. The air was full of cries and laughter, and the shrill calls of +merchants advertising their wares,--candy, fruit, birds, lanterns, and +_confetti_, the latter being merely lumps of lime, large or small, with +a pea or a bean embedded in each lump to give it weight. Boxes full of +this unpleasant confection were suspended in front of each balcony, with +tin scoops to use in ladling it out and flinging it about. Everybody +wore or carried a wire mask as protection against this white, incessant +shower; and before long the air became full of a fine dust which hung +above the Corso like a mist, and filled the eyes and noses and clothes +of all present with irritating particles. + +Pasquino's Car was passing underneath just as Katy and Mrs. Ashe +arrived,--a gorgeous affair, hung with silken draperies, and bearing as +symbol an enormous egg, in which the Carnival was supposed to be in act +of incubation. A huge wagon followed in its wake, on which was a house +some sixteen feet square, whose sole occupant was a gentleman attended +by five servants, who kept him supplied with _confetti_, which he +showered liberally on the heads of the crowd. Then came a car in the +shape of a steamboat, with a smoke-pipe and sails, over which flew the +Union Jack, and which was manned with a party wearing the dress of +British tars. The next wagon bore a company of jolly maskers equipped +with many-colored bladders, which they banged and rattled as they went +along. Following this was a troupe of beautiful circus horses, +cream-colored with scarlet trappings, or sorrel with blue, ridden by +ladies in pale green velvet laced with silver, or blue velvet and gold. +Another car bore a bird-cage which was an exact imitation of St. +Peter's, within which perched a lonely old parrot. This device evidently +had a political signification, for it was alternately hissed and +applauded as it went along. The whole scene was like a brilliant, +rapidly shifting dream; and Katy, as she stood with lips apart and eyes +wide open with wonderment and pleasure, forgot whether she was in the +body or not,--forgot everything except what was passing before her gaze. + +She was roused by a stinging shower of lime-dust. An Englishman in the +next balcony had take courteous advantage of her preoccupation, and had +flung a scoopful of _confetti_ in her undefended face! It is generally +Anglo-Saxons of the less refined class, English or Americans, who do +these things at Carnival times. The national love of a rough joke comes +to the surface, encouraged by the license of the moment, and all the +grace and prettiness of the festival vanish. Katy laughed, and dusted +herself as well as she could, and took refuge behind her mask; while a +nimble American boy of the party changed places with her, and +thenceforward made that particular Englishman his special target, plying +such a lively and adroit shovel as to make Katy's assailant rue the hour +when he evoked this national reprisal. His powdered head and rather +clumsy efforts to retaliate excited shouts of laughter from the +adjoining balconies. The young American, fresh from tennis and college +athletics, darted about and dodged with an agility impossible to his +heavily built foe; and each effective shot and parry on his side was +greeted with little cries of applause and the clapping of hands on the +part of those who were watching the contest. + +Exactly opposite them was a balcony hung with white silk, in which sat a +lady who seemed to be of some distinction; for every now and then an +officer in brilliant uniform, or some official covered with orders and +stars, would be shown in by her servants, bow before her with the utmost +deference, and after a little conversation retire, kissing her gloved +hand as he went. The lady was a beautiful person, with lustrous black +eyes and dark hair, over which a lace mantilla was fastened with diamond +stars. She wore pale blue with white flowers, and altogether, as Katy +afterward wrote to Clover, reminded her exactly of one of those +beautiful princesses whom they used to play about in their childhood and +quarrel over, because every one of them wanted to be the Princess and +nobody else. + +"I wonder who she is," said Mrs. Ashe in a low tone. "She might be +almost anybody from her looks. She keeps glancing across to us, Katy. Do +you know, I think she has taken a fancy to you." + +Perhaps the lady had; for just then she turned her head and said a word +to one of her footmen, who immediately placed something in her hand. It +was a little shining bonbonniere, and rising she threw it straight at +Katy. Alas! it struck the edge of the balcony and fell into the street +below, where it was picked up by a ragged little peasant girl in a red +jacket, who raised a pair of astonished eyes to the heavens, as if sure +that the gift must have fallen straight from thence. Katy bent forward +to watch its fate, and went through a little pantomime of regret and +despair for the benefit of the opposite lady, who only laughed, and +taking another from her servant flung with better aim, so that it fell +exactly at Katy's feet. This was a gilded box in the shape of a +mandolin, with sugar-plums tucked cunningly away inside. Katy kissed +both her hands in acknowledgment for the pretty toy, and tossed back a +bunch of roses which she happened to be wearing in her dress. After that +it seemed the chief amusement of the fair unknown to throw bonbons at +Katy. Some went straight and some did not; but before the afternoon +ended, Katy had quite a lapful of confections and trifles,--roses, +sugared almonds, a satin casket, a silvered box in the shape of a +horseshoe, a tiny cage with orange blossoms for birds on the perches, a +minute gondola with a _marron glacée_ by way of passenger, and, +prettiest of all, a little ivory harp strung with enamelled violets +instead of wires. For all these favors she had nothing better to offer, +in return, than a few long-tailed bonbons with gay streamers of ribbon. +These the lady opposite caught very cleverly, rarely missing one, and +kissing her hand in thanks each time. + +"Isn't she exquisite?" demanded Katy, her eyes shining with +excitement. "Did you ever see any one so lovely in your life, Polly +dear? I never did. There, now! she is buying those birds to set them +free, I do believe." + +It was indeed so. A vender of larks had, by the aid of a long staff, +thrust a cage full of wretched little prisoners up into the balcony; and +"Katy's lady," as Mrs. Ashe called her, was paying for the whole. As +they watched she opened the cage door, and with the sweetest look on her +face encouraged the birds to fly away. The poor little creatures cowered +and hesitated, not knowing at first what use to make of their new +liberty; but at last one, the boldest of the company, hopped to the door +and with a glad, exultant chirp flew straight upward. Then the others, +taking courage from his example, followed, and all were lost to view in +the twinkling of an eye. + +"Oh, you angel!" cried Katy, leaning over the edge of the balcony and +kissing both hands impulsively, "I never saw any one so sweet as you are +in my life. Polly dear, I think carnivals are the most perfectly +bewitching things in the world. How glad I am that this lasts a week, +and that we can come every day. Won't Amy be delighted with these +bonbons! I do hope my lady will be here tomorrow." + +How little she dreamed that she was never to enter that balcony again! +How little can any of us see what lies before us till it comes so near +that we cannot help seeing it, or shut our eyes, or turn away! + +The next morning, almost as soon as it was light, Mrs. Ashe tapped at +Katy's door. She was in her dressing-gown, and her eyes looked large and +frightened. + +"Amy is ill," she cried. "She has been hot and feverish all night, and +she says that her head aches dreadfully. What shall I do, Katy? We +ought to have a doctor at once, and I don't know the name even of any +doctor here." + +Katy sat up in bed, and for one bewildered moment did not speak. Her +brain felt in a whirl of confusion; but presently it cleared, and she +saw what to do. + +"I will write a note to Mrs. Sands," she said. Mrs. Sands was the wife +of the American Minister, and one of the few acquaintances they had +made since they came to Rome. "You remember how nice she was the other +day, and how we liked her; and she has lived here so long that of +course she must know all about the doctors. Don't you think that is the +best thing to do!" + +"The very best," said Mrs. Ashe, looking relieved. "I wonder I did not +think of it myself, but I am so confused that I can't think. Write the +note at once, please, dear Katy. I will ring your bell for you, and then +I must hurry back to Amy." + +Katy made haste with the note. The answer came promptly in half an hour, +and by ten o'clock the physician recommended appeared. Dr. Hilary was a +dark little Italian to all appearance; but his mother had been a +Scotch-woman, and he spoke English very well,--a great comfort to poor +Mrs. Ashe, who knew not a word of Italian and not a great deal of +French. He felt Amy's pulse for a long time, and tested her temperature; +but he gave no positive opinion, only left a prescription, and said that +he would call later in the day and should then be able to judge more +clearly what the attack was likely to prove. + +Katy augured ill from this reserve. There was no talk of going to the +Carnival that afternoon; no one had any heart for it. Instead, Katy +spent the time in trying to recollect all she had ever heard about the +care of sick people,--what was to be done first and what next,--and in +searching the shops for a feather pillow, which luxury Amy was +imperiously demanding. The pillows of Roman hotels are, as a general +thing, stuffed with wool, and very hard. + +"I won't have this horrid pillow any longer," poor Amy was screaming. +"It's got bricks in it. It hurts the back of my neck. Take it away, +mamma, and give me a nice soft American pillow. I won't have this a +minute longer. Don't you hear me, mamma! Take it away!" + +So, while Mrs. Ashe pacified Amy to the best of her ability, Katy +hurried out in quest of the desired pillow. It proved almost an +unattainable luxury; but at last, after a long search, she secured an +air-cushion, a down cushion about twelve inches square, and one old +feather pillow which had come from some auction, and had apparently lain +for years in the corner of the shop. When this was encased in a fresh +cover of Canton flannel, it did very well, and stilled Amy's complaints +a little; but all night she grew worse, and when Dr. Hilary came next +day, he was forced to utter plainly the dreaded words "Roman fever." Amy +was in for an attack,--a light one he hoped it might be,--but they had +better know the truth and make ready for it. + +Mrs. Ashe was utterly overwhelmed by this verdict, and for the first +bewildered moments did not know which way to turn. Katy, happily, kept +a steadier head. She had the advantage of a little preparation of +thought, and had decided beforehand what it would be necessary to do +"in case." Oh, that fateful "in case"! The doctor and she consulted +together, and the result was that Katy sought out the padrona of the +establishment, and without hinting at the nature of Amy's attack, +secured some rooms just vacated, which were at the end of a corridor, +and a little removed from the rooms of other people. There was a large +room with corner windows, a smaller one opening from it, and another, +still smaller, close by, which would serve as a storeroom or might do +for the use of a nurse. + +These rooms, without much consultation with Mrs. Ashe,--who seemed +stunned and sat with her eyes fixed on Amy, just answering, "Certainly, +dear, anything you say," when applied to,--Katy had arranged according +to her own ideas of comfort and hygienic necessity, as learned from Miss +Nightingale's excellent little book on nursing. From the larger room she +had the carpet, curtains, and nearly all the furniture taken away, the +floor scrubbed with hot soapsuds, and the bed pulled out from the wall +to allow of a free circulation of air all round it. The smaller one she +made as comfortable as possible for the use of Mrs. Ashe, choosing for +it the softest sofa and the best mattresses that were obtainable; for +she knew that her friend's strength was likely to be severely tried if +Amy's illness proved serious. When all was ready, Amy, well wrapped in +her coverings, was carried down the entry and laid in the fresh bed with +the soft pillows about her; and Katy, as she went to and fro, conveying +clothes and books and filling drawers, felt that they were perhaps +making arrangements for a long, hard trial of faith and spirits. + +By the next day the necessity of a nurse became apparent, and in the +afternoon Katy started out in a little hired carriage in search of one. +She had a list of names, and went first to the English nurses; but +finding them all engaged, she ordered the coachman to drive to a convent +where there was hope that a nursing sister might be procured. + +Their route lay across the Corso. So utterly had the Carnival with all +its gay follies vanished from her mind, that she was for a moment +astonished at finding herself entangled in a motley crowd, so dense +that the coachman was obliged to rein in his horses and stand still for +some time. + +There were the same masks and dominos, the same picturesque peasant +costumes which had struck her as so gay and pretty only three days +before. The same jests and merry laughter filled the air, but somehow +it all seemed out of tune. The sense of cold, lonely fear that had +taken possession of her killed all capacity for merriment; the +apprehension and solicitude of which her heart was full made the gay +chattering and squeaking of the crowd sound harsh and unfeeling. The +bright colors affronted her dejection; she did not want to see them. +She lay back in the carriage, trying to be patient under the detention, +and half shut her eyes. + +A shower of lime dust aroused her. It came from a party of burly figures +in white cotton dominos, whose carriage had been stayed by the crowd +close to her own. She signified by gestures that she had no _confetti_ +and no protection, that she "was not playing," in fact; but her appeal +made no difference. The maskers kept on shovelling lime all over her +hair and person and the carriage, and never tired of the sport till an +opportune break in the procession enabled their vehicle to move on. + +Katy was shaking their largesse from her dress and parasol as well as +she could, when an odd gibbering sound close to her ear, and the +laughter of the crowd attracted her attention to the back of the +carriage. A masker attired as a scarlet devil had climbed into the hood, +and was now perched close behind her. She shook her head at him; but he +only shook his in return, and chattered and grimaced, and bent over till +his fiery mask almost grazed her shoulder. There was no hope but in good +humor, as she speedily realized; and recollecting that in her +shopping-bag one or two of the Carnival bonbons still remained, she took +these out and offered them in the hope of propitiating him. The fiend +bit one to insure that it was made of sugar and not lime, while the +crowd laughed more than ever; then, seeming satisfied, he made Katy a +little speech in rapid Italian, of which she did not comprehend a word, +kissed her hand, jumped down from the carriage and disappeared in the +crowd to her great relief. + +Presently after that the driver spied an opening, of which he took +advantage. They were across the Corso now, the roar and rush of the +Carnival dying into silence as they drove rapidly on; and Katy, as she +finished wiping away the last of the lime dust, wiped some tears from +her cheeks as well. + +"How hateful it all was!" she said to herself. Then she remembered a +sentence read somewhere, "How heavily roll the wheels of other people's +joys when your heart is sorrowful!" and she realized that it is true. + +The convent was propitious, and promised to send a sister next morning, +with the proviso that every second day she was to come back to sleep and +rest. Katy was too thankful for any aid to make objections, and drove +home with visions of saintly nuns with pure pale faces full of peace and +resignation, such as she had read of in books, floating before her eyes. + +Sister Ambrogia, when she appeared next day, did not exactly realize +these imaginations. She was a plump little person, with rosy cheeks, a +pair of demure black eyes, and a very obstinate mouth and chin. It soon +appeared that natural inclination combined with the rules of her convent +made her theory of a nurse's duties a very limited one. + +If Mrs. Ashe wished her to go down to the office with an order, she was +told: "We sisters care for the sick; we are not allowed to converse with +porters and hotel people." + +If Katy suggested that on the way home she should leave a prescription +at the chemist's, it was: "We sisters are for nursing only; we do not +visit shops." And when she was asked if she could make beef tea, she +replied calmly but decisively, "We sisters are not cooks." + +In fact, all that Sister Ambrogia seemed able or willing to do, beyond +the bathing of Amy's face and brushing her hair, which she accomplished +handily, was to sit by the bedside telling her rosary, or plying a +little ebony shuttle in the manufacture of a long strip of tatting. Even +this amount of usefulness was interfered with by the fact that Amy, who +by this time was in a semi-delirious condition, had taken an aversion to +her at the first glance, and was not willing to be left with her for a +single moment. + +"I won't stay here alone with Sister Embroidery," she would cry, if her +mother and Katy went into the next room for a moment's rest or a private +consultation; "I hate Sister Embroidery! Come back, mamma, come back +this moment! She's making faces at me, and chattering just like an old +parrot, and I don't understand a word she says. Take Sister Embroidery +away, mamma, I tell you! Don't you hear me? Come back, I say!" + +The little voice would be raised to a shrill scream; and Mrs. Ashe and +Katy, hurrying back, would find Amy sitting up on her pillow with wet, +scarlet-flushed cheeks and eyes bright with fever, ready to throw +herself out of bed; while, calm as Mabel, whose curly head lay on the +pillow beside her little mistress, Sister Ambrogia, unaware of the +intricacies of the English language, was placidly telling her beads and +muttering prayers to herself. Some of these prayers, I do not doubt, +related to Amy's recovery if not to her conversion, and were well meant; +but they were rather irritating under the circumstances! + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN. + + +When the first shock is over and the inevitable realized and accepted, +those who tend a long illness are apt to fall into a routine of life +which helps to make the days seem short. The apparatus of nursing is got +together. Every day the same things need to be done at the same hours +and in the same way. Each little appliance is kept at hand; and sad and +tired as the watchers may be, the very monotony and regularity of their +proceedings give a certain stay for their thoughts to rest upon. + +But there was little of this monotony to help Mrs. Ashe and Katy through +with Amy's illness. Small chance was there for regularity or exact +system; for something unexpected was always turning up, and needful +things were often lacking. The most ordinary comforts of the sick-room, +or what are considered so in America, were hard to come by, and much of +Katy's time was spent in devising substitutes to take their places. + +Was ice needed? A pailful of dirty snow would be brought in, full of +straws, sticks, and other refuse, which had apparently been scraped from +the surface of the street after a frosty night. Not a particle of it +could be put into milk or water; all that could be done was to make the +pail serve the purpose of a refrigerator, and set bowls and tumblers in +it to chill. + +Was a feeding-cup wanted? It came of a cumbrous and antiquated pattern, +which the infant Hercules may have enjoyed, but which the modern Amy +abominated and rejected. Such a thing as a glass tube could not be found +in all Rome. Bed-rests were unknown. Katy searched in vain for an +India-rubber hot-water bag. + +But the greatest trial of all was the beef tea. It was Amy's sole food, +and almost her only medicine; for Dr. Hilary believed in leaving Nature +pretty much to herself in cases of fever. The kitchen of the hotel sent +up, under that name, a mixture of grease and hot water, which could not +be given to Amy at all. In vain Katy remonstrated and explained the +process. In vain did she go to the kitchen herself to translate a +carefully written recipe to the cook, and to slip a shining five-franc +piece in his hand, which it was hoped would quicken his energies and +soften his heart. In vain did she order private supplies of the best of +beef from a separate market. The cooks stole the beef and ignored the +recipe; and day after day the same bottle-full of greasy liquid came +upstairs, which Amy would not touch, and which would have done her no +good had she swallowed it all. At last, driven to desperation, Katy +procured a couple of stout bottles, and every morning slowly and +carefully cut up two pounds of meat into small pieces, sealed the bottle +with her own seal ring, and sent it down to be boiled for a specified +time. This answered better, for the thieving cook dared not tamper with +her seal; but it was a long and toilsome process, and consumed more time +than she well knew how to spare,--for there were continual errands to be +done which no one could attend to but herself, and the interminable +flights of stairs taxed her strength painfully, and seemed to grow +longer and harder every day. + +At last a good Samaritan turned up in the shape of an American lady with +a house of her own, who, hearing of their plight from Mrs. Sands, +undertook to send each day a supply of strong, perfectly made beef tea, +from her own kitchen, for Amy's use. It was an inexpressible relief, and +the lightening of this one particular care made all the rest seem easier +of endurance. + +Another great relief came, when, after some delay, Dr. Hilary succeeded +in getting an English nurse to take the places of the unsatisfactory +Sister Ambrogia and her substitute, Sister Agatha, whom Amy in her +half-comprehending condition persisted in calling "Sister Nutmeg +Grater." Mrs. Swift was a tall, wiry, angular person, who seemed made of +equal parts of iron and whalebone. She was never tired; she could lift +anybody, do anything; and for sleep she seemed to have a sort of +antipathy, preferring to sit in an easy-chair and drop off into little +dozes, whenever it was convenient, to going regularly to bed for a +night's rest. + +Amy took to her from the first, and the new nurse managed her +beautifully. No one else could soothe her half so well during the +delirious period, when the little shrill voice seemed never to be still, +and went on all day and all night in alternate raving or screaming or, +what was saddest of all to hear, low pitiful moans. There was no +shutting in these sounds. People moved out of the rooms below and on +either side, because they could get no sleep; and till the arrival of +Nurse Swift, there was no rest for poor Mrs. Ashe, who could not keep +away from her darling for a moment while that mournful wailing sounded +in her ears. + +Somehow the long, dry Englishwoman seemed to have a mesmeric effect on +Amy, who was never quite so violent after she arrived. Katy was more +thankful for this than can well be told; for her great underlying +dread--a dread she dared not whisper plainly even to herself--was that +"Polly dear" might break down before Amy was better, and then what +_should_ they do? + +She took every care that was possible of her friend. She made her eat; +she made her lie down. She forced daily doses of quinine and port-wine +down her throat, and saved her every possible step. But no one, however +affectionate and willing, could do much to lift the crushing burden of +care, which was changing Mrs. Ashe's rosy fairness to wan pallor and +laying such dark shadows under the pretty gray eyes. She had taken small +thought of looks since Amy's illness. All the little touches which had +made her toilette becoming, all the crimps and fluffs, had disappeared; +yet somehow never had she seemed to Katy half so lovely as now in the +plain black gown which she wore all day long, with her hair tucked into +a knot behind her ears. Her real beauty of feature and outline seemed +only enhanced by the rigid plainness of her attire, and the charm of +true expression grew in her face. Never had Katy admired and loved her +friend so well as during those days of fatigue and wearing suspense, or +realized so strongly the worth of her sweetness of temper, her +unselfishness and power of devoting herself to other people. + +"Polly bears it wonderfully," she wrote her father; "she was all broken +down for the first day or two, but now her courage and patience are +surprising. When I think how precious Amy is to her and how lonely her +life would be if she were to die, I can hardly keep the tears out of my +eyes. But Polly does not cry. She is quiet and brave and almost cheerful +all the time, keeping herself busy with what needs to be done; she never +complains, and she looks--oh, so pretty! I think I never knew how much +she had in her before." + +All this time no word had come from Lieutenant Worthington. His sister +had written him as soon as Amy was taken ill, and had twice telegraphed +since, but no answer had been received, and this strange silence added +to the sense of lonely isolation and distance from home and help which +those who encounter illness in a foreign land have to bear. + +So first one week and then another wore themselves away somehow. The +fever did not break on the fourteenth day, as had been hoped, and must +run for another period, the doctor said; but its force was lessened, and +he considered that a favorable sign. Amy was quieter now and did not +rave so constantly, but she was very weak. All her pretty hair had been +shorn away, which made her little face look tiny and sharp. Mabel's +golden wig was sacrificed at the same time. Amy had insisted upon it, +and they dared not cross her. + +"She has got a fever, too, and it's a great deal badder than mine is," +she protested. "Her cheeks are as hot as fire. She ought to have ice on +her head, and how can she when her bang is so thick? Cut it all off, +every bit, and then I will let you cut mine." + +"You had better give ze child her way," said Dr. Hilary. "She's in no +state to be fretted with triffles [trifles, the doctor meant], and in ze +end it will be well; for ze fever infection might harbor in zat doll's +head as well as elsewhere, and I should have to disinfect it, which +would be bad for ze skin of her." + +"She isn't a doll," cried Amy, overhearing him; "she's my child, and you +sha'n't call her names." She hugged Mabel tight in her arms, and glared +at Dr. Hilary defiantly. + +So Katy with pitiful fingers slashed away at Mabel's blond wig till her +head was as bare as a billiard-ball; and Amy, quite content, patted her +child while her own locks were being cut, and murmured, "Perhaps your +hair will all come out in little round curls, darling, as Johnnie Carr's +did;" then she fell into one of the quietest sleeps she had yet had. + +It was the day after this that Katy, coming in from a round of errands, +found Mrs. Ashe standing erect and pale, with a frightened look in her +eyes, and her back against Amy's door, as if defending it from somebody. +Confronting her was Madame Frulini, the _padrona_ of the hotel. Madame's +cheeks were red, and her eyes bright and fierce; she was evidently in a +rage about something, and was pouring out a torrent of excited Italian, +with now and then a French or English word slipped in by way of +punctuation, and all so rapidly that only a trained ear could have +followed or grasped her meaning. + +"What is the matter?" asked Katy, in amazement. + +"Oh, Katy, I am so glad you have come," cried poor Mrs. Ashe. "I can +hardly understand a word that this horrible woman says, but I think she +wants to turn us out of the hotel, and that we shall take Amy to some +other place. It would be the death of her,--I know it would. I never, +never will go, unless the doctor says it is safe. I oughtn't to,--I +couldn't; she can't make me, can she, Katy?" + +"Madame," said Katy,--and there was a flash in her eyes before which the +landlady rather shrank,--"what is all this? Why do you come to trouble +madame while her child is so ill?" + +Then came another torrent of explanation which didn't explain; but Katy +gathered enough of the meaning to make out that Mrs. Ashe was quite +correct in her guess, and that Madame Frulini was requesting, nay, +insisting, that they should remove Amy from the hotel at once. There +were plenty of apartments to be had now that the Carnival was over, she +said,--her own cousin had rooms close by,--it could easily be arranged, +and people were going away from the Del Mondo every day because there +was fever in the house. Such a thing could not be, it should not +be,--the landlady's voice rose to a shriek, "the child must go!" + +"You are a cruel woman," said Katy, indignantly, when she had grasped +the meaning of the outburst. "It is wicked, it is cowardly, to come thus +and attack a poor lady under your roof who has so much already to bear. +It is her only child who is lying in there,--her only one, do you +understand, madame?--and she is a widow. What you ask might kill the +child. I shall not permit you or any of your people to enter that door +till the doctor comes, and then I shall tell him how you have behaved, +and we shall see what he will say." As she spoke she turned the key of +Amy's door, took it out and put it in her pocket, then faced the +_padrona_ steadily, looking her straight in the eyes. + +"Mademoiselle," stormed the landlady, "I give you my word, four people +have left this house already because of the noises made by little miss. +More will go. I shall lose my winter's profit,--all of it,--all; it will +be said there is fever at the Del Mondo,--no one will hereafter come to +me. There are lodgings plenty, comfortable,--oh, so comfortable! I will +not have my season ruined by a sickness; no, I will not!" + +Madame Frulini's voice was again rising to a scream. + +"Be silent!" said Katy, sternly; "you will frighten the child. I am +sorry that you should lose any customers, madame, but the fever is here +and we are here, and here we must stay till it is safe to go. The child +shall not be moved till the doctor gives permission. Money is not the +only thing in the world! Mrs. Ashe will pay anything that is fair to +make up your losses to you, but you must leave this room now, and not +return till Dr. Hilary is here." + +Where Katy found French for all these long coherent speeches, she could +never afterward imagine. She tried to explain it by saying that +excitement inspired her for the moment, but that as soon as the moment +was over the inspiration died away and left her as speechless and +confused as ever. Clover said it made her think of the miracle of +Balaam; and Katy merrily rejoined that it might be so, and that no +donkey in any age of the world could possibly have been more grateful +than was she for the sudden gift of speech. + +"But it is not the money,--it is my prestige," declared the landlady. + +"Thank Heaven! here is the doctor now," cried Mrs. Ashe. + +The doctor had in fact been standing in the doorway for several moments +before they noticed him, and had overheard part of the colloquy with +Madame Frulini. With him was some one else, at the sight of whom Mrs. +Ashe gave a great sob of relief. It was her brother, at last. + +When Italian meets Italian, then comes the tug of expletive. It did not +seem to take one second for Dr. Hilary to whirl the _padrona_ out into +the entry, where they could be heard going at each other like two +furious cats. Hiss, roll, sputter, recrimination, objurgation! In five +minutes Madame Frulini was, metaphorically speaking, on her knees, and +the doctor standing over her with drawn sword, making her take back +every word she had said and every threat she had uttered. + +"Prestige of thy miserable hotel!" he thundered; "where will that be +when I go and tell the English and Americans--all of whom I know, every +one!--how thou hast served a countrywoman of theirs in thy house? Dost +thou think thy prestige will help thee much when Dr. Hilary has fixed a +black mark on thy door! I tell thee no; not a stranger shalt thou have +next year to eat so much as a plate of macaroni under thy base roof! I +will advertise thy behavior in all the foreign papers,--in Figaro, in +Galignani, in the Swiss Times, and the English one which is read by all +the nobility, and the Heraldo of New York, which all Americans peruse--" + +"Oh, doctor--pardon me--I regret what I said--I am afflicted--" + +"I will post thee in the railroad stations," continued the doctor, +implacably; "I will bid my patients to write letters to all their +friends, warning them against thy flea-ridden Del Mondo; I will apprise +the steamboat companies at Genoa and Naples. Thou shalt see what comes +of it,--truly, thou shalt see." + +Having thus reduced Madame Frulini to powder, the doctor now +condescended to take breath and listen to her appeals for mercy; and +presently he brought her in with her mouth full of protestations and +apologies, and assurances that the ladies had mistaken her meaning, she +had only spoken for the good of all; nothing was further from her +intention than that they should be disturbed or offended in any way, and +she and all her household were at the service of "the little sick angel +of God." After which the doctor dismissed her with an air of +contemptuous tolerance, and laid his hand on the door of Amy's room. +Behold, it was locked! + +"Oh, I forgot," cried Katy, laughing; and she pulled the key out of +her pocket. + +"You are a hee-roine, mademoiselle," said Dr. Hilary. "I watched you as +you faced that tigress, and your eyes were like a swordsman's as he +regards his enemy's rapier." + +"Oh, she was so brave, and such a help!" said Mrs. Ashe, kissing her +impulsively. "You can't think how she has stood by me all through, Ned, +or what a comfort she has been." + +"Yes, I can," said Ned Worthington, with a warm, grateful look at Katy. +"I can believe anything good of Miss Carr." + +"But where have _you_ been all this time?" said Katy, who felt this +flood of compliment to be embarrassing; "we have so wondered at not +hearing from you." + +"I have been off on a ten-days' leave to Corsica for moufflon-shooting," +replied Mr. Worthington. "I only got Polly's telegrams and letters day +before yesterday, and I came away as soon as I could get my leave +extended. It was a most unlucky absence. I shall always regret it." + +"Oh, it is all right now that you have come," his sister said, leaning +her head on his arm with a look of relief and rest which was good to +see. "Everything will go better now, I am sure." + +"Katy Carr has behaved like a perfect angel," she told her brother when +they were alone. + +"She is a trump of a girl. I came in time for part of that scene with +the landlady, and upon my word she was glorious! I didn't suppose she +could look so handsome." + +"Have the Pages left Nice yet?" asked his sister, rather irrelevantly. + +"No,--at least they were there on Thursday, but I think that they were +to start to-day." + +Mr. Worthington answered carelessly, but his face darkened as he spoke. +There had been a little scene in Nice which he could not forget. He was +sitting in the English garden with Lilly and her mother when his +sister's telegrams were brought to him; and he had read them aloud, +partly as an explanation for the immediate departure which they made +necessary and which broke up an excursion just arranged with the ladies +for the afternoon. It is not pleasant to have plans interfered with; and +as neither Mrs. Page nor her daughter cared personally for little Amy, +it is not strange that disappointment at the interruption of their +pleasure should have been the first impulse with them. Still, this did +not excuse Lilly's unstudied exclamation of "Oh, bother!" and though she +speedily repented it as an indiscretion, and was properly sympathetic, +and "hoped the poor little thing would soon be better," Amy's uncle +could not forget the jarring impression. It completed a process of +disenchantment which had long been going on; and as hearts are sometimes +caught at the rebound, Mrs. Ashe was not so far astray when she built +certain little dim sisterly hopes on his evident admiration for Katy's +courage and this sudden awakening to a sense of her good looks. + +But no space was left for sentiment or match-making while still Amy's +fate hung in the balance, and all three of them found plenty to do +during the next fortnight. The fever did not turn on the twenty-first +day, and another weary week of suspense set in, each day bringing a +decrease of the dangerous symptoms, but each day as well marking a +lessening in the childish strength which had been so long and severely +tested. Amy was quite conscious now, and lay quietly, sleeping a great +deal and speaking seldom. There was not much to do but to wait and hope; +but the flame of hope burned low at times, as the little life flickered +in its socket, and seemed likely to go out like a wind-blown torch. + +Now and then Lieutenant Worthington would persuade his sister to go +with him for a few minutes' drive or walk in the fresh air, from which +she had so long been debarred, and once or twice he prevailed on Katy +to do the same; but neither of them could bear to be away long from +Amy's bedside. + +Intimacy grows fast when people are thus united by a common anxiety, +sharing the same hopes and fears day after day, speaking and thinking of +the same thing. The gay young officer at Nice, who had counted so little +in Katy's world, seemed to have disappeared, and the gentle, +considerate, tender-hearted fellow who now filled his place was quite a +different person in her eyes. Katy began to count on Ned Worthington as +a friend who could be trusted for help and sympathy and comprehension, +and appealed to and relied upon in all emergencies. She was quite at +ease with him now, and asked him to do this and that, to come and help +her, or to absent himself, as freely as if he had been Dorry or Phil. + +He, on his part, found this easy intimacy charming. In the reaction of +his temporary glamour for the pretty Lilly, Katy's very difference from +her was an added attraction. This difference consisted, as much as +anything else, in the fact that she was so truly in earnest in what she +said and did. Had Lilly been in Katy's place, she would probably have +been helpful to Mrs. Ashe and kind to Amy so far as in her lay; but the +thought of self would have tinctured all that she did and said, and the +need of keeping to what was tasteful and becoming would have influenced +her in every emergency, and never have been absent from her mind. + +Katy, on the contrary, absorbed in the needs of the moment, gave little +heed to how she looked or what any one was thinking about her. Her habit +of neatness made her take time for the one thorough daily dressing,--the +brushing of hair and freshening of clothes, which were customary with +her; but, this tax paid to personal comfort, she gave little further +heed to appearances. She wore an old gray gown, day in and day out, +which Lilly would not have put on for half an hour without a large +bribe, so unbecoming was it; but somehow Lieutenant Worthington grew to +like the gray gown as a part of Katy herself. And if by chance he +brought a rose in to cheer the dim stillness of the sick-room, and she +tucked it into her buttonhole, immediately it was as though she were +decked for conquest. Pretty dresses are very pretty on pretty +people,--they certainly play an important part in this queer little +world of ours; but depend upon it, dear girls, no woman ever has +established so distinct and clear a claim on the regard of her lover as +when he has ceased to notice or analyze what she wears, and just accepts +it unquestioningly, whatever it is, as a bit of the dear human life +which has grown or is growing to be the best and most delightful thing +in the world to him. + +The gray gown played its part during the long anxious night when they +all sat watching breathlessly to see which way the tide would turn with +dear little Amy. The doctor came at midnight, and went away to come +again at dawn. Mrs. Swift sat grim and watchful beside the pillow of her +charge, rising now and then to feel pulse and skin, or to put a spoonful +of something between Amy's lips. The doors and windows stood open to +admit the air. In the outer room all was hushed. A dim Roman lamp, fed +with olive oil, burned in one corner behind a screen. Mrs. Ashe lay on +the sofa with her eyes closed, bearing the strain of suspense in +absolute silence. Her brother sat beside her, holding in his one of the +hot hands whose nervous twitches alone told of the surgings of hope and +fear within. Katy was resting in a big chair near by, her wistful eyes +fixed on Amy's little figure seen in the dim distance, her ears alert +for every sound from the sick-room. + +So they watched and waited. Now and then Ned Worthington or Katy would +rise softly, steal on tiptoe to the bedside, and come back to whisper to +Mrs. Ashe that Amy had stirred or that she seemed to be asleep. It was +one of the nights which do not come often in a lifetime, and which +people never forget. The darkness seems full of meaning; the hush, of +sound. God is beyond, holding the sunrise in his right hand, holding the +sun of our earthly hopes as well,--will it dawn in sorrow or in joy? We +dare not ask, we can only wait. + +A faint stir of wind and a little broadening of the light roused Katy +from a trance of half-understood thoughts. She crept once more into +Amy's room. Mrs. Swift laid a warning finger on her lips; Amy was +sleeping, she said with a gesture. Katy whispered the news to the still +figure on the sofa, then she went noiselessly out of the room. The great +hotel was fast asleep; not a sound stirred the profound silence of the +dark halls. A longing for fresh air led her to the roof. + +There was the dawn just tingeing the east. The sky, even thus early, +wore the deep mysterious blue of Italy. A fresh _tramontana_ was +blowing, and made Katy glad to draw her shawl about her. + +Far away in the distance rose the Alban Hills above the dim Campagna, +with the more lofty Sabines beyond, and Soracte, clear cut against the +sky like a wave frozen in the moment of breaking. Below lay the ancient +city, with its strange mingling of the old and the new, of past things +embedded in the present; or is it the present thinly veiling the rich +and mighty past,--who shall say? + +Faint rumblings of wheels and here and there a curl of smoke showed that +Rome was waking up. The light insensibly grew upon the darkness. A pink +flush lit up the horizon. Florio stirred in his lair, stretched his +dappled limbs, and as the first sun-ray glinted on the roof, raised +himself, crossed the gravelled tiles with soundless feet, and ran his +soft nose into Katy's hand. She fondled him for Amy's sake as she stood +bent over the flower-boxes, inhaling the scent of the mignonette and +gilly-flowers, with her eyes fixed on the distance; but her heart was at +home with the sleepers there, and a rush of strong desire stirred her. +Would this dreary time come to an end presently, and should they be set +at liberty to go their ways with no heavy sorrow to press them down, to +be care-free and happy again in their own land? + +A footstep startled her. Ned Worthington was coming over the roof on +tiptoe as if fearful of disturbing somebody. His face looked resolute +and excited. + +"I wanted to tell you," he said in a hushed voice, "that the doctor is +here, and he says Amy has no fever, and with care may be considered out +of danger." + +"Thank God!" cried Katy, bursting into tears. The long fatigue, the +fears kept in check so resolutely, the sleepless night just passed, had +their revenge now, and she cried and cried as if she could never stop, +but with all the time such joy and gratitude in her heart! She was +conscious that Ned had his arm round her and was holding both her hands +tight; but they were so one in the emotion of the moment that it did not +seem strange. + +"How sweet the sun looks!" she said presently, releasing herself, with a +happy smile flashing through her tears; "it hasn't seemed really bright +for ever so long. How silly I was to cry! Where is dear Polly? I must go +down to her at once. Oh, what does she say?" + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +NEXT. + + +Lieut. Worthington's leave had nearly expired. He must rejoin his +ship; but he waited till the last possible moment in order to help his +sister through the move to Albano, where it had been decided that Amy +should go for a few days of hill air before undertaking the longer +journey to Florence. + +It was a perfect morning in late March when the pale little invalid was +carried in her uncle's strong arms, and placed in the carriage which was +to take them to the old town on the mountain slopes which they had seen +shining from far away for so many weeks past. Spring had come in her +fairest shape to Italy. The Campagna had lost its brown and tawny hues +and taken on a tinge of fresher color. The olive orchards were budding +thickly. Almond boughs extended their dazzling shapes across the blue +sky. Arums and acanthus and ivy filled every hollow, roses nodded from +over every gate, while a carpet of violets and cyclamen and primroses +stretched over the fields and freighted every wandering wind with +fragrance. + +When once the Campagna with its long line of aqueducts, arches, and +hoary tombs was left behind, and the carriage slowly began to mount the +gradual rises of the hill, Amy revived. With every breath of the fresher +air her eyes seemed to brighten and her voice to grow stronger. She held +Mabel up to look at the view; and the sound of her laugh, faint and +feeble as it was, was like music to her mother's ears. + +Amy wore a droll little silk-lined cap on her head, over which a downy +growth of pale-brown fuzz was gradually thickening. Already it showed a +tendency to form into tiny rings, which to Amy, who had always hankered +for curls, was an extreme satisfaction. Strange to say, the same thing +exactly had happened to Mabel; her hair had grown out into soft little +round curls also! Uncle Ned and Katy had ransacked Rome for this +baby-wig, which filled and realized all Amy's hopes for her child. On +the same excursion they had bought the materials for the pretty spring +suit which Mabel wore, for it had been deemed necessary to sacrifice +most of her wardrobe as a concession to possible fever-germs. Amy +admired the pearl-colored dress and hat, the fringed jacket and little +lace-trimmed parasol so much, that she was quite consoled for the loss +of the blue velvet costume and ermine muff which had been the pride of +her heart ever since they left Paris, and whose destruction they had +scarcely dared to confess to her. + +So up, up, up, they climbed till the gateway of the old town was passed, +and the carriage stopped before a quaint building once the residence of +the Bishop of Albano, but now known as the Hôtel de la Poste. Here they +alighted, and were shown up a wide and lofty staircase to their rooms, +which were on the sunny side of the house, and looked across a walled +garden, where roses and lemon trees grew beside old fountains guarded by +sculptured lions and heathen divinities with broken noses and a scant +supply of fingers and toes, to the Campagna, purple with distance and +stretching miles and miles away to where Rome sat on her seven hills, +lifting high the Dome of St. Peter's into the illumined air. + +Nurse Swift said that Amy must go to bed at once, and have a long rest. +But Amy nearly wept at the proposal, and declared that she was not a bit +tired and couldn't sleep if she went to bed ever so much. The change of +air had done her good already, and she looked more like herself than for +many weeks past. They compromised their dispute on a sofa, where Amy, +well wrapped up, was laid, and where, in spite of her protestations, she +presently fell asleep, leaving the others free to examine and arrange +their new quarters. + +Such enormous rooms as they were! It was quite a journey to go from one +side of them to another. The floors were of stone, with squares of +carpet laid down over them, which looked absurdly small for the great +spaces they were supposed to cover. The beds and tables were of the +usual size, but they seemed almost like doll furniture because the +chambers were so big. A quaint old paper, with an enormous pattern of +banyan trees and pagodas, covered the walls, and every now and then +betrayed by an oblong of regular cracks the existence of a hidden door, +papered to look exactly like the rest of the wall. + +These mysterious doors made Katy nervous, and she never rested till she +had opened every one of them and explored the places they led to. One +gave access to a queer little bathroom. Another led, through a narrow +dark passage, to a sort of balcony or loggia overhanging the garden. A +third ended in a dusty closet with an artful chink in it from which you +could peep into what had been the Bishop's drawing-room but which was +now turned into the dining-room of the hotel. It seemed made for +purposes of espial; and Katy had visions of a long line of reverend +prelates with their ears glued to the chink, overhearing what was being +said about them in the apartment beyond. + +The most surprising of all she did not discover till she was going to +bed on the second night after their arrival, when she thought she knew +all about the mysterious doors and what they led to. A little +unexplained draught of wind made her candle flicker, and betrayed the +existence of still another door so cunningly hid in the wall pattern +that she had failed to notice it. She had quite a creepy feeling as she +drew her dressing-gown about her, took a light, and entered the narrow +passage into which it opened. It was not a long passage, and ended +presently in a tiny oratory. There was a little marble altar, with a +kneeling-step and candlesticks and a great crucifix above. Ends of wax +candles still remained in the candlesticks, and bunches of dusty paper +flowers filled the vases which stood on either side of them. A faded +silk cushion lay on the step. Doubtless the Bishop had often knelt +there. Katy felt as if she were the first person to enter the place +since he went away. Her common-sense told her that in a hotel bedroom +constantly occupied by strangers for years past, some one _must_ have +discovered the door and found the little oratory before her; but +common-sense is sometimes less satisfactory than romance. Katy liked to +think that she was the first, and to "make believe" that no one else +knew about it; so she did so, and invented legends about the place which +Amy considered better than any fairy story. + +Before he left them Lieutenant Worthington had a talk with his sister +in the garden. She rather forced this talk upon him, for various +things were lying at her heart about which she longed for explanation; +but he yielded so easily to her wiles that it was evident he was not +averse to the idea. + +"Come, Polly, don't beat about the bush any longer," he said at last, +amused and a little irritated at her half-hints and little feminine +_finesses_. "I know what you want to ask; and as there's no use +making a secret of it, I will take my turn in asking. Have I any chance, +do you think?" + +"Any chance?--about Katy, do you mean? Oh, Ned, you make me so happy." + +"Yes; about her, of course." + +"I don't see why you should say 'of course,'" remarked his sister, with +the perversity of her sex, "when it's only five or six weeks ago that I +was lying awake at night for fear you were being gobbled up by that +Lilly Page." + +"There was a little risk of it," replied her brother, seriously. "She's +awfully pretty and she dances beautifully, and the other fellows were +all wild about her, and--well, you know yourself how such things go. I +can't see now what it was that I fancied so much about her, I don't +suppose I could have told exactly at the time; but I can tell without +the smallest trouble what it is in--the other." + +"In Katy? I should think so," cried Mrs. Ashe, emphatically; "the two +are no more to be compared than--than--well, bread and syllabub! You can +live on one, and you can't live on the other." + +"Come, now, Miss Page isn't so bad as that. She is a nice girl enough, +and a pretty girl too,--prettier than Katy; I'm not so far gone that I +can't see that. But we won't talk about her, she's not in the present +question at all; very likely she'd have had nothing to say to me in any +case. I was only one out of a dozen, and she never gave me reason to +suppose that she cared more for me than the rest. Let us talk about this +friend of yours; have I any chance at all, do you think, Polly?" + +"Ned, you are the dearest boy! I would rather have Katy for a sister +than any one else I know. She's so nice all through,--so true and sweet +and satisfactory." + +"She is all that and more; she's a woman to tie to for life, to be +perfectly sure of always. She would make a splendid wife for any man. +I'm not half good enough for her; but the question is,--and you haven't +answered it yet, Polly,--what's my chance?" + +"I don't know," said his sister, slowly. + +"Then I must ask herself, and I shall do so to-day." + +"I don't know," repeated Mrs. Ashe. "'She is a woman, therefore to be +won:' and I don't think there is any one ahead of you; that is the best +hope I have to offer, Ned. Katy never talks of such things; and though +she's so frank, I can't guess whether or not she ever thinks about them. +She likes you, however, I am sure of that. But, Ned, it will not be wise +to say anything to her yet." + +"Not say anything? Why not?" + +"No. Recollect that it is only a little while since she looked upon you +as the admirer of another girl, and a girl she doesn't like very much, +though they are cousins. You must give her time to get over that +impression. Wait awhile; that's my advice, Ned." + +"I'll wait any time if only she will say yes in the end. But it's hard +to go away without a word of hope, and it's more like a man to speak +out, it seems to me." + +"It's too soon," persisted his sister. "You don't want her to think +you a fickle fellow, falling in love with a fresh girl every time you +go into port, and falling out again when the ship sails. Sailors have +a bad reputation for that sort of thing. No woman cares to win a man +like that." + +"Great Scott! I should think not! Do you mean to say that is the way my +conduct appears to her, Polly?" + +"No, I don't mean just that; but wait, dear Ned, I am sure it is +better." + +Fortified by this sage counsel, Lieutenant Worthington went away next +morning, without saying anything to Katy in words, though perhaps eyes +and tones may have been less discreet. He made them promise that some +one should send a letter every day about Amy; and as Mrs. Ashe +frequently devolved the writing of these bulletins upon Katy, and the +replies came in the shape of long letters, she found herself conducting +a pretty regular correspondence without quite intending it. Ned +Worthington wrote particularly nice letters. He had the knack, more +often found in women than men, of giving a picture with a few graphic +touches, and indicating what was droll or what was characteristic with +a single happy phrase. His letters grew to be one of Katy's pleasures; +and sometimes, as Mrs. Ashe watched the color deepen in her cheeks +while she read, her heart would bound hopefully within her. But she was +a wise woman in her way, and she wanted Katy for a sister very much; so +she never said a word or looked a look to startle or surprise her, but +left the thing to work itself out, which is the best course always in +love affairs. + +Little Amy's improvement at Albano was something remarkable. Mrs. Swift +watched over her like a lynx. Her vigilance never relaxed. Amy was made +to eat and sleep and walk and rest with the regularity of a machine; and +this exact system, combined with the good air, worked like a charm. The +little one gained hour by hour. They could absolutely see her growing +fat, her mother declared. Fevers, when they do not kill, operate +sometimes as spring bonfires do in gardens, burning up all the refuse +and leaving the soil free for the growth of fairer things; and Amy +promised in time to be only the better and stronger for her hard +experience. + +She had gained so much before the time came to start for Florence, that +they scarcely dreaded the journey; but it proved worse than their +expectations. They had not been able to secure a carriage to themselves, +and were obliged to share their compartment with two English ladies, and +three Roman Catholic priests, one old, the others young. The older +priest seemed to be a person of some consequence; for quite a number of +people came to see him off, and knelt for his blessing devoutly as the +train moved away. The younger ones Katy guessed to be seminary students +under his charge. Her chief amusement through the long dusty journey was +in watching the terrible time that one of these young men was having +with his own hat. It was a large three-cornered black affair, with sharp +angles and excessively stiff; and a perpetual struggle seemed to be +going on between it and its owner, who was evidently unhappy when it was +on his head and still more unhappy when it was anywhere else. If he +perched it on his knees it was sure to slide away from him and fall with +a thump on the floor, whereupon he would pick it up, blushing furiously +as he did so. Then he would lay it on the seat when the train stopped at +a station, and jump out with an air of relief; but he invariably forgot, +and sat down upon it when he returned, and sprang up with a look of +horror at the loud crackle it made; after which he would tuck it into +the baggage-rack overhead, from which it would presently descend, +generally into the lap of one of the staid English ladies, who would +hand it back to him with an air of deep offence, remarking to her +companion,-- + +"I never knew anything like it. Fancy! that makes four times that hat +has fallen on me. The young man is a feedgit! He's the most feegitty +creature I ever saw in my life." + +The young _seminariat_ did not understand a word she said; but the +tone needed no interpreter, and set him to blushing more painfully than +ever. Altogether, the hat was never off his mind for a moment. Katy +could see that he was thinking about it, even when he was thumbing his +Breviary and making believe to read. + +At last the train, steaming down the valley of the Arno, revealed fair +Florence sitting among olive-clad hills, with Giotto's beautiful +Bell-tower, and the great, many-colored, soft-hued Cathedral, and the +square tower of the old Palace, and the quaint bridges over the river, +looking exactly as they do in the photographs; and Katy would have felt +delighted, in spite of dust and fatigue, had not Amy looked so worn out +and exhausted. They were seriously troubled about her, and for the +moment could think of nothing else. Happily the fatigue did no permanent +harm, and a day or two of rest made her all right again. By good +fortune, a nice little apartment in the modern quarter of the city had +been vacated by its winter occupants the very day of their arrival, and +Mrs. Ashe secured it for a month, with all its conveniences and +advantages, including a maid named Maria, who had been servant to the +just departed tenants. + +Maria was a very tall woman, at least six feet two, and had a splendid +contralto voice, which she occasionally exercised while busy over her +pots and pans. It was so remarkable to hear these grand arias and +recitatives proceeding from a kitchen some eight feet square, that Katy +was at great pains to satisfy her curiosity about it. By aid of the +dictionary and much persistent questioning, she made out that Maria in +her youth had received a partial training for the opera; but in the end +it was decided that she was too big and heavy for the stage, and the +poor "giantess," as Amy named her, had been forced to abandon her +career, and gradually had sunk to the position of a maid-of-all-work. +Katy suspected that heaviness of mind as well as of body must have stood +in her way; for Maria, though a good-natured giantess, was by no means +quick of intelligence. + +"I do think that the manner in which people over here can make homes for +themselves at five minutes' notice is perfectly delightful," cried Katy, +at the end of their first day's housekeeping. "I wish we could do the +same in America. How cosy it looks here already!" + +It was indeed cosy. Their new domain consisted of a parlor in a corner, +furnished in bright yellow brocade, with windows to south and west; a +nice little dining-room; three bedrooms, with dimity-curtained beds; a +square entrance hall, lighted at night by a tall slender brass lamp +whose double wicks were fed with olive oil; and the aforesaid tiny +kitchen, behind which was a sleeping cubby, quite too small to be a good +fit for the giantess. The rooms were full of conveniences,--easy-chairs, +sofas, plenty of bureaus and dressing-tables, and corner fireplaces like +Franklin stoves, in which odd little fires burned on cool days, made of +pine cones, cakes of pressed sawdust exactly like Boston brown bread cut +into slices, and a few sticks of wood thriftily adjusted, for fuel is +worth its weight in gold in Florence. Katy's was the smallest of the +bedrooms, but she liked it best of all for the reason that its one big +window opened on an iron balcony over which grew a Banksia rose-vine +with a stem as thick as her wrist. It was covered just now with masses +of tiny white blossoms, whose fragrance was inexpressibly delicious and +made every breath drawn in their neighborhood a delight. The sun +streamed in on all sides of the little apartment, which filled a +narrowing angle at the union of three streets; and from one window and +another, glimpses could be caught of the distant heights about the +city,--San Miniato in one direction, Bellosguardo in another, and for +the third the long olive-hung ascent of Fiesole, crowned by its gray +cathedral towers. + +It was astonishing how easily everything fell into train about the +little establishment. Every morning at six the English baker left two +small sweet brown loaves and a dozen rolls at the door. Then followed +the dairyman with a supply of tiny leaf-shaped pats of freshly churned +butter, a big flask of milk, and two small bottles of thick cream, with +a twist of vine leaf in each by way of a cork. Next came a _contadino_ +with a flask of red Chianti wine, a film of oil floating on top to keep +it sweet. People in Florence must drink wine, whether they like it or +not, because the lime-impregnated water is unsafe for use without some +admixture. + +Dinner came from a _trattoria_, in a tin box, with a pan of coals inside +to keep it warm, which box was carried on a man's head. It was furnished +at a fixed price per day,--a soup, two dishes of meat, two vegetables, +and a sweet dish; and the supply was so generous as always to leave +something toward next day's luncheon. Salad, fruit, and fresh eggs Maria +bought for them in the old market. From the confectioners came loaves of +_pane santo_, a sort of light cake made with arrowroot instead of flour; +and sometimes, by way of treat, a square of _pan forte da Siena_, +compounded of honey, almonds, and chocolate,--a mixture as pernicious +as it is delicious, and which might take a medal anywhere for the sure +production of nightmares. + +Amy soon learned to know the shops from which these delicacies came. +She had her favorites, too, among the strolling merchants who sold +oranges and those little sweet native figs, dried in the sun without +sugar, which are among the specialties of Florence. They, in their +turn, learned to know her and to watch for the appearance of her little +capped head and Mabel's blond wig at the window, lingering about till +she came, and advertising their wares with musical modulations, so +appealing that Amy was always running to Katy, who acted as +housekeeper, to beg her to please buy this or that, "because it is my +old man, and he wants me to so much." + +"But, chicken, we have plenty of figs for to-day." + +"No matter; get some more, please do. I'll eat them all; really, I +will." + +And Amy was as good as her word. Her convalescent appetite was something +prodigious. + +There was another branch of shopping in which they all took equal +delight. The beauty and the cheapness of the Florence flowers are a +continual surprise to a stranger. Every morning after breakfast an old +man came creaking up the two long flights of stairs which led to Mrs. +Ashe's apartment, tapped at the door, and as soon as it opened, inserted +a shabby elbow and a large flat basket full of flowers. Such flowers! +Great masses of scarlet and cream-colored tulips, and white and gold +narcissus, knots of roses of all shades, carnations, heavy-headed trails +of wistaria, wild hyacinths, violets, deep crimson and orange +ranunculus, _giglios_, or wild irises,--the Florence emblem, so deeply +purple as to be almost black,--anemones, spring-beauties, faintly tinted +wood-blooms tied in large loose nosegays, ivy, fruit +blossoms,--everything that can be thought of that is fair and sweet. +These enticing wares the old man would tip out on the table. Mrs. Ashe +and Katy would select what they wanted, and then the process of +bargaining would begin, without which no sale is complete in Italy. The +old man would name an enormous price, five times as much as he hoped to +get. Katy would offer a very small one, considerably less than she +expected to give. The old man would dance with dismay, wring his hands, +assure them that he should die of hunger and all his family with him if +he took less than the price named; he would then come down half a franc +in his demand. So it would go on for five minutes, ten, sometimes for a +quarter of an hour, the old man's price gradually descending, and Katy's +terms very slowly going up, a cent or two at a time. Next the giantess +would mingle with the fray. She would bounce out of her kitchen, berate +the flower-vender, snatch up his flowers, declare that they smelt badly, +fling them down again, pouring out all the while a voluble tirade of +reproaches and revilings, and looking so enormous in her excitement that +Katy wondered that the old man dared to answer her at all. Finally, +there would be a sudden lull. The old man would shrug his shoulders, and +remarking that he and his wife and his aged grandmother must go without +bread that day since it was the Signora's will, take the money offered +and depart, leaving such a mass of flowers behind him that Katy would +begin to think that they had paid an unfair price for them and to feel a +little rueful, till she observed that the old man was absolutely dancing +downstairs with rapture over the good bargain he had made, and that +Maria was black with indignation over the extravagance of her ladies! + +"The Americani are a nation of spend-thrifts," she would mutter to +herself, as she quickened the charcoal in her droll little range by +fanning it with a palm-leaf fan; "they squander money like water. Well, +all the better for us Italians!" with a shrug of her shoulders. + +"But, Maria, it was only sixteen cents that we paid, and look at those +flowers! There are at least half a bushel of them." + +"Sixteen cents for garbage like that! The Signorina would better let me +make her bargains for her. _Già! Già!_ No Italian lady would have paid +more than eleven sous for such useless _roba_. It is evident that the +Signorina's countrymen eat gold when at home, they think so little of +casting it away!" + +Altogether, what with the comfort and quiet of this little home, the +numberless delightful things that there were to do and to see, and +Viessieux's great library, from which they could draw books at will +to make the doing and seeing more intelligible, the month at +Florence passed only too quickly, and was one of the times to which +they afterward looked back with most pleasure. Amy grew steadily +stronger, and the freedom from anxiety about her after their long +strain of apprehension was restful and healing beyond expression to +both mind and body. + +Their very last excursion of all, and one of the pleasantest, was to the +old amphitheatre at Fiesole; and it was while they sat there in the soft +glow of the late afternoon, tying into bunches the violets which they +had gathered from under walls whose foundations antedate Rome itself, +that a cheery call sounded from above, and an unexpected surprise +descended upon them in the shape of Lieutenant Worthington, who having +secured another fifteen days' furlough, had come to take his sister on +to Venice. + +"I didn't write you that I had applied for leave," he explained, +"because there seemed so little chance of my getting off again so soon; +but as luck had it, Carruthers, whose turn it was, sprained his ankle +and was laid up, and the Commodore let us exchange. I made all the +capital I could out of Amy's fever; but upon my word, I felt like a +humbug when I came upon her and Mrs. Swift in the Cascine just now, as I +was hunting for you. How she has picked up! I should never have known +her for the same child." + +"Yes, she seems perfectly well again, and as strong as before she had +the fever, though that dear old Goody Swift is just as careful of her as +ever. She would not let us bring her here this afternoon, for fear we +should stay out till the dew fell. Ned, it is perfectly delightful that +you were able to come. It makes going to Venice seem quite a different +thing, doesn't it, Katy?" + +"I don't want it to seem quite different, because going to Venice was +always one of my dreams," replied Katy, with a little laugh. + +"I hope at least it doesn't make it seem less pleasant," said Mr. +Worthington, as his sister stopped to pick a violet. + +"No, indeed, I am glad," said Katy; "we shall all be seeing it for +the first time, too, shall we not? I think you said you had never +been there." She spoke simply and frankly, but she was conscious of +an odd shyness. + +"I simply couldn't stand it any longer," Ned Worthington confided to his +sister when they were alone. "My head is so full of her that I can't +attend to my work, and it came to me all of a sudden that this might be +my last chance. You'll be getting north before long, you know, to +Switzerland and so on, where I cannot follow you. So I made a clean +breast of it to the Commodore; and the good old fellow, who has a soft +spot in his heart for a love-story, behaved like a brick, and made it +all straight for me to come away." + +Mrs. Ashe did not join in these commendations of the Commodore; her +attention was fixed on another part of her brother's discourse. + +"Then you won't be able to come to me again? I sha'n't see you again +after this!" she exclaimed. "Dear me! I never realized that before. What +shall I do without you?" + +"You will have Miss Carr. She is a host in herself," suggested Ned +Worthington. His sister shook her head. + +"Katy is a jewel," she remarked presently; "but somehow one wants a man +to call upon. I shall feel lost without you, Ned." + +The month's housekeeping wound up that night with a "thick tea" in honor +of Lieutenant Worthington's arrival, which taxed all the resources of +the little establishment. Maria was sent out hastily to buy _pan forte +da Siena_ and _vino d'Asti_, and fresh eggs for an omelette, and +chickens' breasts smothered in cream from the restaurant, and artichokes +for a salad, and flowers to garnish all; and the guest ate and praised +and admired; and Amy and Mabel sat on his knee and explained everything +to him, and they were all very happy together. Their merriment was so +infectious that it extended to the poor giantess, who had been very +pensive all day at the prospect of losing her good place, and who now +raised her voice in the grand aria from "Orfeo," and made the kitchen +ring with the passionate demand "Che farò senza Eurydice?" The splendid +notes, full of fire and lamentation, rang out across the saucepans as +effectively as if they had been footlights; and Katy, rising softly, +opened the kitchen door a little way that they might not lose a sound. + +The next day brought them to Venice. It was a "moment," indeed, as Katy +seated herself for the first time in a gondola, and looked from beneath +its black hood at the palace walls on the Grand Canal, past which they +were gliding. Some were creamy white and black, some orange-tawny, +others of a dull delicious ruddy color, half pink, half red; but all, in +build and ornament, were unlike palaces elsewhere. High on the prow +before her stood the gondolier, his form defined in dark outline against +the sky, as he swayed and bent to his long oar, raising his head now and +again to give a wild musical cry, as warning to other approaching +gondolas. It was all like a dream. Ned Worthington sat beside her, +looking more at the changes in her expressive face than at the palaces. +Venice was as new to him as to Katy; but she was a new feature in his +life also, and even more interesting than Venice. They seemed to float +on pleasures for the next ten days. Their arrival had been happily timed +to coincide with a great popular festival which for nearly a week kept +Venice in a state of continual brilliant gala. All the days were spent +on the water, only landing now and then to look at some famous building +or picture, or to eat ices in the Piazza with the lovely façade of St. +Mark's before them. Dining or sleeping seemed a sheer waste of time! The +evenings were spent on the water too; for every night, immediately after +sunset, a beautiful drifting pageant started from the front of the +Doge's Palace to make the tour of the Grand Canal, and our friends +always took a part in it. In its centre went a barge hung with +embroideries and filled with orange trees and musicians. This was +surrounded by a great convoy of skiffs and gondolas bearing colored +lanterns and pennons and gay awnings, and managed by gondoliers in +picturesque uniforms. All these floated and shifted and swept on +together with a sort of rhythmic undulation as if keeping time to the +music, while across their path dazzling showers and arches of colored +fire poured from the palace fronts and the hotels. Every movement of the +fairy flotilla was repeated in the illuminated water, every torch-tip +and scarlet lantern and flake of green or rosy fire; above all the +bright full moon looked down as if surprised. It was magically beautiful +in effect. Katy felt as if her previous sober ideas about life and +things had melted away. For the moment the world was turned topsy-turvy. +There was nothing hard or real or sordid left in it; it was just a fairy +tale, and she was in the middle of it as she had longed to be in her +childhood. She was the Princess, encircled by delights, as when she and +Clover and Elsie played in "Paradise,"--only, this was better; and, dear +me! who was this Prince who seemed to belong to the story and to grow +more important to it every day? + +Fairy tales must come to ending. Katy's last chapter closed with a +sudden turn-over of the leaf when, toward the end of this happy +fortnight, Mrs. Ashe came into her room with the face of one who has +unpleasant news to communicate. + +"Katy," she began, "should you be _awfully_ disappointed, should +you consider me a perfect wretch, if I went home now instead of in +the autumn?" + +Katy was too much astonished to reply. + +"I am grown such a coward, I am so knocked up and weakened by what I +suffered in Rome, that I find I cannot face the idea of going on to +Germany and Switzerland alone, without Ned to take care of me. You are a +perfect angel, dear, and I know that you would do all you could to make +it easy for me, but I am such a fool that I do not dare. I think my +nerves must have given way," she continued half tearfully; "but the very +idea of shifting for myself for five months longer makes me so miserably +homesick that I cannot endure it. I dare say I shall repent afterward, +and I tell myself now how silly it is; but it's no use,--I shall never +know another easy moment till I have Amy safe again in America and under +your father's care." + +"I find," she continued after another little pause, "that we can go down +with Ned to Genoa and take a steamer there which will carry us straight +to New York without any stops. I hate to disappoint you dreadfully, +Katy, but I have almost decided to do it. Shall you mind very much? Can +you ever forgive me?" She was fairly crying now. + +Katy had to swallow hard before she could answer, the sense of +disappointment was so sharp; and with all her efforts there was almost a +sob in her voice as she said,-- + +"Why yes, indeed, dear Polly, there is nothing to forgive. You are +perfectly right to go home if you feel so." Then with another swallow +she added: "You have given me the loveliest six months' treat that ever +was, and I should be a greedy girl indeed if I found fault because it is +cut off a little sooner than we expected." + +"You are so dear and good not to be vexed," said her friend, embracing +her. "It makes me feel doubly sorry about disappointing you. Indeed I +wouldn't if I could help it, but I simply can't. I _must_ go home. +Perhaps we'll come back some day when Amy is grown up, or safely married +to somebody who will take good care of her!" + +This distant prospect was but a poor consolation for the immediate +disappointment. The more Katy thought about it the sorrier did she feel. +It was not only losing the chance--very likely the only one she would +ever have--of seeing Switzerland and Germany; it was all sorts of other +little things besides. They must go home in a strange ship with a +captain they did not know, instead of in the "Spartacus," as they had +planned; and they should land in New York, where no one would be waiting +for them, and not have the fun of sailing into Boston Bay and seeing +Rose on the wharf, where she had promised to be. Furthermore, they must +pass the hot summer in Burnet instead of in the cool Alpine valleys; and +Polly's house was let till October. She and Amy would have to shift for +themselves elsewhere. Perhaps they would not be in Burnet at all. Oh +dear, what a pity it was! what a dreadful pity! + +Then, the first shock of surprise and discomfiture over, other ideas +asserted themselves; and as she realized that in three weeks more, or +four at the longest, she was to see papa and Clover and all her dear +people at home, she began to feel so very glad that she could hardly +wait for the time to come. After all, there was nothing in Europe quite +so good as that. + +"No, I'm not sorry," she told herself; "I am glad. Poor Polly! it's no +wonder she feels nervous after all she has gone through. I hope I wasn't +cross to her! And it will be _very_ nice to have Lieutenant Worthington +to take care of us as far as Genoa." + +The next three days were full of work. There was no more floating in +gondolas, except in the way of business. All the shopping which they had +put off must be done, and the trunks packed for the voyage. Every one +recollected last errands and commissions; there was continual coming and +going and confusion, and Amy, wild with excitement, popping up every +other moment in the midst of it all, to demand of everybody if they were +not glad that they were going back to America. + +Katy had never yet bought her gift from old Mrs. Redding. She had +waited, thinking continually that she should see something more tempting +still in the next place they went to; but now, with the sense that there +were to be no more "next places," she resolved to wait no longer, and +with a hundred francs in her pocket, set forth to choose something from +among the many tempting things for sale in the Piazza. A bracelet of old +Roman coins had caught her fancy one day in a bric-à-brac shop, and she +walked straight toward it, only pausing by the way to buy a pale blue +iridescent pitcher at Salviate's for Cecy Slack, and see it carefully +rolled in seaweed and soft paper. + +The price of the bracelet was a little more than she expected, and quite +a long process of bargaining was necessary to reduce it to the sum she +had to spend. She had just succeeded and was counting out the money when +Mrs. Ashe and her brother appeared, having spied her from the opposite +side of the Piazza, where they were choosing last photographs at Naga's. +Katy showed her purchase and explained that it was a present; "for of +course I should never walk out in cold blood and buy a bracelet for +myself," she said with a laugh. + +"This is a fascinating little shop," said Mrs. Ashe. "I wonder +what is the price of that queer old chatelaine with the bottles +hanging from it." + +The price was high; but Mrs. Ashe was now tolerably conversant with +shopping Italian, which consists chiefly of a few words repeated many +times over, and it lowered rapidly under the influence of her _troppo's_ +and _è molto caro's_, accompanied with telling little shrugs and looks +of surprise. In the end she bought it for less than two thirds of what +had been originally asked for it. As she put the parcel in her pocket, +her brother said,-- + +"If you have done your shopping now, Polly, can't you come out for a +last row?" + +"Katy may, but I can't," replied Mrs. Ashe. "The man promised to bring +me gloves at six o'clock, and I must be there to pay for them. Take +her down to the Lido, Ned. It's an exquisite evening for the water, +and the sunset promises to be delicious. You can take the time, can't +you, Katy?" + +Katy could. + +Mrs. Ashe turned to leave them, but suddenly stopped short. + +"Katy, look! Isn't that a picture!" + +The "picture" was Amy, who had come to the Piazza with Mrs. Swift, to +feed the doves of St. Mark's, which was one of her favorite amusements. +These pretty birds are the pets of all Venice, and so accustomed to +being fondled and made much of by strangers, that they are perfectly +tame. Amy, when her mother caught sight of her, was sitting on the +marble pavement, with one on her shoulder, two perched on the edge of +her lap, which was full of crumbs, and a flight of others circling round +her head. She was looking up and calling them in soft tones. The +sunlight caught the little downy curls on her head and made them +glitter. The flying doves lit on the pavement, and crowded round her, +their pearl and gray and rose-tinted and white feathers, their scarlet +feet and gold-ringed eyes, making a shifting confusion of colors, as +they hopped and fluttered and cooed about the little maid, unstartled +even by her clear laughter. Close by stood Nurse Swift, observant and +grimly pleased. + +The mother looked on with happy tears in her eyes. "Oh, Katy, think +what she was a few weeks ago and look at her now! Can I ever be +thankful enough?" + +She squeezed Katy's hand convulsively and walked away, turning her head +now and then for another glance at Amy and the doves; while Ned and Katy +silently crossed to the landing and got into a gondola. It was the +perfection of a Venice evening, with silver waves lapsing and lulling +under a rose and opal sky; and the sense that it was their last row on +those enchanted waters made every moment seem doubly precious. + +I cannot tell you exactly what it was that Ned Worthington said to Katy +during that row, or why it took so long to say it that they did not get +in till after the sun was set, and the stars had come out to peep at +their bright, glinting faces, reflected in the Grand Canal. In fact, no +one can tell; for no one overheard, except Giacomo, the brown +yellow-jacketed gondolier, and as he did not understand a word of +English he could not repeat the conversation. Venetian boatmen, however, +know pretty well what it means when a gentleman and lady, both young, +find so much to say in low tones to each other under the gondola hood, +and are so long about giving the order to return; and Giacomo, deeply +sympathetic, rowed as softly and made himself as imperceptible as he +could,--a display of tact which merited the big silver piece with which +Lieutenant Worthington "crossed his palm" on landing. + +Mrs. Ashe had begun to look for them long before they appeared, but I +think she was neither surprised nor sorry that they were so late. Katy +kissed her hastily and went away at once,--"to pack," she said,--and +Ned was equally undemonstrative; but they looked so happy, both of them, +that "Polly dear" was quite satisfied and asked no questions. + +Five days later the parting came, when the "Florio" steamer put into the +port of Genoa for passengers. It was not an easy good-by to say. Mrs. +Ashe and Amy both cried, and Mabel was said to be in deep affliction +also. But there were alleviations. The squadron was coming home in the +autumn, and the officers would have leave to see their friends, and of +course Lieutenant Worthington must come to Burnet--to visit his sister. +Five months would soon go, he declared; but for all the cheerful +assurance, his face was rueful enough as he held Katy's hand in a long +tight clasp while the little boat waited to take him ashore. + +After that it was just a waiting to be got through with till they +sighted Sandy Hook and the Neversinks,--a waiting varied with peeps at +Marseilles and Gibraltar and the sight of a whale or two and one distant +iceberg. The weather was fair all the way, and the ocean smooth. Amy was +never weary of lamenting her own stupidity in not having taken Maria +Matilda out of confinement before they left Venice. + +"That child has hardly been out of the trunk since we started," she +said. "She hasn't seen anything except a little bit of Nice. I shall +really be ashamed when the other children ask her about it. I think I +shall play that she was left at boarding-school and didn't come to +Europe at all! Don't you think that would be the best way, mamma?" + +"You might play that she was left in the States-prison for having done +something naughty," suggested Katy; but Amy scouted this idea. + +"She never does naughty things," she said, "because she never does +anything at all. She's just stupid, poor child! It's not her fault." + +The thirty-six hours between New York and Burnet seemed longer than all +the rest of the journey put together, Katy thought. But they ended at +last, as the "Lake Queen" swung to her moorings at the familiar wharf, +where Dr. Carr stood surrounded with all his boys and girls just as they +had stood the previous October, only that now there were no clouds on +anybody's face, and Johnnie was skipping up and down for joy instead of +grief. It was a long moment while the plank was being lowered from the +gangway; but the moment it was in place, Katy darted across, first +ashore of all the passengers, and was in her father's arms. + +Mrs. Ashe and Amy spent two or three days with them, while looking up +temporary quarters elsewhere; and so long as they stayed all seemed a +happy confusion of talking and embracing and exclaiming, and +distributing of gifts. After they went away things fell into their +customary train, and a certain flatness became apparent. Everything had +happened that could happen. The long-talked-of European journey was +over. Here was Katy at home again, months sooner than they expected; yet +she looked remarkably cheerful and content! Clover could not understand +it; she was likewise puzzled to account for one or two private +conversations between Katy and papa in which she had not been invited to +take part, and the occasional arrival of a letter from "foreign parts" +about whose contents nothing was said. + +"It seems a dreadful pity that you had to come so soon," she said one +day when they were alone in their bedroom. "It's delightful to have you, +of course; but we had braced ourselves to do without you till October, +and there are such lots of delightful things that you could have been +doing and seeing at this moment." + +"Oh, yes, indeed," replied Katy, but not at all as if she were +particularly disappointed. + +"Katy Carr, I don't understand you," persisted Clover. "Why don't you +feel worse about it? Here you have lost five months of the most +splendid time you ever had, and you don't seem to mind it a bit! Why, +if I were in your place my heart would be perfectly broken. And you +needn't have come, either; that's the worst of it. It was just a whim +of Polly's. Papa says Amy might have stayed as well as not. Why aren't +you sorrier, Katy?" + +"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because I had so much as it was,--enough to +last all my life, I think, though I _should_ like to go again. You can't +imagine what beautiful pictures are put away in my memory." + +"I don't see that you had so awfully much," said the aggravated Clover; +"you were there only a little more than six months,--for I don't count +the sea,--and ever so much of that time was taken up with nursing Amy. +You can't have any pleasant pictures of _that_ part of it." + +"Yes, I have, some." + +"Well, I should really like to know what. There you were in a dark room, +frightened to death and tired to death, with only Mrs. Ashe and the old +nurse to keep you company--Oh, yes, that brother was there part of the +time; I forgot him--" + +Clover stopped short in sudden amazement. Katy was standing with her +back toward her, smoothing her hair, but her face was reflected in the +glass. At Clover's words a sudden deep flush had mounted in Katy's +cheeks. Deeper and deeper it burned as she became conscious of Clover's +astonished gaze, till even the back of her neck was pink. Then, as if +she could not bear it any longer, she put the brush down, turned, and +fled out of the room; while Clover, looking after her, exclaimed in a +tone of sudden comical dismay,-- + +"What does it mean? Oh, dear me! is that what Katy is going to do next?" + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What Katy Did Next, by Susan Coolidge + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT KATY DID NEXT *** + +***** This file should be named 8995-8.txt or 8995-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/8/9/9/8995/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Suzanne L. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/8995-8.zip b/8995-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5a6f73a --- /dev/null +++ b/8995-8.zip diff --git a/8995-h.zip b/8995-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a42663d --- /dev/null +++ b/8995-h.zip diff --git a/8995-h/8995-h.htm b/8995-h/8995-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e254227 --- /dev/null +++ b/8995-h/8995-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,10191 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<title>WHAT KATY DID NEXT</title> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content= +"text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> +<style type="text/css"> +body {margin:2%; text-align:justify;} +img {border: 0;} +p {margin-top:.2em;text-align:justify;margin-bottom:.2em;text-indent:4%;} + h1 {margin-top:5%;text-align:center;clear:both;} +.cb {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;font-weight:bold;} +.cbc {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;font-weight:bold; +margin:auto;max-width:40%;} + h2 {margin-top:4%;margin-bottom:2%;text-align:center;clear:both; + font-size:120%;} + + @media print, handheld +{h2 +{page-break-before: always;} +} +table {margin-top:2%;margin-bottom:2%;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;border:none;text-align:left;} +.c {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;} +</style> +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of What Katy Did Next, by Susan Coolidge + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: What Katy Did Next + +Author: Susan Coolidge + +Posting Date: January 31, 2012 [EBook #8995] +Release Date: September, 2005 +First Posted: August 31, 2003 +[Last updated: February 24, 2014] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT KATY DID NEXT *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles +Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + +</pre> +<center> +<a href="images/cover2a.jpg"> +<img alt="cover" src="images/cover.jpg" +height="500" width="340"></a> +</center> + + + + +<h1>WHAT KATY DID NEXT</h1> +<p class="cb">BY<br> +SUSAN COOLIDGE</p> + + +<a name="frontisa" id="frontisa"></a> + +<center> +<a href="images/frontisa.jpg"> +<img alt="frontispiece" +src="images/frontis.jpg" height="500" width="350"> +</a> +</center> + + +<p class="cb">[She paid a visit to the little garden. +FRONTISPIECE.]</p> + +<br><br> + +<p class="cbc">This Story is Dedicated<br> +TO<br> +THE MANY LITTLE GIRLS<br><br> +(SOME OF THEM GROWN TO BE GREAT GIRLS NOW),<br><br> +<i>Who, during the last twelve years, have begged that +something +more might be told them about KATY CARR, and what she did +after +leaving school.</i></p> + + + + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='right'>CHAPTER</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>I.</td><td align='left'><a href="#c1">AN UNEXPECTED GUEST</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>II.</td><td align='left'><a href="#c2">AN INVITATION</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>III.</td><td align='left'><a href="#c3">ROSE AND ROSEBUD</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>IV.</td><td align='left'><a href="#c4">ON THE "SPARTACUS"</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>V.</td><td align='left'><a href="#c5">STORY-BOOK ENGLAND</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VI.</td><td align='left'><a href="#c6">ACROSS THE CHANNEL</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VII.</td><td align='left'><a href="#c7">THE PENSION SUISSE</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VIII.</td><td align='left'> <a href="#c8">ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>IX.</td><td align='left'><a href="#c9">A ROMAN HOLIDAY</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>X.</td><td align='left'><a href="#c10">CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XI.</td><td align='left'><a href="#c11">NEXT</a></td></tr> +</table></div> + +<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> + +<p class="c"><a href="#frontisa">SHE PAID A VISIT TO THE LITTLE GARDEN</a></p> + +<p class="c"><a href="#11">"SHE WAS HAVING THE MEASLES ON THE BACK SHELF OF THE CLOSET, YOU KNOW"</a></p> + +<p class="c"><a href="#90">KATY WAS FEEDING GRETCHEN OUT OF A BIG BOWL FULL OF BREAD AND MILK</a></p> + +<p class="c"><a href="#214">AMY WAS LEFT IN PEACE WITH HER FAWN</a></p> + + +<a name="c1" id="c1"></a> + +<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2> + +<p class="cb">AN UNEXPECTED GUEST.</p> + +<p>The September sun was glinting cheerfully into a pretty +bedroom +furnished with blue. It danced on the glossy hair and bright eyes +of two +girls, who sat together hemming ruffles for a white muslin dress. +The +half-finished skirt of the dress lay on the bed; and as each +crisp +ruffle was completed, the girls added it to the snowy heap, which +looked +like a drift of transparent clouds or a pile of foamy +white-of-egg +beaten stiff enough to stand alone.</p> + +<p>These girls were Clover and Elsie Carr, and it was Clover's +first +evening dress for which they were hemming ruffles. It was nearly +two +years since a certain visit made by Johnnie to Inches Mills, of +which +some of you have read in "Nine Little Goslings;" and more than +three +since Clover and Katy had returned home from the boarding-school +at +Hillsover.</p> + +<p>Clover was now eighteen. She was a very small Clover still, +but it would +have been hard to find anywhere a prettier little maiden than she +had +grown to be. Her skin was so exquisitely fair that her arms and +wrists +and shoulders, which were round and dimpled like a baby's, seemed +cut +out of daisies or white rose leaves. Her thick, brown hair waved +and +coiled gracefully about her head. Her smile was peculiarly sweet; +and +the eyes, always Clover's chief beauty, had still that pathetic +look +which made them irresistible to tender-hearted people.</p> + +<p>Elsie, who adored Clover, considered her as beautiful as girls +in +books, and was proud to be permitted to hem ruffles for the dress +in +which she was to burst upon the world. Though, as for that, not +much +"bursting" was possible in Burnet, where tea-parties of a +middle-aged +description, and now and then a mild little dance, represented +"gayety" +and "society." Girls "came out" very much, as the sun comes out +in the +morning,—by slow degrees and gradual approaches, with no +particular +one moment which could be fixed upon as having been the crisis of +the +joyful event.</p> + +<p>"There," said Elsie, adding another ruffle to the pile on +the +bed,—"there's the fifth done. It's going to be ever so pretty, I +think. +I'm glad you had it all white; it's a great deal nicer."</p> + +<p>"Cecy wanted me to have a blue bodice and sash," said Clover, +"but I +wouldn't. Then she tried to persuade me to get a long spray of +pink +roses for the skirt."</p> + +<p>"I'm so glad you didn't! Cecy was always crazy about pink +roses. I only +wonder she didn't wear them when she was married!"</p> + +<p>Yes; the excellent Cecy, who at thirteen had announced her +intention to +devote her whole life to teaching Sunday School, visiting the +poor, and +setting a good example to her more worldly contemporaries, had +actually +forgotten these fine resolutions, and before she was twenty had +become +the wife of Sylvester Slack, a young lawyer in a neighboring +town! +Cecy's wedding and wedding-clothes, and Cecy's house-furnishing +had been +the great excitement of the preceding year in Burnet; and a +fresh +excitement had come since in the shape of Cecy's baby, now about +two +months old, and named "Katherine Clover," after her two friends. +This +made it natural that Cecy and her affairs should still be of +interest in +the Carr household; and Johnnie, at the time we write of, was +making her +a week's visit.</p> + +<p>"She <i>was</i> rather wedded to them," went on Clover, +pursuing the subject +of the pink roses. "She was almost vexed when I wouldn't buy the +spray. +But it cost lots, and I didn't want it in the least, so I stood +firm. +Besides, I always said that my first party dress should be plain +white. +Girls in novels always wear white to their first balls; and +fresh +flowers are a great deal prettier, any way, than artificial. Katy +says +she'll give me some violets to wear."</p> + +<p>"Oh, will she? That will be lovely!" cried the adoring Elsie. +"Violets +look just like you, somehow. Oh, Clover, what sort of a dress do +you +think I shall have when I grow up and go to parties and things? +Won't it +be awfully interesting when you and I go out to choose it?"</p> + +<p>Just then the noise of some one running upstairs quickly made +the +sisters look up from their work. Footsteps are very significant +at +times, and these footsteps suggested haste and excitement.</p> + +<p>Another moment, the door opened, and Katy dashed in, calling +out, +"Papa!—Elsie, Clover, where's papa?"</p> + +<p>"He went over the river to see that son of Mr. White's who +broke his +leg. Why, what's the matter?" asked Clover.</p> + +<p>"Is somebody hurt?" inquired Elsie, startled at Katy's +agitated looks.</p> + +<p>"No, not hurt, but poor Mrs. Ashe is in such trouble."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ashe, it should be explained, was a widow who had come to +Burnet +some months previously, and had taken a pleasant house not far +from the +Carrs'. She was a pretty, lady-like woman, with a particularly +graceful, +appealing manner, and very fond of her one child, a little girl. +Katy +and papa both took a fancy to her at once; and the families had +grown +neighborly and intimate in a short time, as people occasionally +do when +circumstances are favorable.</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you all about it in a minute," went on Katy. "But +first I +must find Alexander, and send him off to meet papa and beg him to +hurry +home." She went to the head of the stairs as she spoke, and +called +"Debby! Debby!" Debby answered. Katy gave her direction, and then +came +back again to the room where the other two were sitting.</p> + +<p>"Now," she said, speaking more collectedly, "I must explain as +fast as I +can, for I have got to go back. You know that Mrs. Ashe's little +nephew +is here for a visit, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, he came on Saturday."</p> + +<p>"Well, he was ailing all day yesterday, and to-day he is +worse, and she +is afraid it is scarlet-fever. Luckily, Amy was spending the day +with +the Uphams yesterday, so she scarcely saw the boy at all; and as +soon +as her mother became alarmed, she sent her out into the garden to +play, +and hasn't let her come indoors since, so she can't have been +exposed +to any particular danger yet. I went by the house on my way +down +street, and there sat the poor little thing all alone in the +arbor, +with her dolly in her lap, looking so disconsolate. I spoke to +her over +the fence, and Mrs. Ashe heard my voice, and opened the upstairs +window +and called to me. She said Amy had never had the fever, and that +the +very idea of her having it frightened her to death. She is such +a +delicate child, you know."</p> + +<p>"Oh, poor Mrs. Ashe!" cried Clover; "I am so sorry for her! +Well, Katy, +what did you do?"</p> + +<p>"I hope I didn't do wrong, but I offered to bring Amy here. +Papa won't +object, I am almost sure."</p> + +<p>"Why, of course he won't. Well?"</p> + +<p>"I am going back now to fetch Amy. Mrs. Ashe is to let Ellen, +who hasn't +been in the room with the little boy, pack a bagful of clothes +and put +it out on the steps, and I shall send Alexander for it by and by. +You +can't think how troubled poor Mrs. Ashe was. She couldn't help +crying +when she said that Amy was all she had left in the world. And I +nearly +cried too, I was so sorry for her. She was so relieved when I +said that +we would take Amy. You know she has a great deal of confidence in +papa."</p> + +<p>"Yes, and in you too. Where will you put Amy to sleep, +Katy?"</p> + +<p>"What do you think would be best? In Dorry's room?"</p> + +<p>"I think she'd better come in here with you, and I'll go into +Dorry's +room. She is used to sleeping with her mother, you know, and she +would +be lonely if she were left to herself."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps that will be better, only it is a great bother for +you, +Clovy dear."</p> + +<p>"I don't mind," responded Clover, cheerfully. "I rather like +to change +about and try a new room once in a while. It's as good as going +on a +journey—almost."</p> + +<p>She pushed aside the half-finished dress as she spoke, opened +a drawer, +took out its contents, and began to carry them across the entry +to +Dorry's room, doing everything with the orderly deliberation that +was +characteristic of whatever Clover did. Her preparations were +almost +complete before Katy returned, bringing with her little Amy +Ashe.</p> + +<p>Amy was a tall child of eight, with a frank, happy face, and +long light +hair hanging down her back. She looked like the pictures of +"Alice in +Wonderland;" but just at that moment it was a very woful little +Alice +indeed that she resembled, for her cheeks were stained with tears +and +her eyes swollen with recent crying.</p> + +<p>"Why, what is the matter?" cried kind little Clover, taking +Amy in her +arms, and giving her a great hug. "Aren't you glad that you are +coming +to make us a visit? We are."</p> + +<p>"Mamma didn't kiss me for good-by," sobbed the little girl. +"She didn't +come downstairs at all. She just put her head out of the window +and +said, 'Good-by; Amy, be very good, and don't make Miss Carr +any +trouble,' and then she went away. I never went anywhere before +without +kissing mamma for good-by."</p> + +<p>"Mamma was afraid to kiss you for fear she might give you the +fever," +explained Katy, taking her turn as a comforter. "It wasn't +because she +forgot. She felt worse about it than you did, I imagine. You know +the +thing she cares most for is that you shall not be ill as your +cousin +Walter is. She would rather do anything than have that happen. As +soon +as he gets well she will kiss you dozens of times, see if she +doesn't. +Meanwhile, she says in this note that you must write her a little +letter +every day, and she will hang a basket by a string out of the +window, and +you and I will go and drop the letters into the basket, and stand +by the +gate and see her pull it up. That will be funny, won't it? We +will play +that you are my little girl, and that you have a real mamma and +a +make-believe mamma."</p> + +<p>"Shall I sleep with you?" demanded Amy,</p> + +<p>"Yes, in that bed over there."</p> + +<p>"It's a pretty bed," pronounced Amy after examining it gravely +for a +moment. "Will you tell me a story every morning?"</p> + + +<center><a name="11" id="11"></a> + +<img alt="illusp11a.jpg (73K)" src="images/illusp11a.jpg" height="724" width="506"> + +<p class="c">["She was having the measles on the back shelf +of the +closet, you know."]</p></center> + +<p>"If you don't wake me up too early. My stories are always +sleepy +till seven o'clock. Let us see what Ellen has packed in that +bag, +and then I'll give you some drawers of your own, and we will put +the +things away."</p> + +<p>The bag was full of neat little frocks and underclothes +stuffed hastily +in all together. Katy took them out, smoothing the folds, and +crimping +the tumbled ruffles with her fingers. As she lifted the last +skirt, Amy, +with a cry of joy, pounced on something that lay beneath it.</p> + +<p>"It is Maria Matilda," she said, "I'm glad of that. I thought +Ellen +would forget her, and the poor child wouldn't know what to do +with me +and her little sister not coming to see her for so long. She was +having +the measles on the back shelf of the closet, you know, and nobody +would +have heard her if she had cried ever so loud."</p> + +<p>"What a pretty face she has!" said Katy, taking the doll out +of +Amy's hands.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but not so pretty as Mabel. Miss Upham says that Mabel +is the +prettiest child she ever saw. Look, Miss Clover," lifting the +other doll +from the table where she had laid it; "hasn't she got +<i>sweet</i> eyes? +She's older than Maria Matilda, and she knows a great deal more. +She's +begun on French verbs!"</p> + +<p>"Not really! Which ones?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, only 'J'aime, tu aimes, il aime,' you know,—the same +that our +class is learning at school. She hasn't tried any but that. +Sometimes +she says it quite nicely, but sometimes she's very stupid, and I +have to +scold her." Amy had quite recovered her spirits by this time.</p> + +<p>"Are these the only dolls you have?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, please don't call them <i>that!</i>" urged Amy. "It hurts +their feelings +dreadfully. I never let them know that they are dolls. They think +that +they are real children, only sometimes when they are very bad I +use the +word for a punishment. I've got several other children. There's +old +Ragazza. My uncle named her, and she's made of rag, but she has +such bad +rheumatism that I don't play with her any longer; I just give +her +medicine. Then there's Effie Deans, she's only got one leg; and +Mopsa +the Fairy, she's a tiny one made out of china; and Peg of +Linkinvaddy,—but she don't count, for she's all come to +pieces."</p> + +<p>"What very queer names your children have!" said Elsie, who +had come in +during the enumeration.</p> + +<p>"Yes; Uncle Ned named them. He's a very funny uncle, but he's +nice. He's +always so much interested in my children."</p> + +<p>"There's papa now!" cried Katy; and she ran downstairs to meet +him.</p> + +<p>"Did I do right?" she asked anxiously after she had told her +story.</p> + +<p>"Yes, my dear, perfectly right," replied Dr. Carr. "I only +hope Amy was +taken away in time. I will go round at once to see Mrs. Ashe and +the +boy; and, Katy, keep away from me when I come back, and keep the +others +away, till I have changed my coat."</p> + +<p>It is odd how soon and how easily human beings accustom +themselves to a +new condition of things. When sudden illness comes, or sudden +sorrow, or +a house is burned up, or blown down by a tornado, there are a few +hours +or days of confusion and bewilderment, and then people gather up +their +wits and their courage and set to work to repair damages. They +clear +away ruins, plant, rebuild, very much as ants whose hill has +been +trodden upon, after running wildly about for a little while, +begin all +together to reconstruct the tiny cone of sand which is so +important in +their eyes. In a very short time the changes which at first seem +so sad +and strange become accustomed and matter-of-course things which +no +longer surprise us.</p> + +<p>It seemed to the Carrs after a few days as if they had always +had Amy in +the house with them. Papa's daily visit to the sick-room, +their +avoidance of him till after he had "changed his coat," Amy's +lessons and +games of play, her dressing and undressing, the walks with +the +make-believe mamma, the dropping of notes into the little basket, +seemed +part of a system of things which had been going on for a long, +long +time, and which everybody would miss should they suddenly +stop.</p> + +<p>But they by no means suddenly stopped. Little Walter Ashe's +case proved +to be rather a severe one; and after he had begun to mend, he +caught +cold somehow and was taken worse again. There were some +serious +symptoms, and for a few days Dr. Carr did not feel sure how +things would +turn. He did not speak of his anxiety at home, but kept silence +and a +cheerful face, as doctors know how to do. Only Katy, who was +more +intimate with her father than the rest, guessed that things were +going +gravely at the other house, and she was too well trained to +ask +questions. The threatening symptoms passed off, however, and +little +Walter slowly got better; but it was a long convalescence, and +Mrs. Ashe +grew thin and pale before he began to look rosy. There was no one +on +whom she could devolve the charge of the child. His mother was +dead; his +father, an overworked business man, had barely time to run up +once a +week to see about him; there was no one at his home but a +housekeeper, +in whom Mrs. Ashe had not full confidence. So the good aunt +denied +herself the sight of her own child, and devoted her strength and +time to +Walter; and nearly two months passed, and still little Amy +remained at +Dr. Carr's.</p> + +<p>She was entirely happy there. She had grown very fond of Katy, +and was +perfectly at home with the others. Phil and Johnnie, who had +returned +from her visit to Cecy, were by no means too old or too proud to +be +play-fellows to a child of eight; and with all the older members +of the +family Amy was a chosen pet. Debby baked turnovers, and twisted +cinnamon +cakes into all sorts of fantastic shapes to please her; Alexander +would +let her drive if she happened to sit on the front seat of the +carryall; +Dr. Carr was seldom so tired that he could not tell her a +story,—and +nobody told such nice stories as Dr. Carr, Amy thought; Elsie +invented +all manner of charming games for the hour before bedtime; Clover +made +wonderful capes and bonnets for Mabel and Maria Matilda; and +Katy—Katy +did all sorts of things.</p> + +<p>Katy had a peculiar gift with children which is not easy to +define. Some +people possess it, and some do not; it cannot be learned, it +comes by +nature. She was bright and firm and equable all at once. She both +amused +and influenced them. There was something about her which excited +the +childish imagination, and always they felt her sympathy. Amy was +a +tractable child, and intelligent beyond her age, but she was +never quite +so good with any one as with Katy. She followed her about like a +little +lover; she lavished upon her certain special words and caresses +which +she gave to no one else; and would kneel on her lap, patting +Katy's +shoulders with her soft hand, and cooing up into her face like a +happy +dove, for a half-hour together. Katy laughed at these +demonstrations, +but they pleased her very much. She loved to be loved, as all +affectionate people do, but most of all to be loved by a +child.</p> + +<p>At last, the long convalescence ended, Walter was carried away +to his +father, with every possible precaution against fatigue and +exposure, and +an army of workpeople was turned into Mrs. Ashe's house. Plaster +was +scraped and painted, wall-papers torn down, mattresses made over, +and +clothing burned. At last Dr. Carr pronounced the premises in a +sanitary +condition, and Mrs. Ashe sent for her little girl to come home +again.</p> + +<p>Amy was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing her mother; but at +the last +moment she clung to Katy and cried as if her heart would +break.</p> + +<p>"I want you too," she said. "Oh, if Dr. Carr would only let +you come and +live with me and mamma, I should be so happy! I shall be so +lone-ly!"</p> + +<p>"Nonsense!" cried Clover. "Lonely with mamma, and those poor +children of +yours who have been wondering all these weeks what has become of +you! +They'll want a great deal of attention at first, I am sure; +medicine and +new clothes and whippings,—all manner of things. You remember +I +promised to make a dress for Effie Deans out of that blue and +brown +plaid like Johnnie's balmoral. I mean to begin it to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Oh, will you?"—forgetting her grief—"that will be lovely. +The skirt +needn't be <i>very</i> full, you know. Effie doesn't walk much, +because of +only having one leg. She will be <i>so</i> pleased, for she +hasn't had a new +dress I don't know when."</p> + +<p>Consoled by the prospect of Effie's satisfaction, Amy departed +quite +cheerfully, and Mrs. Ashe was spared the pain of seeing her only +child +in tears on the first evening of their reunion. But Amy talked +so +constantly of Katy, and seemed to love her so much, that it put a +plan +into her mother's head which led to important results, as the +next +CHAPTER will show.</p> + + + +<a name="c2" id="c2"></a> + +<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2> + + +<p class="cb">AN INVITATION.</p> + +<p>It is a curious fact, and makes life very interesting, that, +generally +speaking, none of us have any expectation that things are going +to +happen till the very moment when they do happen. We wake up some +morning +with no idea that a great happiness is at hand, and before night +it has +come, and all the world is changed for us; or we wake bright +and +cheerful, with never a guess that clouds of sorrow are lowering +in our +sky, to put all the sunshine out for a while, and before noon all +is +dark. Nothing whispers of either the joy or the grief. No +instinct bids +us to delay or to hasten the opening of the letter or telegram, +or the +lifting of the latch of the door at which stands the messenger of +good +or ill. And because it may be, and often is, happy tidings that +come, +and joyful things which happen, each fresh day as it dawns upon +us is +like an unread story, full of possible interest and adventure, to +be +made ours as soon as we have cut the pages and begun to read.</p> + +<p>Nothing whispered to Katy Carr, as she sat at the window +mending a long +rent in Johnnie's school coat, and saw Mrs. Ashe come in at the +side +gate and ring the office bell, that the visit had any special +significance for her. Mrs. Ashe often did come to the office to +consult +Dr. Carr. Amy might not be quite well, Katy thought, or there +might be a +letter with something about Walter in it, or perhaps matters had +gone +wrong at the house, where paperers and painters were still at +work. So +she went calmly on with her darning, drawing the "ravelling," +with which +her needle was threaded, carefully in and out, and taking nice +even +stitches without one prophetic thrill or tremor; while, if only +she +could have looked through the two walls and two doors which +separated +the room in which she sat from the office, and have heard what +Mrs. Ashe +was saying, the school coat would have been thrown to the winds, +and for +all her tall stature and propriety, she would have been skipping +with +delight and astonishment. For Mrs. Ashe was asking papa to let +her do +the very thing of all others that she most longed to do; she was +asking +him to let Katy go with her to Europe!</p> + +<p>"I am not very well," she told the Doctor. "I got tired and +run down +while Walter was ill, and I don't seem to throw it off as I hoped +I +should. I feel as if a change would do me good. Don't you think +so +yourself?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do," Dr. Carr admitted.</p> + +<p>"This idea of Europe is not altogether a new one," continued +Mrs. Ashe. +"I have always meant to go some time, and have put it off, +partly +because I dreaded going alone, and didn't know anybody whom I +exactly +wanted to take with me. But if you will let me have Katy, Dr. +Carr, it +will settle all my difficulties. Amy loves her dearly, and so do +I; she +is just the companion I need; if I have her with me, I sha'n't be +afraid +of anything. I do hope you will consent."</p> + +<p>"How long do you mean to be away?" asked Dr. Carr, divided +between +pleasure at these compliments to Katy and dismay at the idea +of +losing her.</p> + +<p>"About a year, I think. My plans are rather vague as yet; but +my idea +was to spend a few weeks in Scotland and England first,—I have +some +cousins in London who will be good to us; and an old friend of +mine +married a gentleman who lives on the Isle of Wight; perhaps we +might go +there. Then we could cross over to France and visit Paris and a +few +other places; and before it gets cold go down to Nice, and from +there to +Italy. Katy would like to see Italy. Don't you think so?"</p> + +<p>"I dare say she would," said Dr. Carr, with a smile. "She +would be a +queer girl if she didn't."</p> + +<p>"There is one reason why I thought Italy would be particularly +pleasant +this winter for me and for her too," went on Mrs. Ashe; "and that +is, +because my brother will be there. He is a lieutenant in the navy, +you +know, and his ship, the 'Natchitoches,' is one of the +Mediterranean +squadron. They will be in Naples by and by, and if we were there +at the +same time we should have Ned to go about with; and he would take +us to +the receptions on the frigate, and all that, which would be a +nice +chance for Katy. Then toward spring I should like to go to +Florence and +Venice, and visit the Italian lakes and Switzerland in the early +summer. +But all this depends on your letting Katy go. If you decide +against it, +I shall give the whole thing up. But you won't decide against +it,"—coaxingly,—"you will be kinder than that. I will take the +best +possible care of her, and do all I can to make her happy, if only +you +will consent to lend her to me; and I shall consider it +<i>such</i> a favor. +And it is to cost you nothing. You understand, Doctor, she is to +be my +guest all through. That is a point I want to make clear in the +outset; +for she goes for my sake, and I cannot take her on any other +conditions. +Now, Dr. Carr, please, please! I am sure you won't deny me, when +I have +so set my heart upon having her."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ashe was very pretty and persuasive, but still Dr. Carr +hesitated. +To send Katy for a year's pleasuring in Europe was a thing that +had +never occurred to his mind as possible. The cost alone would +have +prevented; for country doctors with six children are not apt to +be rich +men, even in the limited and old-fashioned construction of the +word +"wealth." It seemed equally impossible to let her go at Mrs. +Ashe's +expense; at the same time, the chance was such a good one, and +Mrs. Ashe +so much in earnest and so urgent, that it was difficult to refuse +point +blank. He finally consented to take time for consideration before +making +his decision.</p> + +<p>"I will talk it over with Katy," he said. "The child ought to +have a say +in the matter; and whatever we decide, you must let me thank you +in her +name as well as my own for your great kindness in proposing +it."</p> + +<p>"Doctor, I'm not kind at all, and I don't want to be thanked. +My desire +to take Katy with me to Europe is purely selfish. I am a lonely +person," +she went on; "I have no mother or sister, and no cousins of my +own age. +My brother's profession keeps him at sea; I scarcely ever see +him. I +have no one but a couple of old aunts, too feeble in health to +travel +with me or to be counted on in case of any emergency. You see, I +am a +real case for pity."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ashe spoke gayly, but her brown eyes were dim with tears +as she +ended her little appeal. Dr. Carr, who was soft-hearted where +women were +concerned, was touched. Perhaps his face showed it, for Mrs. Ashe +added +in a more hopeful tone,—</p> + +<p>"But I won't tease any more. I know you will not refuse me +unless you +think it right and necessary; and," she continued mischievously, +"I have +great faith in Katy as an ally. I am pretty sure that she will +say that +she wants to go."</p> + +<p>And indeed Katy's cry of delight when the plan was proposed to +her said +that sufficiently, without need of further explanation. To go to +Europe +for a year with Mrs. Ashe and Amy seemed simply too delightful to +be +true. All the things she had heard about and read +about—cathedrals, +pictures, Alpine peaks, famous places, famous people—came +rushing into +her mind in a sort of bewildering tide as dazzling as it was +overwhelming. Dr. Carr's objections, his reluctance to part with +her, +melted before the radiance of her satisfaction. He had no idea +that +Katy would care so much about it. After all, it was a great +chance,—perhaps the only one of the sort that she would ever +have. +Mrs. Ashe could well afford to give Katy this treat, he knew; and +it +was quite true what she said, that it was a favor to her as well +as to +Katy. This train of reasoning led to its natural results. Dr. +Carr +began to waver in his mind.</p> + +<p>But, the first excitement over, Katy's second thoughts were +more sober +ones. How could papa manage without her for a whole year, she +asked +herself. He would miss her, she well knew, and might not the +charge of +the house be too much for Clover? The preserves were almost all +made, +that was one comfort; but there were the winter clothes to be +seen to; +Dorry needed new flannels, Elsie's dresses must be altered over +for +Johnnie,—there were cucumbers to pickle, the coal to order! A +host of +housewifely cares began to troop through Katy's mind, and a +little +pucker came into her forehead, and a worried look across the face +which +had been so bright a few minutes before. Strange to say, it was +that +little pucker and the look of worry which decided Dr. Carr.</p> + +<p>"She is only twenty-one," he reflected; "hardly out of +childhood. I +don't want her to settle into an anxious, drudging state and lose +her +youth with caring for us all. She shall go; though how we are to +manage +without her I don't see. Little Clover will have to come to the +fore, +and show what sort of stuff there is in her."</p> + +<p>"Little Clover" came gallantly "to the fore" when the first +shock of +surprise was over, and she had relieved her mind with one long +private +cry over having to do without Katy for a year. Then she wiped her +eyes, +and began to revel unselfishly in the idea of her sister's having +so +great a treat. Anything and everything seemed possible to secure +it for +her; and she made light of all Katy's many anxieties and +apprehensions.</p> + +<p>"My dear child, I know a flannel undershirt when I see one, +just as well +as you do," she declared. "Tucks in Johnnie's dress, forsooth! +why, of +course. Ripping out a tuck doesn't require any superhuman +ingenuity! +Give me your scissors, and I'll show you at once. Quince +marmalade? +Debby can make that. Hers is about as good as yours; and if it +wasn't, +what should we care, as long as you are ascending Mont Blanc, +and +hob-nobbing with Michael Angelo and the crowned heads of Europe? +I'll +make the spiced peaches! I'll order the kindling! And if there +ever +comes a time when I feel lost and can't manage without advice, +I'll go +across to Mrs. Hall. Don't worry about us. We shall get on +happily and +easily; in fact, I shouldn't be surprised if I developed such a +turn for +housekeeping, that when you come back the family refused to +change, and +you had just to sit for the rest of your life and twirl your +thumbs and +watch me do it! Wouldn't that be fine?" and Clover laughed +merrily. "So, +Katy darling, cast that shadow from your brow, and look as a girl +ought +to look who's going to Europe. Why, if it were I who were going, +I +should simply stand on my head every moment of the time!"</p> + +<p>"Not a very convenient position for packing," said Katy, +smiling.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is, if you just turn your trunk upside down! When I +think of +all the delightful things you are going to do, I can hardly sit +still. I +<i>love</i> Mrs. Ashe for inviting you."</p> + +<p>"So do I," said Katy, soberly. "It was the kindest thing! I +can't think +why she did it."</p> + +<p>"Well, I can," replied Clover, always ready to defend Katy +even against +herself. "She did it because she wanted you, and she wanted you +because +you are the dearest old thing in the world, and the nicest to +have +about. You needn't say you're not, for you are! Now, Katy, don't +waste +another thought on such miserable things as pickles and +undershirts. We +shall get along perfectly well, I do assure you. Just fix your +mind +instead on the dome of St. Peter's, or try to fancy how you'll +feel the +first time you step into a gondola or see the Mediterranean. +There will +be a moment! I feel a forty-horse power of housekeeping +developing +within me; and what fun it will be to get your letters! We shall +fetch +out the Encyclopaedia and the big Atlas and the 'History of +Modern +Europe,' and read all about everything you see and all the places +you +go to; and it will be as good as a lesson in geography and +history and +political economy all combined, only a great deal more +interesting! We +shall stick out all over with knowledge before you come back; and +this +makes it a plain duty to go, if it were only for our sakes." With +these +zealous promises, Katy was forced to be content. Indeed, +contentment +was not difficult with such a prospect of delight before her. +When once +her little anxieties had been laid aside, the idea of the +coming +journey grew in pleasantness every moment. Night after night she +and +papa and the children pored over maps and made out schemes for +travel +and sight-seeing, every one of which was likely to be discarded +as soon +as the real journey began. But they didn't know that, and it made +no +real difference. Such schemes are the preliminary joys of travel, +and +it doesn't signify that they come to nothing after they have +served +their purpose.</p> + +<p>Katy learned a great deal while thus talking over what she was +to see +and do. She read every scrap she could lay her hand on which +related to +Rome or Florence or Venice or London. The driest details had a +charm for +her now that she was likely to see the real places. She went +about with +scraps of paper in her pocket, on which were written such things +as +these: "Forum. When built? By whom built? More than one?" "What +does +<i>Cenacola</i> mean?" "Cecilia Metella. Who was she?" "Find out +about Saint +Catherine of Siena." "Who was Beatrice Cenci?" How she wished +that she +had studied harder and more carefully before this wonderful +chance came +to her. People always wish this when they are starting for +Europe; and +they wish it more and more after they get there, and realize of +what +value exact ideas and information and a fuller knowledge of the +foreign +languages are to all travellers; how they add to the charm of +everything +seen, and enhance the ease of everything done.</p> + +<p>All Burnet took an interest in Katy's plans, and almost +everybody had +some sort of advice or help, or some little gift to offer. Old +Mrs. +Worrett, who, though fatter than ever, still retained the power +of +locomotion, drove in from Conic Section in her roomy carryall +with the +present of a rather obsolete copy of "Murray's Guide," in faded +red +covers, which her father had used in his youth, and which she was +sure +Katy would find convenient; also a bottle of Brown's Jamaica +Ginger, in +case of sea-sickness. Debby's sister-in-law brought a bundle of +dried +chamomile for the same purpose. Some one had told her it was +the +"handiest thing in the world to take along with you on them +steamboats." +Cecy sent a wonderful old-gold and scarlet contrivance to hang on +the +wall of the stateroom. There were pockets for watches, and +pockets for +medicines, and pockets for handkerchief and hairpins,—in short, +there +were pockets for everything; besides a pincushion with "Bon +Voyage" in +rows of shining pins, a bottle of eau-de-cologne, a cake of soap, +and a +hammer and tacks to nail the whole up with. Mrs. Hall's gift was +a warm +and very pretty woollen wrapper of dark blue flannel, with a pair +of +soft knitted slippers to match. Old Mr. Worrett sent a note of +advice, +recommending Katy to take a quinine pill every day that she was +away, +never to stay out late, because the dews "over there" were said +to be +unwholesome, and on no account to drink a drop of water which had +not +been boiled.</p> + +<p>From Cousin Helen came a delightful travelling-bag, light and +strong at +once, and fitted up with all manner of nice little conveniences. +Miss +Inches sent a "History of Europe" in five fat volumes, which was +so +heavy that it had to be left at home. In fact, a good many of +Katy's +presents had to be left at home, including a bronze paper-weight +in the +shape of a griffin, a large pair of brass screw candlesticks, and +an +ormolu inkstand with a pen-rest attached, which weighed at least +a pound +and a half. These Katy laid aside to enjoy after her return. Mrs. +Ashe +and Cousin Helen had both warned her of the inconvenient +consequences of +weight in baggage; and by their advice she had limited herself to +a +single trunk of moderate size, besides a little flat valise for +use in +her stateroom.</p> + +<p>Clover's gift was a set of blank books for notes, journals, +etc. In one +of these, Katy made out a list of "Things I must see," "Things I +must +do," "Things I would like to see," "Things I would like to do." +Another +she devoted to various good shopping addresses which had been +given her; +for though she did not expect to do any shopping herself, she +thought +Mrs. Ashe might find them useful. Katy's ideas were still so +simple and +unworldly, and her experience of life so small, that it had not +occurred +to her how very tantalizing it might be to stand in front of +shop +windows full of delightful things and not be able to buy any of +them. +She was accordingly overpowered with surprise, gratitude, and the +sense +of sudden wealth, when about a week before the start her father +gave her +three little thin strips of paper, which he told her were +circular +notes, and worth a hundred dollars apiece. He also gave her five +English +sovereigns.</p> + +<p>"Those are for immediate use," he said. "Put the notes away +carefully, +and don't lose them. You had better have them cashed one at a +time as +you require them. Mrs. Ashe will explain how. You will need a +gown or so +before you come back, and you'll want to buy some photographs and +so on, +and there will be fees—"</p> + +<p>"But, papa," protested Katy, opening wide her candid eyes, "I +didn't +expect you to give me any money, and I'm afraid you are giving me +too +much. Do you think you can afford it? Really and truly, I don't +want to +buy things. I shall see everything, you know, and that's +enough."</p> + +<p>Her father only laughed.</p> + +<p>"You'll be wiser and greedier before the year is out, my +dear," he +replied. "Three hundred dollars won't go far, as you'll find. But +it's +all I can spare, and I trust you to keep within it, and not come +home +with any long bills for me to pay."</p> + +<p>"Papa! I should think not!" cried Katy, with unsophisticated +horror.</p> + +<p>One very interesting thing was to happen before they sailed, +the thought +of which helped both Katy and Clover through the last hard days, +when +the preparations were nearly complete, and the family had leisure +to +feel dull and out of spirits. Katy was to make Rose Red a +visit.</p> + +<p>Rose had by no means been idle during the three years and a +half which +had elapsed since they all parted at Hillsover, and during which +the +girls had not seen her. In fact, she had made more out of the +time than +any of the rest of them, for she had been engaged for eighteen +months, +had been married, and was now keeping house near Boston with a +little +Rose of her own, who, she wrote to Clover, was a perfect angel, +and more +delicious than words could say! Mrs. Ashe had taken passage in +the +"Spartacus," sailing from Boston; and it was arranged that Katy +should +spend the last two days before sailing, with Rose, while Mrs. +Ashe and +Amy visited an old aunt in Hingham. To see Rose in her own home, +and +Rose's husband, and Rose's baby, was only next in interest to +seeing +Europe. None of the changes in her lot seemed to have changed +her +particularly, to judge by the letter she sent in reply to +Katy's +announcing her plans, which letter ran as follows:—</p> + +<p>"LONGWOOD, September 20.</p> + +<p>"My dearest child,—Your note made me dance with delight. I +stood on my +head waving my heels wildly to the breeze till Deniston thought I +must +be taken suddenly mad; but when I explained he did the same. It +is too +enchanting, the whole of it. I put it at the head of all the nice +things +that ever happened, except my baby. Write the moment you get this +by +what train you expect to reach Boston, and when you roll into +the +station you will behold two forms, one tall and stalwart, the +other +short and fatsome, waiting for you. They will be those of +Deniston and +myself. Deniston is not beautiful, but he is good, and he is +prepared to +<i>adore</i> you. The baby is both good and beautiful, and you +will adore +her. I am neither; but you know all about me, and I always did +adore you +and always shall. I am going out this moment to the butcher's to +order a +calf fatted for your special behoof; and he shall be slain and +made into +cutlets the moment I hear from you. My funny little house, which +is +quite a dear little house too, assumes a new interest in my eyes +from +the fact that you so soon are to see it. It is somewhat queer, as +you +might know my house would be; but I think you will like it.</p> + +<p>"I saw Silvery Mary the other day and told her you were +coming. She is +the same mouse as ever. I shall ask her and some of the other +girls to +come out to lunch on one of your days. Good-by, with a hundred +and fifty +kisses to Clovy and the rest.</p> + +<p>"Your loving</p> + +<p>"ROSE RED."</p> + +<p>"She never signs herself Browne, I observe," said Clover, as +she +finished the letter.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Rose Red Browne would sound too funny. Rose Red she must +stay till +the end of the CHAPTER; no other name could suit her half so +well, and I +can't imagine her being called anything else. What fun it will be +to see +her and little Rose!"</p> + +<p>"And Deniston Browne," put in Clover.</p> + +<p>"Somehow I find it rather hard to take in the fact that there +is a +Deniston Browne," observed Katy.</p> + +<p>"It will be easier after you have seen him, perhaps."</p> + +<p>The last day came, as last days will. Katy's trunk, most +carefully +and exactly packed by the united efforts of the family, stood in +the +hall, locked and strapped, not to be opened again till the +party +reached London. This fact gave it a certain awful interest in +the +eyes of Phil and Johnnie, and even Elsie gazed upon it with +respect. +The little valise was also ready; and Dorry, the neat-handed, +had +painted a red star on both ends of both it and the trunk, that +they +might be easily picked from among a heap of luggage. He now +proceeded +to prepare and paste on two square cards, labelled +respectively, +"Hold" and "State-room." Mrs. Hall had told them that this was +the +correct thing to do.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ashe had been full of business likewise in putting her +house to +rights for a family who had rented it for the time of her +absence, and +Katy and Clover had taken a good many hours from their own +preparations +to help her. All was done at last; and one bright morning in +October, +Katy stood on the wharf with her family about her, and a lump in +her +throat which made it difficult to speak to any of them. She stood +so +very still and said so very little, that a bystander not +acquainted with +the circumstances might have dubbed her "unfeeling;" while the +fact was +that she was feeling too much!</p> + +<p>The first bell rang. Katy kissed everybody quietly and went on +board +with her father. Her parting from him, hardest of all, took place +in the +midst of a crowd of people; then he had to leave her, and as the +wheels +began to revolve she went out on the side deck to have a last +glimpse of +the home faces. There they were: Elsie crying tumultuously, with +her +head on papa's coat-sleeve; John laughing, or trying to laugh, +with big +tears running down her cheeks the while; and brave little Clover +waving +her handkerchief encouragingly, but with a very sober look on her +face. +Katy's heart went out to the little group with a sudden passion +of +regret and yearning. Why had she said she would go? What was all +Europe +in comparison with what she was leaving? Life was so short, how +could +she take a whole year out of it to spend away from the people she +loved +best? If it had been left to her to choose, I think she would +have flown +back to the shore then and there, and given up the journey, I +also think +she would have been heartily sorry a little later, had she done +so.</p> + +<p>But it was not left for her to choose. Already the throb of +the engines +was growing more regular and the distance widening between the +great +boat and the wharf. Gradually the dear faces faded into distance; +and +after watching till the flutter of Clover's handkerchief became +an +undistinguishable speck, Katy went to the cabin with a heavy +heart. But +there were Mrs. Ashe and Amy, inclined to be homesick also, and +in need +of cheering; and Katy, as she tried to brighten them, gradually +grew +bright herself, and recovered her hopeful spirits. Burnet pulled +less +strongly as it got farther away, and Europe beckoned more +brilliantly +now that they were fairly embarked on their journey. The sun +shone, the +lake was a beautiful, dazzling blue, and Katy said to herself, +"After +all, a year is not very long, and how happy I am going to +be!"</p> + + +<a name="c3" id="c3"></a> + +<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2> + + +<p class="cb">ROSE AND ROSEBUD.</p> + +<p>Thirty-six hours later the Albany train, running smoothly +across the +green levels beyond the Mill Dam, brought the travellers to +Boston.</p> + +<p>Katy looked eagerly from the window for her first glimpse of +the city of +which she had heard so much. "Dear little Boston! How nice it is +to see +it again!" she heard a lady behind her say; but why it should be +called +"little Boston" she could not imagine. Seen from the train, it +looked +large, imposing, and very picturesque, after flat Burnet with its +one +bank down to the edge of the lake. She studied the towers, +steeples, and +red roofs crowding each other up the slopes of the Tri-Mountain, +and the +big State House dome crowning all, and made up her mind that she +liked +the looks of it better than any other city she had ever seen.</p> + +<p>The train slackened its speed, ran for a few moments between +rows of +tall, shabby brick walls, and with a long, final screech of its +whistle +came to halt in the station-house. Every one made a simultaneous +rush +for the door; and Katy and Mrs. Ashe, waiting to collect their +books and +bags, found themselves wedged into their seats and unable to get +out. It +was a confusing moment, and not comfortable; such moments never +are.</p> + +<p>But the discomfort brightened into a sense of relief as, +looking out of +the window, Katy caught sight of a face exactly opposite, which +had +evidently caught sight of her,—a fresh, pretty face, with light, +waving +hair, pink cheeks all a-dimple, and eyes which shone with +laughter and +welcome. It was Rose herself, not a bit changed during the years +since +they parted. A tall young man stood beside her, who must, of +course, be +her husband, Deniston Browne.</p> + +<p>"There is Rose Red," cried Katy to Mrs. Ashe. "Oh, doesn't she +look dear +and natural? Do wait and let me introduce you. I want you to know +her."</p> + +<p>But the train had come in a little behind time, and Mrs. Ashe +was +afraid of missing the Hingham boat; so she only took a hasty +peep +from the window at Rose, pronounced her to be +charming-looking, +kissed Katy hurriedly, reminded her that they must be on the +steamer +punctually at twelve o'clock the following Saturday, and was +gone, +with Amy beside her; so that Katy, following last of all the +slow-moving line of passengers, stepped all alone down from +the +platform into the arms of Rose Red.</p> + +<p>"You darling!" was Rose's first greeting. "I began to think +you meant +to spend the night in the car, you were so long in getting out. +Well, +how perfectly lovely this is! Deniston, here is Katy; Katy, this +is +my husband."</p> + +<p>Rose looked about fifteen as she spoke, and so absurdly young +to have a +"husband," that Katy could not help laughing as she shook hands +with +"Deniston;" and his own eyes twinkled with fun and evident +recognition +of the same joke. He was a tall young man, with a pleasant, +"steady" +face, and seemed to be infinitely amused, in a quiet way, +with +everything which his wife said and did.</p> + +<p>"Let us make haste and get out of this hole," went on Rose. "I +can +scarcely see for the smoke. Deniston, dear, please find the cab, +and +have Katy's luggage put on it. I am wild to get her home, and +exhibit +baby before she chews up her new sash or does something else that +is +dreadful, to spoil her looks. I left her sitting in state, Katy, +with +all her best clothes on, waiting to be made known to you."</p> + +<p>"My large trunk is to go straight to the steamer," explained +Katy, as +she gave her checks to Mr. Browne. "I only want the little one +taken out +to Longwood, please."</p> + +<p>"Now, this is cosey," remarked Rose, when they were seated in +the cab +with Katy's bag at their feet. "Deniston, my love, I wish you +were going +out with us. There's a nice little bench here all ready and +vacant, +which is just suited to a man of your inches. You won't? Well, +come in +the early train, then. Don't forget.—Now, isn't he just as nice +as I +told you he was?" she demanded, the moment the cab began to +move.</p> + +<p>"He looks very nice indeed, as far as I can judge in three +minutes and +a quarter."</p> + +<p>"My dear, it ought not to take anybody of ordinary discernment +a minute +and a quarter to perceive that he is simply the dearest fellow +that ever +lived," said Rose. "I discovered it three seconds after I first +beheld +him, and was desperately in love with him before he had fairly +finished +his first bow after introduction."</p> + +<p>"And was he equally prompt?" asked Katy.</p> + +<p>"He says so," replied Rose, with a pretty blush. "But then, +you know, he +could hardly say less after such a frank confession on my part. +It is no +more than decent of him to make believe, even if it is not true. +Now, +Katy, look at Boston, and see if you don't <i>love</i> it!"</p> + +<p>The cab had now turned into Boylston Street; and on the right +hand lay +the Common, green as summer after the autumn rains, with the elm +arches +leafy still. Long, slant beams of afternoon sun were filtering +through +the boughs and falling across the turf and the paths, where +people were +walking and sitting, and children and babies playing together. It +was a +delightful scene; and Katy received an impression of space and +cheer and +air and freshness, which ever after was associated with her +recollection +of Boston.</p> + +<p>Rose was quite satisfied with her raptures as they drove +through Charles +Street, between the Common and the Public Garden, all ablaze with +autumn +flowers, and down the length of Beacon Street with the blue bay +shining +between the handsome houses on the water side. Every vestibule +and +bay-window was gay with potted plants and flower-boxes; and a +concourse +of happy-looking people, on foot, on horseback, and in carriages, +was +surging to and fro like an equal, prosperous tide, while the +sunlight +glorified all.</p> + +<p>"'Boston shows a soft Venetian side,'" quoted Katy, after a +while. "I +know now what Mr. Lowell meant when he wrote that. I don't +believe there +is a more beautiful place in the world."</p> + +<p>"Why, of course there isn't," retorted Rose, who was a most +devoted +little Bostonian, in spite of the fact that she had lived in +Washington +nearly all her life. "I've not seen much beside, to be sure, but +that is +no matter; I know it is true. It is the dream of my life to come +into +the city to live. I don't care what part I live in,—West End, +South +End, North End; it's all one to me, so long as it is Boston!"</p> + +<p>"But don't you like Longwood?" asked Katy, looking out +admiringly at the +pretty places set amid vines and shrubberies, which they were +now +passing. "It looks so very pretty and pleasant."</p> + +<p>"Yes, it's well enough for any one who has a taste for +natural +beauties," replied Rose. "I haven't; I never had. There is +nothing I +hate so much as Nature! I'm a born cockney. I'd rather live in +one room +over Jordan and Marsh's, and see the world wag past, than be the +owner +of the most romantic villa that ever was built, I don't care +where it +may be situated."</p> + +<p>The cab now turned in at a gate and followed a curving drive +bordered +with trees to a pretty stone house with a porch embowered with +Virginia +creepers, before which it stopped.</p> + +<p>"Here we are!" cried Rose, springing out. "Now, Katy, you +mustn't even +take time to sit down before I show you the dearest baby that +ever was +sent to this sinful earth. Here, let me take your bag; come +straight +upstairs, and I will exhibit her to you."</p> + +<p>They ran up accordingly, and Rose took Katy into a large sunny +nursery, +where, tied with pink ribbon into a little basket-chair and +watched over +by a pretty young nurse, sat a dear, fat, fair baby, so exactly +like +Rose in miniature that no one could possibly have mistaken +the +relationship. The baby began to laugh and coo as soon as it +caught sight +of its gay little mother, and exhibited just such another dimple +as +hers, in the middle of a pink cheek. Katy was enchanted.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you darling!" she said. "Would she come to me, do you +think, Rose?"</p> + +<p>"Why, of course she shall," replied Rose, picking up the baby +as if she +had been a pillow, and stuffing her into Katy's arms head first. +"Now, +just look at her, and tell me if ever you saw anything so +enchanting in +the whole course of your life before? Isn't she big? Isn't +she +beautiful? Isn't she good? Just see her little hands and her +hair! She +never cries except when it is clearly her duty to cry. See her +turn her +head to look at me! Oh, you angel!" And seizing the +long-suffering baby, +she smothered it with kisses. "I never, never, never did see +anything so +sweet. Smell her, Katy! Doesn't she smell like heaven?"</p> + +<p>Little Rose was indeed a delicious baby, all dimples and +good-humor and +violet-powder, with a skin as soft as a lily's leaf, and a +happy +capacity for allowing herself to be petted and cuddled +without +remonstrance. Katy wanted to hold her all the time; but this Rose +would +by no means permit; in fact, I may as well say at once that the +two +girls spent a great part of their time during the visit in +fighting for +the possession of the baby, who looked on at the struggle, and +smiled on +the victor, whichever it happened to be, with all the +philosophic +composure of Helen of Troy. She was so soft and sunny and +equable, that +it was no more trouble to care for and amuse her than if she had +been a +bird or a kitten; and, as Rose remarked, it was "ten times better +fun."</p> + +<p>"I was never allowed as much doll as I wanted in my infancy," +she said. +"I suppose I tore them to pieces too soon; and they couldn't give +me tin +ones to play with, as they did wash-bowls when I broke the china +ones."</p> + +<p>"Were you such a very bad child?" asked Katy.</p> + +<p>"Oh, utterly depraved, I believe. You wouldn't think so now, +would you? +I recollect some dreadful occasions at school. Once I had my head +pinned +up in my apron because I <i>would</i> make faces at the other +scholars, and +they laughed; but I promptly bit a bay-window through the apron, +and ran +my tongue out of it till they laughed worse than ever. The +teacher used +to send me home with notes fastened to my pinafore with things +like this +written in them: 'Little Frisk has been more troublesome than +usual +to-day. She has pinched all the younger children, and bent the +bonnets +of all the older ones. We hope to see an amendment soon, or we do +not +know what we shall do.'"</p> + +<p>"Why did they call you Little Frisk?" inquired Katy, after she +had +recovered from the laugh which Rose's reminiscences called +forth.</p> + +<p>"It was a term of endearment, I suppose; but somehow my family +never +seemed to enjoy it as they ought. I cannot understand," she went +on +reflectively, "why I had not sense enough to suppress those +awful +little notes. It would have been so easy to lose them on the way +home, +but somehow it never occurred to me. Little Rose will be wiser +than +that; won't you, my angel? She will tear up the horrid +notes—mammy +will show her how!"</p> + +<p>All the time that Katy was washing her face and brushing the +dust of the +railway from her dress, Rose sat by with the little Rose in her +lap, +entertaining her thus. When she was ready, the droll little mamma +tucked +her baby under her arm and led the way downstairs to a large +square +parlor with a bay-window, through which the westering sun was +shining. +It was a pretty room, and had a flavor about it "just like Rose," +Katy +declared. No one else would have hung the pictures or looped back +the +curtains in exactly that way, or have hit upon the happy device +of +filling the grate with a great bunch of marigolds, pale brown, +golden, +and orange, to simulate the fire, which would have been quite too +warm +on so mild an evening. Morris papers and chintzes and "artistic" +shades +of color were in their infancy at that date; but Rose's taste was +in +advance of her time, and with a foreshadowing of the coming +"reaction," +she had chosen a "greenery, yallery" paper for her walls, against +which +hung various articles which looked a great deal queerer then than +they +would to-day. There was a mandolin, picked up at some Eastern +sale, a +warming-pan in shining brass from her mother's attic, two old +samplers +worked in faded silks, and a quantity of gayly tinted Japanese +fans and +embroideries. She had also begged from an old aunt at Beverly +Farms a +couple of droll little armchairs in white painted wood, with +covers of +antique needle-work. One had "Chit" embroidered on the middle of +its +cushion; the other, "Chat." These stood suggestively at the +corners of +the hearth.</p> + +<p>"Now, Katy," said Rose, seating herself in "Chit," "pull up +'Chat' and +let us begin."</p> + +<p>So they did begin, and went on, interrupted only by Baby +Rose's coos and +splutters, till the dusk fell, till appetizing smells floated +through +from the rear of the house, and the click of a latch-key +announced Mr. +Browne, come home just in time for dinner.</p> + +<p>The two days' visit went only too quickly. There is nothing +more +fascinating to a girl than the menage of a young couple of her +own age. +It is a sort of playing at real life without the cares and the +sense of +responsibility that real life is sure to bring. Rose was an +adventurous +housekeeper. She was still new to the position, she found it +very +entertaining, and she delighted in experiments of all sorts. If +they +turned out well, it was good fun; if not, that was funnier still! +Her +husband, for all his serious manner, had a real boy's love of a +lark, +and he aided and abetted her in all sorts of whimsical devices. +They +owned a dog who was only less dear than the baby, a cat only less +dear +than the dog, a parrot whose education required constant +supervision, +and a hutch of ring-doves whose melancholy little "whuddering" +coos were +the delight of Rose the less. The house seemed astir with young +life all +over. The only elderly thing in it was the cook, who had the +reputation +of a dreadful temper; only, unfortunately, Rose made her laugh so +much +that she never found time to be cross.</p> + +<p>Katy felt quite an old, experienced person amid all this +movement and +liveliness and cheer. It seemed to her that nobody in the world +could +possibly be having such a good time as Rose; but Rose did not +take the +same view of the situation.</p> + +<p>"It's all very well now," she said, "while the warm weather +lasts; but +in winter Longwood is simply grewsome. The wind never stops +blowing day +nor night. It howls and it roars and it screams, till I feel as +if every +nerve in my body were on the point of snapping in two. And the +snow, +ugh! And the wind, ugh! And burglars! Every night of our lives +they +come,—or I think they come,—and I lie awake and hear them +sharpening +their tools and forcing the locks and murdering the cook and +kidnapping +Baby, till I long to die, and have done with them forever! Oh, +Nature is +the most unpleasant thing!"</p> + +<p>"Burglars are not Nature," objected Katy.</p> + +<p>"What are they, then? Art? High Art? Well, whatever they are, +I do not +like them. Oh, if ever the happy day comes when Deniston consents +to +move into town, I never wish to set my eyes on the country again +as long +as I live, unless—well, yes, I should like to come out just once +more +in the horse-cars and <i>kick</i> that elm-tree by the fence! The +number of +times that I have lain awake at night listening to its +creaking!"</p> + +<p>"You might kick it without waiting to have a house in +town."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I shouldn't dare as long as we are living here! You never +know what +Nature may do. She has ways of her own of getting even with +people," +remarked her friend, solemnly.</p> + +<p>No time must be lost in showing Boston to Katy, Rose said. So +the +morning after her arrival she was taken in bright and early to +see the +sights. There were not quite so many sights to be seen then as +there are +today. The Art Museum had not got much above its foundations; the +new +Trinity Church was still in the future; but the big organ and the +bronze +statue of Beethoven were in their glory, and every day at high +noon a +small straggling audience wandered into Music Hall to hear +the +instrument played. To this extempore concert Katy was taken, and +to +Faneuil Hall and the Athenaeum, to Doll and Richards's, where was +an +exhibition of pictures, to the Granary Graveyard, and the Old +South. +Then the girls did a little shopping; and by that time they were +quite +tired enough to make the idea of luncheon agreeable, so they took +the +path across the Common to the Joy Street Mall.</p> + +<p>Katy was charmed by all she had seen. The delightful nearness +of so many +interesting things surprised her. She perceived what is one of +Boston's +chief charms,—that the Common and its surrounding streets make +a +natural centre and rallying-point for the whole city; as the +heart is +the centre of the body and keeps up a quick correspondence and +regulates +the life of all its extremities. The stately old houses on +Beacon +Street, with their rounded fronts, deep window-casements, and +here and +there a mauve or a lilac pane set in the sashes, took her fancy +greatly; +and so did the State House, whose situation made it +sufficiently +imposing, even before the gilding of the dome.</p> + +<p>Up the steep steps of the Joy Street Mall they went, to the +house on Mt. +Vernon Street which the Reddings had taken on their return +from +Washington nearly three years before. Rose had previously shown +Katy the +site of the old family house on Summer Street, where she was +born, now +given over wholly to warehouses and shops. Their present +residence was +one of those wide old-fashioned brick houses on the crest of the +hill, +whose upper windows command the view across to the Boston +Highlands; in +the rear was a spacious yard, almost large enough to be called a +garden, +walled in with ivies and grapevines, under which were long beds +full of +roses and chrysanthemums and marigolds and mignonette.</p> + +<p>Rose carried a latch-key in her pocket, which she said had +been one of +her wedding-gifts; with this she unlocked the front door and let +Katy +into a roomy white-painted hall.</p> + +<p>"We will go straight through to the back steps," she said. +"Mamma is +sure to be sitting there; she always sits there till the first +frost; +she says it makes her think of the country. How different people +are! I +don't want to think of the country, but I'm never allowed to +forget it +for a moment. Mamma is so fond of those steps and the +garden."</p> + +<p>There, to be sure, Mrs. Redding was found sitting in a +wicker-work +chair under the shade of the grapevines, with a big basket of +mending +at her side. It looked so homely and country-like to find a +person +thus occupied in the middle of a busy city, that Katy's heart +warmed +to her at once.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Redding was a fair little woman, scarcely taller than +Rose and very +much like her. She gave Katy a kind welcome.</p> + +<p>"You do not seem like a stranger," she said, "Rose has told us +so much +about you and your sister. Sylvia will be very disappointed not +to see +you. She went off to make some visits when we broke up in the +country, +and is not to be home for three weeks yet."</p> + +<p>Katy was disappointed, too, for she had heard a great deal +about Sylvia +and had wished very much to meet her. She was shown her picture, +from +which she gathered that she did not look in the least like Rose; +for +though equally fair, her fairness was of the tall aquiline type, +quite +different from Rose's dimpled prettiness. In fact, Rose resembled +her +mother, and Sylvia her father; they were only alike in little +peculiarities of voice and manner, of which a portrait did not +enable +Katy to judge.</p> + +<p>The two girls had a cosey little luncheon with Mrs. Redding, +after which +Rose carried Katy off to see the house and everything in it which +was in +any way connected with her own personal history,—the room where +she +used to sleep, the high-chair in which she sat as a baby and +which was +presently to be made over to little Rose, the sofa where +Deniston +offered himself, and the exact spot on the carpet on which she +had stood +while they were being married! Last of all,—</p> + +<p>"Now you shall see the best and dearest thing in the whole +house," +she said, opening the door of a room in the second story.— +"Grandmamma, here is my friend Katy Carr, whom you have so +often +heard me tell about."</p> + +<p>It was a large pleasant room, with a little wood-fire blazing +in a +grate, by which, in an arm-chair full of cushions, with a +Solitaire-board on a little table beside her, sat a sweet old +lady. +This was Rose's father's mother. She was nearly eighty; but she +was +beautiful still, and her manner had a gracious old-fashioned +courtesy +which was full of charm. She had been thrown from a carriage the +year +before, and had never since been able to come downstairs or to +mingle +in the family life.</p> + +<p>"They come to me instead," she told Katy. "There is no lack of +pleasant +company," she added; "every one is very good to me. I have a +reader for +two hours a day, and I read to myself a little, and play Patience +and +Solitaire, and never lack entertainment."</p> + +<p>There was something restful in the sight of such a lovely +specimen of +old age. Katy realized, as she looked at her, what a loss it had +been +to her own life that she had never known either of her +grandparents. +She sat and gazed at old Mrs. Redding with a mixture of regret +and +fascination. She longed to hold her hand, and kiss her, and play +with +her beautiful silvery hair, as Rose did. Rose was evidently the +old +lady's peculiar darling. They were on the most intimate terms; +and +Rose dimpled and twinkled, and made saucy speeches, and told all +her +little adventures and the baby's achievements, and made jests, +and +talked nonsense as freely as to a person of her own age. It was +a +delightful relation.</p> + +<p>"Grandmamma has taken a fancy to you, I can see," she told +Katy, as they +drove back to Longwood. "She always wants to know my friends; and +she +has her own opinions about them, I can tell you."</p> + +<p>"Do you really think she liked me?" said Katy, warmly. "I am +so glad +if she did, for I <i>loved</i> her. I never saw a really +beautiful old +person before."</p> + +<p>"Oh, there's nobody like her," rejoined Rose. "I can't imagine +what it +would be not to have her." Her merry little face was quite sad +and +serious as she spoke. "I wish she were not so old," she added +with a +sigh. "If we could only put her back twenty years! Then, perhaps, +she +would live as long as I do."</p> + +<p>But, alas! there is no putting back the hands on the dial of +time, no +matter how much we may desire it.</p> + +<p>The second day of Katy's visit was devoted to the +luncheon-party of +which Rose had written in her letter, and which was meant to be +a +reunion or "side CHAPTER" of the S.S.U.C. Rose had asked every +old +Hillsover girl who was within reach. There was Mary Silver, of +course, +and Esther Dearborn, both of whom lived in Boston; and by good +luck +Alice Gibbons happened to be making Esther a visit, and Ellen +Gray came +in from Waltham, where her father had recently been settled over +a +parish, so that all together they made six of the original nine +of the +society; and Quaker Row itself never heard a merrier confusion +of +tongues than resounded through Rose's pretty parlor for the first +hour +after the arrival of the guests.</p> + +<p>There was everybody to ask after, and everything to tell. The +girls all +seemed wonderfully unchanged to Katy, but they professed to find +her +very grown up and dignified.</p> + +<p>"I wonder if I am," she said. "Clover never told me so. But +perhaps she +has grown dignified too."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense!" cried Rose; "Clover could no more be dignified +than my baby +could. Mary Silver, give me that child this moment! I never saw +such a +greedy thing as you are; you have kept her to yourself at least +a +quarter of an hour, and it isn't fair."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Mary, laughing and covering her +mouth with +her hand exactly in her old, shy, half-frightened way.</p> + +<p>"We only need Mrs. Nipson to make our little party complete," +went on +Rose, "or dear Miss Jane! What has become of Miss Jane, by the +way? Do +any of you know?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, she is still teaching at Hillsover and waiting for her +missionary. +He has never come back. Berry Searles says that when he goes out +to walk +he always walks away from the United States, for fear of +diminishing the +distance between them."</p> + +<p>"What a shame!" said Katy, though she could not help laughing. +"Miss +Jane was really quite nice,—no, not nice exactly, but she had +good +things about her."</p> + +<p>"Had she!" remarked Rose, satirically. "I never observed them. +It +required eyes like yours, real 'double million magnifying-glasses +of +h'extra power,' to find them out. She was all teeth and talons as +far +as I was concerned; but I think she really did have a softish +spot in +her old heart for you, Katy, and it's the only good thing I ever +knew +about her."</p> + +<p>"What has become of Lilly Page?" asked Ellen.</p> + +<p>"She's in Europe with her mother. I dare say you'll meet, +Katy, and what +a pleasure that will be! And have you heard about Bella? she's +teaching +school in the Indian Territory. Just fancy that scrap teaching +school!"</p> + +<p>"Isn't it dangerous?" asked Mary Silver.</p> + +<p>"Dangerous? How? To her scholars, do you mean? Oh, the +Indians! Well, +her scalp will be easy to identify if she has adhered to her +favorite +pomatum; that's one comfort," put in naughty Rose.</p> + +<p>It was a merry luncheon indeed, as little Rose seemed to +think, for she +laughed and cooed incessantly. The girls were enchanted with her, +and +voted her by acclamation an honorary member of the S.S.U.C. Her +health +was drunk in Apollinaris water with all the honors, and Rose +returned +thanks in a droll speech. The friends told each other their +histories +for the past three years; but it was curious how little, on the +whole, +most of them had to tell. Though, perhaps, that was because they +did not +tell all; for Alice Gibbons confided to Katy in a whisper that +she +strongly suspected Esther of being engaged, and at the same +moment Ellen +Gray was convulsing Rose by the intelligence that a theological +student +from Andover was "very attentive" to Mary Silver.</p> + +<p>"My dear, I don't believe it," Rose said, "not even a +theological +student would dare! and if he did, I am quite sure Mary would +consider +it most improper. You must be mistaken, Ellen."</p> + +<p>"No, I'm not mistaken; for the theological student is my +second cousin, +and his sister told me all about it. They are not engaged +exactly, but +she hasn't said no; so he hopes she will say yes."</p> + +<p>"Oh, she'll never say no; but then she will never say yes, +either. He +would better take silence as consent! Well, I never did think I +should +live to see Silvery Mary married. I should as soon have expected +to find +the Thirty-nine Articles engaged in a flirtation. She's a dear +old +thing, though, and as good as gold; and I shall consider your +second +cousin a lucky man if he persuades her."</p> + +<p>"I wonder where we shall all be when you come back, Katy," +said Esther +Dearborn as they parted at the gate. "A year is a long time; all +sorts +of things may happen in a year."</p> + +<p>These words rang in Katy's ears as she fell asleep that night. +"All +sorts of things may happen in a year," she thought, "and they may +not be +all happy things, either." Almost she wished that the journey to +Europe +had never been thought of!</p> + +<p>But when she waked the next morning to the brightest of +October suns +shining out of a clear blue sky, her misgivings fled. There could +not +have been a more beautiful day for their start.</p> + +<p>She and Rose went early into town, for old Mrs. Bedding had +made Katy +promise to come for a few minutes to say good-by. They found her +sitting +by the fire as usual, though her windows were open to admit +the +sun-warmed air. A little basket of grapes stood on the table +beside her, +with a nosegay of tea-roses on top. These were from Rose's +mother, for +Katy to take on board the steamer; and there was something else, +a small +parcel twisted up in thin white paper.</p> + +<p>"It is my good-by gift," said the dear old lady. "Don't open +it now. +Keep it till you are well out at sea, and get some little thing +with it +as a keepsake from me."</p> + +<p>Grateful and wondering, Katy put the little parcel in her +pocket. With +kisses and good wishes she parted from these new made friends, +and she +and Rose drove to the steamer, stopping for Mr. Browne by the +way. They +were a little late, so there was not much time for farewells +after they +arrived; but Rose snatched a moment for a private interview with +the +stewardess, unnoticed by Katy, who was busy with Mrs. Ashe and +Amy.</p> + +<p>The bell rang, and the great steam-vessel slowly backed into +the stream. +Then her head was turned to sea, and down the bay she went, +leaving Rose +and her husband still waving their handkerchiefs on the pier. +Katy +watched them to the last, and when she could no longer +distinguish them, +felt that her final link with home was broken.</p> + +<p>It was not till she had settled her things in the little cabin +which +was to be her home for the next ten days, had put her bonnet and +dress +for safe keeping in the upper berth, nailed up her red and yellow +bag, +and donned the woollen gown, ulster, and soft felt hat which were +to do +service during the voyage, that she found time to examine the +mysterious parcel.</p> + +<p>Behold, it was a large, beautiful gold-piece, twenty +dollars!</p> + +<p>"What a darling old lady!" said Katy; and she gave the +gold-piece a +kiss. "How did she come to think of such a thing? I wonder if +there is +anything in Europe good enough to buy with it?"</p> + + + +<a name="c4" id="c4"></a> + +<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2> + +<p class="cb">ON THE "SPARTACUS."</p> + +<p>The ulster and the felt hat soon came off again, for a head +wind lay +waiting in the offing, and the "Spartacus" began to pitch and +toss in a +manner which made all her unseasoned passengers glad to +betake +themselves to their berths. Mrs. Ashe and Amy were among the +earliest +victims of sea-sickness; and Katy, after helping them to settle +in their +staterooms, found herself too dizzy and ill to sit up a moment +longer, +and thankfully resorted to her own.</p> + +<p>As the night came on, the wind grew stronger and the motion +worse. The +"Spartacus" had the reputation of being a dreadful "roller," and +seemed +bound to justify it on this particular voyage. Down, down, down +the +great hull would slide till Katy would hold her breath with fear +lest it +might never right itself again; then slowly, slowly the turn +would be +made, and up, up, up it would go, till the cant on the other side +was +equally alarming. On the whole, Katy preferred to have her own +side of +the ship, the downward one; for it was less difficult to keep +herself in +the berth, from which she was in continual danger of being +thrown. The +night seemed endless, for she was too frightened to sleep except +in +broken snatches; and when day dawned, and she looked through the +little +round pane of glass in the port-hole, only gray sky and gray +weltering +waves and flying spray and rain met her view.</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear, why do people ever go to sea, unless they must?" +she thought +feebly to herself. She wanted to get up and see how Mrs. Ashe had +lived +through the night, but the attempt to move made her so miserably +ill +that she was glad to sink again on her pillows.</p> + +<p>The stewardess looked in with offers of tea and toast, the +very idea +of which was simply dreadful, and pronounced the other lady +"'orridly +ill, worse than you are, Miss," and the little girl "takin' +on +dreadful in the h'upper berth." Of this fact Katy soon had +audible +proof; for as her dizzy senses rallied a little, she could hear +Amy in +the opposite stateroom crying and sobbing pitifully. She seemed +to be +angry as well as sick, for she was scolding her poor mother in +the +most vehement fashion.</p> + +<p>"I hate being at sea," Katy heard her say. "I won't stay in +this nasty +old ship. Mamma! Mamma! do you hear me? I won't stay in this +ship! It +wasn't a bit kind of you to bring me to such a horrid place. It +was very +unkind; it was cru-el. I want to go back, mamma. Tell the captain +to +take me back to the land. Mamma, why don't you speak to me? Oh, I +am so +sick and so very un-happy. Don't you wish you were dead? I +do!"</p> + +<p>And then came another storm of sobs, but never a sound from +Mrs. Ashe, +who, Katy suspected, was too ill to speak. She felt very sorry +for poor +little Amy, raging there in her high berth like some +imprisoned +creature, but she was powerless to help her. She could only +resign +herself to her own discomforts, and try to believe that +somehow, +sometime, this state of things must mend,—either they should all +get to +land or all go to the bottom and be drowned, and at that moment +she +didn't care very much which it turned out to be.</p> + +<p>The gale increased as the day wore on, and the vessel +pitched +dreadfully. Twice Katy was thrown out of her berth on the floor; +then +the stewardess came and fixed a sort of movable side to the +berth, which +held her in, but made her feel like a child fastened into a +railed crib. +At intervals she could still hear Amy crying and scolding her +mother, +and conjectured that they were having a dreadful time of it in +the other +stateroom. It was all like a bad dream. "And they call this +travelling +for pleasure!" thought poor Katy.</p> + +<p>One droll thing happened in the course of the second +night,—at least it +seemed droll afterward; at the time Katy was too uncomfortable to +enjoy +it. Amid the rush of the wind, the creaking of the ship's +timbers, and +the shrill buzz of the screw, she heard a sound of queer +little +footsteps in the entry outside of her open door, hopping and +leaping +together in an odd irregular way, like a regiment of mice or +toy +soldiers. Nearer and nearer they came; and Katy opening her eyes +saw a +procession of boots and shoes of all sizes and shapes, which +had +evidently been left on the floors or at the doors of various +staterooms, +and which in obedience to the lurchings of the vessel had +collected in +the cabin. They now seemed to be acting in concert with one +another, and +really looked alive as they bumped and trotted side by side, and +two by +two, in at the door and up close to her bedside. There they +remained for +several moments executing what looked like a dance; then the +leading +shoe turned on its heel as if giving a signal to the others, and +they +all hopped slowly again into the passage-way and disappeared. It +was +exactly like one of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tales, Katy +wrote to +Clover afterward. She heard them going down the cabin; but how it +ended, +or whether the owners of the boots and shoes ever got their +own +particular pairs again, she never knew.</p> + +<p>Toward morning the gale abated, the sea became smoother, and +she dropped +asleep. When she woke the sun was struggling through the clouds, +and she +felt better.</p> + +<p>The stewardess opened the port-hole to freshen the air, and +helped her +to wash her face and smooth her tangled hair; then she produced a +little +basin of gruel and a triangular bit of toast, and Katy found that +her +appetite was come again and she could eat.</p> + +<p>"And 'ere's a letter, ma'am, which has come for you by post +this +morning," said the nice old stewardess, producing an envelope +from her +pocket, and eying her patient with great satisfaction.</p> + +<p>"By post!" cried Katy, in amazement; "why, how can that be?" +Then +catching sight of Rose's handwriting on the envelope, she +understood, +and smiled at her own simplicity.</p> + +<p>The stewardess beamed at her as she opened it, then saying +again, "Yes, +'m, by post, m'm," withdrew, and left Katy to enjoy the little +surprise.</p> + +<p>The letter was not long, but it was very like its writer. Rose +drew a +picture of what Katy would probably be doing at the time it +reached +her,—a picture so near the truth that Katy felt as if Rose must +have +the spirit of prophecy, especially as she kindly illustrated +the +situation with a series of pen-and-ink drawings, in which Katy +was +depicted as prone in her berth, refusing with horror to go to +dinner, +looking longingly backward toward the quarter where the United +States +was supposed to be, and fishing out of her port-hole with a +crooked pin +in hopes of grappling the submarine cable and sending a message +to her +family to come out at once and take her home. It ended with this +short +"poem," over which Katy laughed till Mrs. Ashe called feebly +across the +entry to ask what <i>was</i> the matter?</p> + +<p> "Break, break, break + And mis-behave, O sea, + And I wish that my tongue could utter + The hatred I feel for thee! + + "Oh, well for the fisherman's child + On the sandy beach at his play; + Oh, well for all sensible folk + Who are safe at home to-day! + + "But this horrible ship keeps on, + And is never a moment still, + And I yearn for the touch of the nice dry land, + Where I needn't feel so ill! + + "Break! break! break! + There is no good left in me; + For the dinner I ate on the shore so late + Has vanished into the sea!"</p> + +<p>Laughter is very restorative after the forlornity of +sea-sickness; and +Katy was so stimulated by her letter that she managed to struggle +into +her dressing-gown and slippers and across the entry to Mrs. +Ashe's +stateroom. Amy had fallen asleep at last and must not be waked +up, so +their interview was conducted in whispers. Mrs. Ashe had by no +means got +to the tea-and-toast stage yet, and was feeling miserable +enough.</p> + +<p>"I have had the most dreadful time with Amy," she said. "All +day +yesterday, when she wasn't sick she was raging at me from the +upper +berth, and I too ill to say a word in reply. I never knew her +so +naughty! And it seemed very neglectful not to come to see after +you, +poor dear child! but really I couldn't raise my head."</p> + +<p>"Neither could I, and I felt just as guilty not to be taking +care of +you," said Katy. "Well, the worst is over with all of us, I hope. +The +vessel doesn't pitch half so much now, and the stewardess says we +shall +feel a great deal better as soon as we get on deck. She is +coming +presently to help me up; and when Amy wakes, won't you let her +be +dressed, and I will take care of her while Mrs. Barrett attends +to you."</p> + +<p>"I don't think I can be dressed," sighed poor Mrs. Ashe. "I +feel as if I +should just lie here till we get to Liverpool."</p> + +<p>"Oh no, h'indeed, mum,—no, you won't," put in Mrs. Barrett, +who at that +moment appeared, gruel-cup in hand. "I don't never let my ladies +lie in +their berths a moment longer than there is need of. I h'always +gets them +on deck as soon as possible to get the h'air. It's the best +medicine you +can 'ave, ma'am, the fresh h'air; h'indeed it h'is."</p> + +<p>Stewardesses are all-powerful on board ship, and Mrs. Barrett +was so +persuasive as well as positive that it was not possible to resist +her. +She got Katy into her dress and wraps, and seated her on deck in +a chair +with a great rug wrapped about her feet, with very little effort +on +Katy's part. Then she dived down the companion-way again, and in +the +course of an hour appeared escorting a big burly steward, who +carried +poor little pale Amy in his arms as easily as though she had been +a +kitten. Amy gave a scream of joy at the sight of Katy, and +cuddled down +in her lap under the warm rug with a sigh of relief and +satisfaction.</p> + +<p>"I thought I was never going to see you again," she said, with +a little +squeeze. "Oh, Miss Katy, it has been so horrid! I never thought +that +going to Europe meant such dreadful things as this!"</p> + +<p>"This is only the beginning; we shall get across the sea in a +few days, +and then we shall find out what going to Europe really means. But +what +made you behave so, Amy, and cry and scold poor mamma when she +was sick? +I could hear you all the way across the entry."</p> + +<p>"Could you? Then why didn't you come to me?"</p> + +<p>"I wanted to; but I was sick too, so sick that I couldn't +move. But why +were you so naughty?—you didn't tell me."</p> + +<p>"I didn't mean to be naughty, but I couldn't help crying. You +would have +cried too, and so would Johnnie, if you had been cooped up in a +dreadful +old berth at the top of the wall that you couldn't get out of, +and +hadn't had anything to eat, and nobody to bring you any water +when you +wanted some. And mamma wouldn't answer when I called to her."</p> + +<p>"She couldn't answer; she was too ill," explained Katy. "Well, +my pet, +it <i>was</i> pretty hard for you. I hope we sha'n't have any +more such days. +The sea is a great deal smoother now."</p> + +<p>"Mabel looks quite pale; she was sick, too," said Amy, +regarding the +doll in her arms with an anxious air. "I hope the fresh h'air +will do +her good."</p> + +<p>"Is she going to have any fresh hair?" asked Katy, +wilfully +misunderstanding.</p> + +<p>"That was what that woman called it,—the fat one who made me +come up +here. But I'm glad she did, for I feel heaps better already; only +I keep +thinking of poor little Maria Matilda shut up in the trunk in +that dark +place, and wondering if she's sick. There's nobody to explain to +her +down there."</p> + +<p>"They say that you don't feel the motion half so much in the +bottom of +the ship," said Katy. "Perhaps she hasn't noticed it at all. Dear +me, +how good something smells! I wish they would bring us something +to eat."</p> + +<p>A good many passengers had come up by this time; and Robert, +the deck +steward, was going about, tray in hand, taking orders for lunch. +Amy and +Katy both felt suddenly ravenous; and when Mrs. Ashe awhile later +was +helped up the stairs, she was amazed to find them eating cold +beef and +roasted potatoes, with the finest appetites in the world. "They +had +served out their apprenticeships," the kindly old captain told +them, +"and were made free of the nautical guild from that time on." So +it +proved; for after these two bad days none of the party were sick +again +during the voyage.</p> + +<p>Amy had a clamorous appetite for stories as well as for cold +beef; and +to appease this craving, Katy started a sort of ocean serial, +called +"The History of Violet and Emma," which she meant to make last +till they +got to Liverpool, but which in reality lasted much longer. It +might with +equal propriety have been called "The Adventures of two little +Girls who +didn't have any Adventures," for nothing in particular happened +to +either Violet or Emma during the whole course of their +long-drawn-out +history. Amy, however, found them perfectly enchanting, and was +never +weary of hearing how they went to school and came home again, how +they +got into scrapes and got out of them, how they made good +resolutions and +broke them, about their Christmas presents and birthday treats, +and what +they said and how they felt. The first instalment of this +un-exciting +romance was given that first afternoon on deck; and after that, +Amy +claimed a new CHAPTER daily, and it was a chief ingredient of +her +pleasure during the voyage.</p> + +<p>On the third morning Katy woke and dressed so early, that she +gained the +deck before the sailors had finished their scrubbing and +holystoning. +She took refuge within the companion-way, and sat down on the top +step +of the ladder, to wait till the deck was dry enough to venture +upon it. +There the Captain found her and drew near for a talk.</p> + +<p>Captain Bryce was exactly the kind of sea-captain that is +found in +story-books, but not always in real life. He was stout and +grizzled and +brown and kind. He had a bluff weather-beaten face, lit up with a +pair +of shrewd blue eyes which twinkled when he was pleased; and his +manner, +though it was full of the habit of command, was quiet and +pleasant. He +was a Martinet on board his ship. Not a sailor under him would +have +dared dispute his orders for a moment; but he was very popular +with +them, notwithstanding; they liked him as much as they feared him, +for +they knew him to be their best friend if it came to sickness or +trouble +with any of them.</p> + +<p>Katy and he grew quite intimate during their long morning +talk. The +Captain liked girls. He had one of his own, about Katy's age, and +was +fond of talking about her. Lucy was his mainstay at home, he told +Katy. +Her mother had been "weakly" now this long time back, and Bess +and Nanny +were but children yet, so Lucy had to take command and keep +things +ship-shape when he was away.</p> + +<p>"She'll be on the lookout when the steamer comes in," said the +Captain. +"There's a signal we've arranged which means 'All's well,' and +when we +get up the river a little way I always look to see if it's +flying. It's +a bit of a towel hung from a particular window; and when I see it +I say +to myself, 'Thank God! another voyage safely done and no harm +come of +it.' It's a sad kind of work for a man to go off for a +twenty-four days' +cruise leaving a sick wife on shore behind him. If it wasn't that +I have +Lucy to look after things, I should have thrown up my command +long ago."</p> + +<p>"Indeed, I am glad you have Lucy; she must be a great comfort +to you," +said Katy, sympathetically; for the Captain's hearty voice +trembled a +little as he spoke. She made him tell her the color of Lucy's +hair and +eyes, and exactly how tall she was, and what she had studied, and +what +sort of books she liked. She seemed such a very nice girl, and +Katy +thought she should like to know her.</p> + +<p>The deck had dried fast in the fresh sea-wind, and the Captain +had just +arranged Katy in her chair, and was wrapping the rug about her +feet in a +fatherly way, when Mrs. Barrett, all smiles, appeared from +below.</p> + +<p>"Oh, 'ere you h'are, Miss. I couldn't think what 'ad come to +you so +early; and you're looking ever so well again, I'm pleased to see; +and +'ere's a bundle just arrived, Miss, by the Parcels Delivery."</p> + +<p>"What!" cried simple Katy. Then she laughed at her own +foolishness, and +took the "bundle," which was directed in Rose's unmistakable +hand.</p> + +<p>It contained a pretty little green-bound copy of Emerson's +Poems, with +Katy's name and "To be read at sea," written on the flyleaf. +Somehow the +little gift seemed to bridge the long misty distance which +stretched +between the vessel's stern and Boston Bay, and to bring home and +friends +a great deal nearer. With a half-happy, half-tearful pleasure +Katy +recognized the fact that distance counts for little if people +love one +another, and that hearts have a telegraph of their own whose +messages +are as sure and swift as any of those sent over the material +lines which +link continent to continent and shore with shore.</p> + +<p>Later in the morning, Katy, going down to her stateroom for +something, +came across a pallid, exhausted-looking lady, who lay stretched +on one +of the long sofas in the cabin, with a baby in her arms and a +little +girl sitting at her feet, quite still, with a pair of small hands +folded +in her lap. The little girl did not seem to be more than four +years old. +She had two pig-tails of thick flaxen hair hanging over her +shoulders, +and at Katy's approach raised a pair of solemn blue eyes, which +had so +much appeal in them, though she said nothing, that Katy stopped +at once.</p> + +<p>"Can I do anything for you?" she asked. "I am afraid you have +been +very ill."</p> + +<p>At the sound of her voice the lady on the sofa opened her +eyes. She +tried to speak, but to Katy's dismay began to cry instead; and +when the +words came they were strangled with sobs.</p> + +<p>"You are so kin-d to ask," she said. "If you would give my +little girl +something to eat! She has had nothing since yesterday, and I have +been +so ill; and no-nobody has c-ome near us!"</p> + +<p>"Oh!" cried Katy, with horror, "nothing to eat since +yesterday! How did +it happen?"</p> + +<p>"Everybody has been sick on our side the ship," explained the +poor lady, +"and I suppose the stewardess thought, as I had a maid with me, +that I +needed her less than the others. But my maid has been sick, too; +and oh, +so selfish! She wouldn't even take the baby into the berth with +her; and +I have had all I could do to manage with him, when I couldn't +lift up my +head. Little Gretchen has had to go without anything; and she has +been +so good and patient!"</p> + +<p>Katy lost no time, but ran for Mrs. Barrett, whose indignation +knew no +bounds when she heard how the helpless party had been +neglected.</p> + +<p>"It's a new person that stewardess h'is, ma'am," she +explained, "and +most h'inefficient! I told the Captain when she come aboard that +I +didn't 'ave much opinion of her, and now he'll see how it h'is. +I'm +h'ashamed that such a thing should 'appen on the 'Spartacus,' +ma'am,—I +h'am, h'indeed. H'it never would 'ave ben so h'under h'Eliza, +ma'am,—she's the one that went h'off and got herself married the +trip +before last, when this person came to take her place."</p> + +<p>All the time that she talked Mrs. Barrett was busy in making +Mrs. +Ware—for that, it seemed, was the sick lady's name—more +comfortable; +and Katy was feeding Gretchen out of a big bowl full of bread and +milk +which one of the stewards had brought. The little uncomplaining +thing +was evidently half starved, but with the mouthfuls the pink began +to +steal back into her cheeks and lips, and the dark circles +lessened under +the blue eyes. By the time the bottom of the bowl was reached she +could +smile, but still she said not a word except a whispered <i>Danke +schon</i>. +Her mother explained that she had been born in Germany, and +always till +now had been cared for by a German nurse, so that she knew that +language +better than English.</p> + +<center><a name="90" id="90"></a> + + +<img alt="illusp90a.jpg (63K)" src="images/illusp90a.jpg" height="730" width="512"> + +<p class="c">[Katy was feeding Gretchen out of a big bowl +full of bread +and milk.]</p></center> + + +<p>Gretchen was a great amusement to Katy and Amy during the rest +of the +voyage. They kept her on deck with them a great deal, and she +was +perfectly content with them and very good, though always solemn +and +quiet. Pleasant people turned up among the passengers, as always +happens +on an ocean steamship, and others not so pleasant, perhaps, who +were +rather curious and interesting to watch.</p> + +<p>Katy grew to feel as if she knew a great deal about her +fellow +travellers as time went on. There was the young girl going out to +join +her parents under the care of a severe governess, whom everybody +on +board rather pitied. There was the other girl on her way to study +art, +who was travelling quite alone, and seemed to have nobody to meet +her or +to go to except a fellow student of her own age, already in +Paris, but +who seemed quite unconscious of her lonely position and competent +to +grapple with anything or anybody. There was the queer old +gentleman who +had "crossed" eleven times before, and had advice and experience +to +spare for any one who would listen to them; and the other +gentleman, not +so old but even more queer, who had "frozen his stomach," eight +years +before, by indulging, on a hot summer's day, in sixteen +successive +ice-creams, alternated with ten glasses of equally cold +soda-water, and +who related this exciting experience in turn to everybody on +board. +There was the bad little boy, whose parents were powerless to +oppose +him, and who carried terror to the hearts of all beholders +whenever he +appeared; and the pretty widow who filled the role of reigning +belle; +and the other widow, not quite so pretty or so much a belle, who +had a +good deal to say, in a voice made discreetly low, about what a +pity it +was that dear Mrs. So-and-so should do this or that, and "Doesn't +it +strike you as very unfortunate that she should not consider" the +other +thing? A great sea-going steamer is a little world in itself, and +gives +one a glimpse of all sorts and conditions of people and +characters.</p> + +<p>On the whole, there was no one on the "Spartacus" whom Katy +liked so +well as sedate little Gretchen except the dear old Captain, with +whom +she was a prime favorite. He gave Mrs. Ashe and herself the seats +next +to him at table, looked after their comfort in every possible +way, and +each night at dinner sent Katy one of the apple-dumplings made +specially +for him by the cook, who had gone many voyages with the Captain +and knew +his fancies. Katy did not care particularly for the dumpling, but +she +valued it as a mark of regard, and always ate it when she +could.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, every morning brought a fresh surprise from that +dear, +painstaking Rose, who had evidently worked hard and thought +harder in +contriving pleasures for Katy's first voyage at sea. Mrs. Barrett +was +enlisted in the plot, there could be no doubt of that, and +enjoyed the +joke as much as any one, as she presented herself each day with +the +invariable formula, "A letter for you, ma'am," or "A bundle, +Miss, come +by the Parcels Delivery." On the fourth morning it was a +photograph of +Baby Rose, in a little flat morocco case. The fifth brought a +wonderful +epistle, full of startling pieces of news, none of them true. On +the +sixth appeared a long narrow box containing a fountain pen. Then +came +Mr. Howells's "A Foregone Conclusion," which Katy had never seen; +then a +box of quinine pills; then a sachet for her trunk; then +another +burlesque poem; last of all, a cake of delicious violet soap, "to +wash +the sea-smell from her hands," the label said. It grew to be one +of the +little excitements of ship life to watch for the arrival of these +daily +gifts; and "What did the mail bring for you this time, Miss +Carr?" was a +question frequently asked. Each arrival Katy thought must be the +final +one; but Rose's forethought had gone so far even as to provide an +extra +parcel in case the voyage was a day longer than usual, and "Miss +Carr's +mail" continued to come in till the very last morning.</p> + +<p>Katy never forgot the thrill that went through her when, after +so many +days of sea, her eyes first caught sight of the dim line of the +Irish +coast. An exciting and interesting day followed as, after +stopping at +Queenstown to leave the mails, they sped northeastward between +shores +which grew more distinct and beautiful with every hour,—on one +side +Ireland, on the other the bold mountain lines of the Welsh coast. +It was +late afternoon when they entered the Mersey, and dusk had fallen +before +the Captain got out his glass to look for the white fluttering +speck in +his own window which meant so much to him. Long he studied before +he +made quite sure that it was there. At last he shut the glass with +a +satisfied air.</p> + +<p>"It's all right," he said to Katy, who stood near, almost as +much +interested as he. "Lucy never forgets, bless her! Well, there's +another +voyage over and done with, thank God, and my Mary is where she +was. It's +a load taken from my mind."</p> + +<p>The moon had risen and was shining softly on the river as +the +crowded tender landed the passengers from the "Spartacus" at +the +Liverpool docks.</p> + +<p>"We shall meet again in London or in Paris," said one to +another, and +cards and addresses were exchanged. Then after a brief delay at +the +Custom House they separated, each to his own particular +destination; +and, as a general thing, none of them ever saw any of the others +again. +It is often thus with those who have been fellow voyagers at sea; +and it +is always a surprise and perplexity to inexperienced travellers +that it +can be so, and that those who have been so much to each other for +ten +days can melt away into space and disappear as though the brief +intimacy +had never existed.</p> + +<p>"Four-wheeler or hansom, ma'am?" said a porter to Mrs. +Ashe.</p> + +<p>"Which, Katy?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, let us have a hansom! I never saw one, and they look so +nice +in 'Punch.'"</p> + +<p>So a hansom cab was called, the two ladies got in, Amy cuddled +down +between them, the folding-doors were shut over their knees like +a +lap-robe, and away they drove up the solidly paved streets to the +hotel +where they were to pass the night. It was too late to see or do +anything +but enjoy the sense of being on firm land once more.</p> + +<p>"How lovely it will be to sleep in a bed that doesn't tip or +roll from +side to side!" said Mrs. Ashe.</p> + +<p>"Yes, and that is wide enough and long enough and soft enough +to be +comfortable!" replied Katy. "I feel as if I could sleep for a +fortnight +to make up for the bad nights at sea."</p> + +<p>Everything seemed delightful to her,—the space for +undressing, the +great tub of fresh water which stood beside the +English-looking +washstand with its ample basin and ewer, the chintz-curtained +bed, the +coolness, the silence,—and she closed her eyes with the +pleasant +thought in her mind, "It is really England and we are really +here!"</p> + + +<a name="c5" id="c5"></a> + +<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2> + + +<p class="cb">STORYBOOK ENGLAND.</p> + +<p>"Oh, is it raining?" was Katy's first question next morning, +when the +maid came to call her. The pretty room, with its gayly flowered +chintz, +and china, and its brass bedstead, did not look half so bright as +when +lit with gas the night before; and a dim gray light struggled in +at the +window, which in America would certainly have meant bad weather +coming +or already come.</p> + +<p>"Oh no, h'indeed, ma'am, it's a very fine day,—not bright, +ma'am, but +very dry," was the answer.</p> + +<p>Katy couldn't imagine what the maid meant, when she peeped +between the +curtains and saw a thick dull mist lying over everything, and +the +pavements opposite her window shining with wet. Afterwards, when +she +understood better the peculiarities of the English climate, she +too +learned to call days not absolutely rainy "fine," and to be +grateful for +them; but on that first morning her sensations were of +bewildered +surprise, almost vexation.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ashe and Amy were waiting in the coffee-room when she +went in +search of them.</p> + +<p>"What shall we have for breakfast," asked Mrs. Ashe,—"our +first meal in +England? Katy, you order it."</p> + +<p>"Let's have all the things we have read about in books and +don't have at +home," said Katy, eagerly. But when she came to look over the +bill of +fare there didn't seem to be many such things. Soles and muffins +she +finally decided upon, and, as an after-thought, gooseberry +jam.</p> + +<p>"Muffins sound so very good in Dickens, you know," she +explained to Mrs. +Ashe; "and I never saw a sole."</p> + +<p>The soles when they came proved to be nice little pan-fish, +not unlike +what in New England are called "scup." All the party took kindly +to +them; but the muffins were a great disappointment, tough and +tasteless, +with a flavor about them as of scorched flannel.</p> + +<p>"How queer and disagreeable they are!" said Katy. "I feel as +if I were +eating rounds cut from an old ironing-blanket and buttered! Dear +me! +what did Dickens mean by making such a fuss about them, I wonder? +And I +don't care for gooseberry jam, either; it isn't half as good as +the jams +we have at home. Books are very deceptive."</p> + +<p>"I am afraid they are. We must make up our minds to find a +great many +things not quite so nice as they sound when we read about them," +replied +Mrs. Ashe.</p> + +<p>Mabel was breakfasting with them, of course, and was heard to +remark at +this juncture that she didn't like muffins, either, and would a +great +deal rather have waffles; whereupon Amy reproved her, and +explained that +nobody in England knew what waffles were, they were such a +stupid +nation, and that Mabel must learn to eat whatever was given her +and not +find fault with it!</p> + +<p>After this moral lesson it was found to be dangerously near +train-time; +and they all hurried to the railroad station, which, fortunately, +was +close by. There was rather a scramble and confusion for a few +moments; +for Katy, who had undertaken to buy the tickets, was puzzled by +the +unaccustomed coinage; and Mrs. Ashe, whose part was to see after +the +luggage, found herself perplexed and worried by the absence of +checks, +and by no means disposed to accept the porter's statement, that +if she'd +only bear in mind that the trunks were in the second van from +the +engine, and get out to see that they were safe once or twice +during the +journey, and call for them as soon as they reached London, she'd +have no +trouble,—"please remember the porter, ma'am!" However all was +happily +settled at last; and without any serious inconveniences they +found +themselves established in a first-class carriage, and presently +after +running smoothly at full speed across the rich English midlands +toward +London and the eastern coast.</p> + +<p>The extreme greenness of the October landscape was what struck +them +first, and the wonderfully orderly and trim aspect of the +country, with +no ragged, stump-dotted fields or reaches of wild untended woods. +Late +in October as it was, the hedgerows and meadows were still +almost +summer-like in color, though the trees were leafless. The +delightful-looking old manor-houses and farm-houses, of which +they had +glimpses now and again, were a constant pleasure to Katy, with +their +mullioned windows, twisted chimney-stacks, porches of quaint +build, and +thick-growing ivy. She contrasted them with the uncompromising +ugliness +of farm-houses which she remembered at home, and wondered whether +it +could be that at the end of another thousand years or so, America +would +have picturesque buildings like these to show in addition to +her +picturesque scenery.</p> + +<p>Suddenly into the midst of these reflections there glanced a +picture so +vivid that it almost took away her breath, as the train steamed +past a +pack of hounds in full cry, followed by a galloping throng of +scarlet-coated huntsmen. One horse and rider were in the air, +going over +a wall. Another was just rising to the leap. A string of others, +headed +by a lady, were tearing across a meadow bounded by a little +brook, and +beyond that streamed the hounds following the invisible fox. It +was like +one of Muybridge's instantaneous photographs of "The Horse in +Motion," +for the moment that it lasted; and Katy put it away in her +memory, +distinct and brilliant, as she might a real picture.</p> + +<p>Their destination in London was Batt's Hotel in Dover Street. +The old +gentleman on the "Spartacus," who had "crossed" so many times, +had +furnished Mrs. Ashe with a number of addresses of hotels and +lodging-houses, from among which Katy had chosen Batt's for the +reason +that it was mentioned in Miss Edgeworth's "Patronage." "It was +the +place," she explained, "where Godfrey Percy didn't stay when +Lord +Oldborough sent him the letter." It seemed an odd enough reason +for +going anywhere that a person in a novel didn't stay there. But +Mrs. Ashe +knew nothing of London, and had no preference of her own; so she +was +perfectly willing to give Katy hers, and Batt's was decided +upon.</p> + +<p>"It is just like a dream or a story," said Katy, as they drove +away from +the London station in a four-wheeler. "It is really ourselves, +and this +is really London! Can you imagine it?"</p> + +<p>She looked out. Nothing met her eyes but dingy weather, muddy +streets, +long rows of ordinary brick or stone houses. It might very well +have +been New York or Boston on a foggy day, yet to her eyes all +things had a +subtle difference which made them unlike similar objects at +home.</p> + +<p>"Wimpole Street!" she cried suddenly, as she caught sight of +the name on +the corner; "that is the street where Maria Crawford in Mansfield +Park, +you know, 'opened one of the best houses' after she married +Mr. +Rushworth. Think of seeing Wimpole Street! What fun!" She looked +eagerly +out after the "best houses," but the whole street looked +uninteresting +and old-fashioned; the best house to be seen was not of a kind, +Katy +thought, to reconcile an ambitious young woman to a dull husband. +Katy +had to remind herself that Miss Austen wrote her novels nearly a +century +ago, that London was a "growing" place, and that things were +probably +much changed since that day.</p> + +<p>More "fun" awaited them when they arrived at Batt's, and +exactly such a +landlady sailed forth to welcome them as they had often met with +in +books,—an old landlady, smiling and rubicund, with a towering +lace cap +on her head, a flowered silk gown, a gold chain, and a pair of +fat +mittened hands demurely crossed over a black brocade apron. She +alone +would have been worth crossing the ocean to see, they all +declared. +Their telegram had been received, and rooms were ready, with a +bright, +smoky fire of soft coals; the dinner-table was set, and a nice, +formal, +white-cravated old waiter, who seemed to have stepped out of the +same +book with the landlady, was waiting to serve it. Everything was +dingy +and old-fashioned, but very clean and comfortable; and Katy +concluded +that on the whole Godfrey Percy would have done wisely to go to +Batt's, +and could have fared no better at the other hotel where he did +stay.</p> + +<p>The first of Katy's "London sights" came to her next morning +before she +was out of her bedroom. She heard a bell ring and a queer +squeaking +little voice utter a speech of which she could not make out a +single +word. Then came a laugh and a shout, as if several boys were +amused at +something or other; and altogether her curiosity was roused, so +that she +finished dressing as fast as she could, and ran to the +drawing-room +window which commanded a view of the street. Quite a little crowd +was +collected under the window, and in their midst was a queer box +raised +high on poles, with little red curtains tied back on either side +to form +a miniature stage, on which puppets were moving and vociferating. +Katy +knew in a moment that she was seeing her first Punch and +Judy!</p> + +<p>The box and the crowd began to move away. Katy in despair ran +to +Wilkins, the old waiter who was setting the breakfast-table.</p> + +<p>"Oh, please stop that man!" she said. "I want to see him."</p> + +<p>"What man is it, Miss?" said Wilkins.</p> + +<p>When he reached the window and realized what Katy meant, his +sense of +propriety seemed to receive a severe shock. He even ventured +on +remonstrance.</p> + +<p>"H'I wouldn't, Miss, h'if h'I was you. Them Punches are a low +lot, Miss; +they h'ought to be put down, really they h'ought. Gentlefolks, +h'as a +general thing, pays no h'attention to them."</p> + +<p>But Katy didn't care what "gentlefolks" did or did not do, and +insisted +upon having Punch called back. So Wilkins was forced to swallow +his +remonstrances and his dignity, and go in pursuit of the +objectionable +object. Amy came rushing out, with her hair flying and Mabel in +her +arms; and she and Katy had a real treat of Punch and Judy, with +all the +well-known scenes, and perhaps a few new ones thrown in for +their +especial behoof; for the showman seemed to be inspired by the +rapturous +enjoyment of his little audience of three at the first-floor +windows. +Punch beat Judy and stole the baby, and Judy banged Punch in +return, and +the constable came in and Punch outwitted him, and the hangman +and the +devil made their appearance duly; and it was all perfectly +satisfactory, +and "just exactly what she hoped it would be, and it quite made +up for +the muffins," Katy declared.</p> + +<p>Then, when Punch had gone away, the question arose as to what +they +should choose, out of the many delightful things in London, for +their +first morning.</p> + +<p>Like ninety-nine Americans out of a hundred, they decided on +Westminster +Abbey; and indeed there is nothing in England better worth +seeing, or +more impressive, in its dim, rich antiquity, to eyes fresh from +the +world which still calls itself "new." So to the Abbey they went, +and +lingered there till Mrs. Ashe declared herself to be absolutely +dropping +with fatigue.</p> + +<p>"If you don't take me home and give me something to eat," she +said, "I +shall drop down on one of these pedestals and stay there and +be +exhibited forever after as an 'h'effigy' of somebody belonging +to +ancient English history."</p> + +<p>So Katy tore herself away from Henry the Seventh and the +Poets' Corner, +and tore Amy away from a quaint little tomb shaped like a cradle, +with +the marble image of a baby in it, which had greatly taken her +fancy. She +could only be consoled by the promise that she should soon come +again +and stay as long as she liked. She reminded Katy of this promise +the +very next morning.</p> + +<p>"Mamma has waked up with rather a bad headache, and she thinks +she +will lie still and not come to breakfast," she reported. "And +she +sends her love, and says will you please have a cab and go where +you +like; and if I won't be a trouble, she would be glad if you would +take +me with you. And I won't be a trouble, Miss Katy, and I know +where I +wish you would go."</p> + +<p>"Where is that!"</p> + +<p>"To see that cunning little baby again that we saw yesterday. +I want to +show her to Mabel,—she didn't go with us, you know, and I don't +like to +have her mind not improved; and, darling Miss Katy, mayn't I buy +some +flowers and put them on the Baby? She's so dusty and so old that +I don't +believe anybody has put any flowers for her for ever so +long."</p> + +<p>Katy found this idea rather pretty, and willingly stopped at +Covent +Garden, where they bought a bunch of late roses for eighteen +pence, +which entirely satisfied Amy. With them in her hand, and Mabel in +her +arms, she led the way through the dim aisles of the Abbey, +through +grates and doors and up and down steps; the guide following, but +not at +all needed, for Amy seemed to have a perfectly clear recollection +of +every turn and winding. When the chapel was reached, she laid the +roses +on the tomb with gentle fingers, and a pitiful, reverent look in +her +gray eyes. Then she lifted Mabel up to kiss the odd little baby +effigy +above the marble quilt; whereupon the guide seemed altogether +surprised +out of his composure, and remarked to Katy,—</p> + +<p>"Little Miss is an h'American, as is plain to see; no +h'English child +would be likely to think of doing such a thing."</p> + +<p>"Do not English children take any interest in the tombs of the +Abbey?" +asked Katy.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, m'm,—h'interest; but they don't take no special +notice of one +tomb above h'another."</p> + +<p>Katy could scarcely keep from laughing, especially as she +heard Amy, who +had been listening to the conversation, give an audible sniff, +and +inform Mabel that she was glad <i>she</i> was not an English +child, who +didn't notice things and liked grown-up graves as much as she did +dear +little cunning ones like this!</p> + +<p>Later in the day, when Mrs. Ashe was better, they all drove +together to +the quaint old keep which has been the scene of so many +tragedies, and +is known as the Tower of London. Here they were shown various +rooms and +chapels and prisons; and among the rest the apartments where +Queen +Elizabeth, when a friendless young Princess, was shut up for many +months +by her sister, Queen Mary. Katy had read somewhere, and now told +Amy, +the pretty legend of the four little children who lived with +their +parents in the Tower, and used to play with the royal captive; +and how +one little boy brought her a key which he had picked up on the +ground, +and said, "Now you can go out when you will, lady;" and how the +Lords of +the Council, getting wind of it, sent for the children to +question them, +and frightened them and their friends almost to death, and +forbade them +to go near the Princess again.</p> + +<p>A story about children always brings the past much nearer to a +child, +and Amy's imagination was so excited by this tale, that when they +got to +the darksome closet which is said to have been the prison of Sir +Walter +Raleigh, she marched out of it with a pale and wrathful face.</p> + +<p>"If this is English history, I never mean to learn any more of +it, and +neither shall Mabel," she declared.</p> + +<p>But it is not possible for Amy or any one else not to learn a +great deal +of history simply by going about London. So many places are +associated +with people or events, and seeing the places makes one care so +much more +for the people or the events, that one insensibly questions and +wonders. +Katy, who had "browsed" all through her childhood in a good +old-fashioned library, had her memory stuffed with all manner of +little +scraps of information and literary allusions, which now came into +use. +It was like owning the disjointed bits of a puzzle, and +suddenly +discovering that properly put together they make a pattern. Mrs. +Ashe, +who had never been much of a reader, considered her young friend +a +prodigy of intelligence; but Katy herself realized how inadequate +and +inexact her knowledge was, and how many bits were missing from +the +pattern of her puzzle. She wished with all her heart, as every +one +wishes under such circumstances, that she had studied harder and +more +wisely while the chance was in her power. On a journey you cannot +read +to advantage. Remember that, dear girls, who are looking forward +to +travelling some day, and be industrious in time.</p> + +<p>October is not a favorable month in which to see England. +Water, water +is everywhere; you breathe it, you absorb it; it wets your +clothes and +it dampens your spirits. Mrs. Ashe's friends advised her not to +think of +Scotland at that time of the year. One by one their little +intended +excursions were given up. A single day and night in Oxford +and +Stratford-on-Avon; a short visit to the Isle of Wight, where, in +a +country-place which seemed provokingly pretty as far as they +could see +it for the rain, lived that friend of Mrs. Ashe who had married +an +Englishman and in so doing had, as Katy privately thought, +"renounced +the sun;" a peep at Stonehenge from under the shelter of an +umbrella, +and an hour or two in Salisbury Cathedral,—was all that they +accomplished, except a brief halt at Winchester, that Katy might +have +the privilege of seeing the grave of her beloved Miss Austen. +Katy had +come abroad with a terribly long list of graves to visit, Mrs. +Ashe +declared. They laid a few rain-washed flowers upon the tomb, +and +listened with edification to the verger, who inquired,—</p> + +<p>"Whatever was it, ma'am, that lady did which brings so many +h'Americans +to h'ask about her? Our h'English people don't seem to take the +same +h'interest."</p> + +<p>"She wrote such delightful stories," explained Katy; but the +old verger +shook his head.</p> + +<p>"I think h'it must be some other party, Miss, you've confused +with this +here. It stands to reason, Miss, that we'd have heard of 'em +h'over 'ere +in England sooner than you would h'over there in h'America, if +the books +'ad been h'anything so h'extraordinary."</p> + +<p>The night after their return to London they were dining for +the second +time with the cousins of whom Mrs. Ashe had spoken to Dr. Carr; +and as +it happened Katy sat next to a quaint elderly American, who had +lived +for twenty years in London and knew it much better than most +Londoners +do. This gentleman, Mr. Allen Beach, had a hobby for antiquities, +old +books especially, and passed half his time at the British Museum, +and +the other half in sales rooms and the old shops in Wardour +Street.</p> + +<p>Katy was lamenting over the bad weather which stood in the way +of +their plans.</p> + +<p>"It is so vexatious," she said. "Mrs. Ashe meant to go to York +and +Lincoln and all the cathedral towns and to Scotland; and we have +had to +give it all up because of the rains. We shall go away having seen +hardly +anything."</p> + +<p>"You can see London."</p> + +<p>"We have,—that is, we have seen the things that everybody +sees."</p> + +<p>"But there are so many things that people in general do not +see. How +much longer are you to stay, Miss Carr?"</p> + +<p>"A week, I believe."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you make out a list of old buildings which are +connected with +famous people in history, and visit them in turn? I did that the +second +year after I came. I gave up three months to it, and it was +most +interesting. I unearthed all manner of curious stories and +traditions."</p> + +<p>"Or," cried Katy, struck with a sudden bright thought, "why +mightn't +I put into the list some of the places I know about in +books,—novels +as well as history,—and the places where the people who wrote +the +books lived?"</p> + +<p>"You might do that, and it wouldn't be a bad idea, either," +said Mr. +Beach, pleased with her enthusiasm. "I will get a pencil after +dinner +and help you with your list if you will allow me."</p> + +<p>Mr. Beach was better than his word. He not only suggested +places and +traced a plan of sight-seeing, but on two different mornings he +went +with them himself; and his intelligent knowledge of London added +very +much to the interest of the excursions. Under his guidance the +little +party of four—for Mabel was never left out; it was <i>such</i> a +chance for +her to improve her mind, Amy declared—visited the Charter-House, +where +Thackeray went to school, and the Home of the Poor Brothers +connected +with it, in which Colonel Newcome answered "Adsum" to the +roll-call of +the angels. They took a look at the small house in Curzon Street, +which +is supposed to have been in Thackeray's mind when he described +the +residence of Becky Sharpe; and the other house in Russell Square +which +is unmistakably that where George Osborne courted Amelia Sedley. +They +went to service in the delightful old church of St. Mary in the +Temple, +and thought of Ivanhoe and Brian de Bois-Guilbert and Rebecca +the +Jewess. From there Mr. Beach took them to Lamb's Court, where +Pendennis +and George Warrington dwelt in chambers together; and to Brick +Court, +where Oliver Goldsmith passed so much of his life, and the little +rooms +in which Charles and Mary Lamb spent so many sadly happy years. +On +another day they drove to Whitefriars, for the sake of Lord +Glenvarloch +and the old privilege of Sanctuary in the "Fortunes of Nigel;" +and took +a peep at Bethnal Green, where the Blind Beggar and his "Pretty +Bessee" +lived, and at the old Prison of the Marshalsea, made interesting +by its +associations with "Little Dorrit." They also went to see Milton's +house +and St. Giles Church, in which he is buried; and stood a long +time +before St. James Palace, trying to make out which could have been +Miss +Burney's windows when she was dresser to Queen Charlotte of +bitter +memory. And they saw Paternoster Row and No. 5 Cheyne Walk, +sacred +forevermore to the memory of Thomas Carlyle, and Whitehall, where +Queen +Elizabeth lay in state and King Charles was beheaded, and the +state +rooms of Holland House; and by great good luck had a glimpse of +George +Eliot getting out of a cab. She stood for a moment while she gave +her +fare to the cabman, and Katy looked as one who might not look +again, and +carried away a distinct picture of the unbeautiful, +interesting, +remarkable face.</p> + +<p>With all this to see and to do, the last week sped all too +swiftly, and +the last day came before they were at all ready to leave what +Katy +called "Story-book England." Mrs. Ashe had decided to cross by +Newhaven +and Dieppe, because some one had told her of the beautiful old +town of +Rouen, and it seemed easy and convenient to take it on the way to +Paris. +Just landed from the long voyage across the Atlantic, the little +passage +of the Channel seemed nothing to our travellers, and they made +ready for +their night on the Dieppe steamer with the philosophy which is +born of +ignorance. They were speedily undeceived!</p> + +<p>The English Channel has a character of its own, which +distinguishes it +from other seas and straits. It seems made fractious and +difficult by +Nature, and set as on purpose to be barrier between two nations +who are +too unlike to easily understand each other, and are the safer +neighbors +for this wholesome difficulty of communication between them. The +"chop" +was worse than usual on the night when our travellers crossed; +the +steamer had to fight her way inch by inch. And oh, such a +little +steamer! and oh, such a long night!</p> + + +<a name="c6" id="c6"></a> + +<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2> + + +<p class="cb">ACROSS THE CHANNEL.</p> + +<p>Dawn had given place to day, and day was well advanced toward +noon, +before the stout little steamer gained her port. It was hours +after +the usual time for arrival; the train for Paris must long since +have +started, and Katy felt dejected and forlorn as, making her way +out of +the terrible ladies'-cabin, she crept on deck for her first +glimpse +of France.</p> + +<p>The sun was struggling through the fog with a watery smile, +and his +faint beams shone on a confusion of stone piers, higher than +the +vessel's deck, intersected with canal-like waterways, through +whose +intricate windings the steamer was slowly threading her course to +the +landing-place. Looking up, Katy could see crowds of people +assembled to +watch the boat come in,—workmen, peasants, women, children, +soldiers, +custom-house officers, moving to and fro,—and all this crowd +were +talking all at once and all were talking French!</p> + +<p>I don't know why this should have startled her as it did. She +knew, of +course, that people of different countries were liable to be +found +speaking their own languages; but somehow the spectacle of +the +chattering multitude, all seeming so perfectly at ease with +their +preterits and subjunctives and never once having to refer to +Ollendorf +or a dictionary, filled her with a sense of dismayed +surprise.</p> + +<p>"Good gracious!" she said to herself, "even the babies +understand it!" +She racked her brains to recall what she had once known of +French, but +very little seemed to have survived the horrors of the night!</p> + +<p>"Oh dear! what is the word for trunk-key?" she asked herself. +"They will +all begin to ask questions, and I shall not have a word to say; +and Mrs. +Ashe will be even worse off, I know." She saw the +red-trousered +custom-house officers pounce upon the passengers as they landed +one by +one, and she felt her heart sink within her.</p> + +<p>But after all, when the time came it did not prove so very +bad. Katy's +pleasant looks and courteous manner stood her in good stead. She +did not +trust herself to say much; but the officials seemed to +understand +without saying. They bowed and gestured, whisked the keys in and +out, +and in a surprisingly short time all was pronounced right, the +baggage +had "passed," and it and its owners were free to proceed to +the +railway-station, which fortunately was close at hand.</p> + +<p>Inquiry revealed the fact that no train for Paris left till +four in the +afternoon.</p> + +<p>"I am rather glad," declared poor Mrs. Ashe, "for I feel too +used up to +move. I will lie here on this sofa; and, Katy dear, please see if +there +is an eating-place, and get some breakfast for yourself and Amy, +and +send me a cup of tea."</p> + +<p>"I don't like to leave you alone," Katy was beginning; but at +that +moment a nice old woman who seemed to be in charge of the +waiting-room +appeared, and with a flood of French which none of them could +follow, +but which was evidently sympathetic in its nature, flew at Mrs. +Ashe and +began to make her comfortable. From a cupboard in the wall she +produced +a pillow, from another cupboard a blanket; in a trice she had one +under +Mrs. Ashe's head and the other wrapped round her feet.</p> + +<p>"Pauvre madame," she said, "si pâle! si souffrante! Il +faut avoir +quelque chose à boire et à manger tout de suite." +She trotted across the +room and into the restaurant which opened out of it, while Mrs. +Ashe +smiled at Katy and said, "You see you can leave me quite safely; +I am to +be taken care of." And Katy and Amy passed through the same door +into +the <i>buffet</i>, and sat down at a little table.</p> + +<p>It was a particularly pleasant-looking place to breakfast in. +There were +many windows with bright polished panes and very clean short +muslin +curtains, and on the window-sills stood rows of thrifty potted +plants in +full bloom,—marigolds, balsams, nasturtiums, and many +colored +geraniums. Two birds in cages were singing loudly; the floor was +waxed +to a glass-like polish; nothing could have been whiter than the +marble +of the tables except the napkins laid over them. And such a +good +breakfast as was presently brought to them,—delicious coffee +in +bowl-like cups, crisp rolls and rusks, an omelette with a +delicate +flavor of fine herbs, stewed chicken, little pats of freshly +churned +butter without salt, shaped like shells and tasting like +solidified +cream, and a pot of some sort of nice preserve. Amy made great +delighted +eyes at Katy, and remarking, "I think France is heaps nicer than +that +old England," began to eat with a will; and Katy herself felt +that if +this railroad meal was a specimen of what they had to expect in +the +future, they had indeed come to a land of plenty.</p> + +<p>Fortified with the satisfactory breakfast, she felt equal to a +walk; and +after they had made sure that Mrs. Ashe had all she needed, she +and Amy +(and Mabel) set off by themselves to see the sights of Dieppe. I +don't +know that travellers generally have considered Dieppe an +interesting +place, but Katy found it so. There was a really old church and +some +quaint buildings of the style of two centuries back, and even the +more +modern streets had a novel look to her unaccustomed eyes. At +first they +only ventured a timid turn or two, marking each corner, and going +back +now and then to reassure themselves by a look at the station; but +after +a while, growing bolder, Katy ventured to ask a question or two +in +French, and was surprised and charmed to find herself understood. +After +that she grew adventurous, and, no longer fearful of being lost, +led Amy +straight down a long street lined with shops, almost all of which +were +for the sale of articles in ivory.</p> + +<p>Ivory wares are one of the chief industries of Dieppe. There +were cases +full, windows full, counters full, of the most exquisite combs +and +brushes, some with elaborate monograms in silver and colors, +others +plain; there were boxes and caskets of every size and shape, +ornaments, +fans, parasol handles, looking-glasses, frames for pictures large +and +small, napkin-rings.</p> + +<p>Katy was particularly smitten with a paper-knife in the form +of an angel +with long slender wings raised over its head and meeting to form +a +point. Its price was twenty francs, and she was strongly tempted +to buy +it for Clover or Rose Red. But she said to herself sensibly, +"This is +the first shop I have been into and the first thing I have really +wanted +to buy, and very likely as we go on I shall see things I like +better and +want more, so it would be foolish to do it. No, I won't." And +she +resolutely turned her back on the ivory angel, and walked +away.</p> + +<p>The next turn brought them to a gay-looking little +market-place, where +old women in white caps were sitting on the ground beside baskets +and +panniers full of apples, pears, and various queer and curly +vegetables, +none of which Katy recognized as familiar; fish of all shapes and +colors +were flapping in shallow tubs of sea-water; there were piles +of +stockings, muffetees, and comforters in vivid blue and red +worsted, and +coarse pottery glazed in bright patterns. The faces of the women +were +brown and wrinkled; there were no pretty ones among them, but +their +black eyes were full of life and quickness, and their fingers one +and +all clicked with knitting-needles, as their tongues flew equally +fast in +the chatter and the chaffer, which went on without stop or stay, +though +customers did not seem to be many and sales were few.</p> + +<p>Returning to the station they found that Mrs. Ashe had been +asleep +during their absence, and seemed so much better that it was with +greatly +amended spirits that they took their places in the late afternoon +train +which was to set them down at Rouen. Katy said they were like the +Wise +Men of the East, "following a star," in their choice of a hotel; +for, +having no better advice, they had decided upon one of those +thus +distinguished in Baedeker's Guide-book.</p> + +<p>The star did not betray their confidence; for the Hôtel +de la Cloche, to +which it led them, proved to be quaint and old, and very pleasant +of +aspect. The lofty chambers, with their dimly frescoed ceilings, +and beds +curtained with faded patch, might to all appearances have been +furnished +about the time when "Columbus crossed the ocean blue;" but +everything +was clean, and had an air of old-time respectability. The +dining-room, +which was evidently of more modern build, opened into a square +courtyard +where oleanders and lemon trees in boxes stood round the basin of +a +little fountain, whose tinkle and plash blended agreeably with +the +rattle of the knives and forks. In one corner of the room was a +raised +and railed platform, where behind a desk sat the mistress of the +house, +busy with her account-books, but keeping an eye the while on all +that +went forward.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ashe walked past this personage without taking any notice +of her, +as Americans are wont to do under such circumstances; but +presently the +observant Katy noticed that every one else, as they went in or +out of +the room, addressed a bow or a civil remark to this lady. She +quite +blushed at the recollection afterward, as she made ready for +bed.</p> + +<p>"How rude we must have seemed!" she thought. "I am afraid the +people +here think that Americans have <i>awful</i> manners, everybody is +so polite. +They said 'Bon soir' and 'Merci' and 'Voulez-vous avoir la +bonté,' to +the waiters even! Well, there is one thing,—I am going to +reform. +To-morrow I will be as polite as anybody. They will think that I +am +miraculously improved by one night on French soil; but, never +mind! I am +going to do it."</p> + +<p>She kept her resolution, and astonished Mrs. Ashe next +morning, by +bowing to the dame on the platform in the most winning manner, +and +saying, "Bon jour, madame," as they went by.</p> + +<p>"But, Katy, who is that person? Why do you speak to her?"</p> + +<p>"Don't you see that they all do? She is the landlady, I think; +at all +events, everybody bows to her. And just notice how prettily these +ladies +at the next table speak to the waiter. They do not order him to +do +things as we do at home. I noticed it last night, and I liked it +so much +that I made a resolution to get up and be as polite as the +French +themselves this morning."</p> + +<p>So all the time that they went about the sumptuous old city, +rich in +carvings and sculptures and traditions, while they were looking +at the +Cathedral and the wonderful church of St. Ouen, and the Palace +of +Justice, and the "Place of the Maid," where poor Jeanne d'Arc was +burned +and her ashes scattered to the winds, Katy remembered her +manners, and +smiled and bowed, and used courteous prefixes in a soft pleasant +voice; +and as Mrs. Ashe and Amy fell in with her example more or less, I +think +the guides and coachmen and the old women who showed them over +the +buildings felt that the air of France was very civilizing indeed, +and +that these strangers from savage countries over the sea were in a +fair +way to be as well bred as if they had been born in a more favored +part +of the world!</p> + +<p>Paris looked very modern after the peculiar quaint richness +and air of +the Middle Ages which distinguish Rouen. Rooms had been engaged +for +Mrs. Ashe's party in a <i>pension</i> near the Arc +d'Étoile, and there they +drove immediately on arriving. The rooms were not in the +<i>pension</i> +itself, but in a house close by,—a sitting-room with six +mirrors, +three clocks, and a pinched little grate about a foot wide, a +dining-room just large enough for a table and four chairs, and +two +bedrooms. A maid called Amandine had been detailed to take charge +of +these rooms and serve their meals.</p> + +<p>Dampness, as Katy afterward wrote to Clover, was the first +impression +they received of "gay Paris." The tiny fire in the tiny grate had +only +just been lighted, and the walls and the sheets and even the +blankets +felt chilly and moist to the touch. They spent their first +evening in +hanging the bedclothes round the grate and piling on fuel; they +even set +the mattresses up on edge to warm and dry! It was not very +enlivening, +it must be confessed. Amy had taken a cold, Mrs. Ashe looked +worried, +and Katy thought of Burnet and the safety and comfort of home +with a +throb of longing.</p> + +<p>The days that ensued were not brilliant enough to remove +this +impression. The November fogs seemed to have followed them across +the +Channel, and Paris remained enveloped in a wet blanket which +dimmed and +hid its usually brilliant features. Going about in cabs with the +windows +drawn up, and now and then making a rush through the drip into +shops, +was not exactly delightful, but it seemed pretty much all that +they +could do. It was worse for Amy, whose cold kept her indoors and +denied +her even the relaxation of the cab. Mrs. Ashe had engaged a +well-recommended elderly English maid to come every morning and +take +care of Amy while they were out; and with this respectable +functionary, +whose ideas were of a rigidly British type and who did not speak +a word +of any language but her own, poor Amy was compelled to spend most +of her +time. Her only consolation was in persuading this serene +attendant to +take a part in the French lessons which she made a daily point of +giving +to Mabel out of her own little phrase-book.</p> + +<p>"Wilkins is getting on, I think," she told Katy one night. +"She says +'Biscuit glacé' quite nicely now. But I never will let her +look at the +book, though she always wants to; for if once she saw how the +words are +spelled, she would never in the world pronounce them right again. +They +look so very different, you know."</p> + +<p>Katy looked at Amy's pale little face and eager eyes with a +real +heartache. Her rapture when at the end of the long dull +afternoons her +mother returned to her was touching. Paris was very <i>triste</i> +to poor +Amy, with all her happy facility for amusing herself; and Katy +felt that +the sooner they got away from it the better it would be. So, in +spite of +the delight which her brief glimpses at the Louvre gave her, and +the fun +it was to go about with Mrs. Ashe and see her buy pretty things, +and the +real satisfaction she took in the one perfectly made walking-suit +to +which she had treated herself, she was glad when the final day +came, +when the belated dressmakers and artistes in jackets and wraps +had sent +home their last wares, and the trunks were packed. It had been +rather +the fault of circumstances than of Paris; but Katy had not +learned to +love the beautiful capital as most Americans do, and did not feel +at all +as if she wanted that her "reward of virtue" should be to go +there when +she died! There must be more interesting places for live people, +and +ghosts too, to be found on the map of Europe, she was sure.</p> + +<p>Next morning as they drove slowly down the Champs +Élysées, and +looked back for a last glimpse of the famous Arch, a bright +object +met their eyes, moving vaguely against the mist. It was the gay +red +wagon of the Bon Marché, carrying bundles home to the +dwellers of +some up-town street.</p> + +<p>Katy burst out laughing. "It is an emblem of Paris," she +said,—"of our +Paris, I mean. It has been all Bon Marché and fog!"</p> + +<p>"Miss Katy," interrupted Amy, "<i>do</i> you like Europe? For +my part, I was +never so disgusted with any place in my life!"</p> + +<p>"Poor little bird, her views of 'Europe' are rather dark just +now, and +no wonder," said her mother. "Never mind, darling, you shall +have +something pleasanter by and by if I can find it for you."</p> + +<p>"Burnet is a great deal pleasanter than Paris," pronounced +Amy, +decidedly. "It doesn't keep always raining there, and I can take +walks, +and I understand everything that people say."</p> + +<p>All that day they sped southward, and with every hour came a +change in +the aspect of their surroundings. Now they made brief stops in +large +busy towns which seemed humming with industry. Now they whirled +through +grape countries with miles of vineyards, where the brown leaves +still +hung on the vines. Then again came glimpses of old Roman +ruins, +amphitheatres, viaducts, fragments of wall or arch; or a sudden +chill +betokened their approach to mountains, where snowy peaks could be +seen +on the far horizon. And when the long night ended and day roused +them +from broken slumbers, behold, the world was made over! Autumn +had +vanished, and the summer, which they thought fled for good, had +taken +his place. Green woods waved about them, fresh leaves were +blowing in +the wind, roses and hollyhocks beckoned from white-walled +gardens; and +before they had done with exclaiming and rejoicing, the +Mediterranean +shot into view, intensely blue, with white fringes of foam, white +sails +blowing across, white gulls flying above it, and over all a sky +of the +same exquisite blue, whose clouds were white as the drifting +sails on +the water below, and they were at Marseilles.</p> + +<p>It was like a glimpse of Paradise to eyes fresh from autumnal +grays and +glooms, as they sped along the lovely coast, every curve and +turn +showing new combinations of sea and shore, olive-crowned cliff +and +shining mountain-peak. With every mile the blue became bluer, the +wind +softer, the feathery verdure more dense and summer-like. +Hyères and +Cannes and Antibes were passed, and then, as they rounded a long +point, +came the view of a sunshiny city lying on a sunlit shore; the +train +slackened its speed, and they knew that their journey's end was +come and +they were in Nice.</p> + +<p>The place seemed to laugh with gayety as they drove down the +Promenade +des Anglais and past the English garden, where the band was +playing +beneath the acacias and palm-trees. On one side was a line of +bright-windowed hotels and <i>pensions</i>, with balconies and +striped +awnings; on the other, the long reach of yellow sand-beach, where +ladies +were grouped on shawls and rugs, and children ran up and down in +the +sun, while beyond stretched the waveless sea. The December sun +felt as +warm as on a late June day at home, and had the same soft +caressing +touch. The pavements were thronged with groups of +leisurely-looking +people, all wearing an unmistakable holiday aspect; pretty girls +in +correct Parisian costumes walked demurely beside their mothers, +with +cavaliers in attendance; and among these young men appeared now +and +again the well-known uniform of the United States Navy.</p> + +<p>"I wonder," said Mrs. Ashe, struck by a sudden thought, "if by +any +chance our squadron is here." She asked the question the moment +they +entered the hotel; and the porter, who prided himself on +understanding +"zose Eenglesh," replied,—</p> + +<p>"Mais oui, Madame, ze Americaine fleet it is here; zat is, not +here, +but at Villefranche, just a leetle four mile away,—it is ze +same +zing exactly."</p> + +<p>"Katy, do you hear that?" cried Mrs. Ashe. "The frigates +<i>are</i> here, and +the 'Natchitoches' among them of course; and we shall have Ned to +go +about with us everywhere. It is a real piece of good luck for us. +Ladies +are at such a loss in a place like this with nobody to escort +them. I am +perfectly delighted."</p> + +<p>"So am I," said Katy. "I never saw a frigate, and I always +wanted to see +one. Do you suppose they will let us go on board of them?"</p> + +<p>"Why, of course they will." Then to the porter, "Give me a +sheet +of paper and an envelope, please.—I must let Ned know that I +am +here at once."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ashe wrote her note and despatched it before they went +upstairs to +take off their bonnets. She seemed to have a half-hope that some +bird of +the air might carry the news of her arrival to her brother, for +she kept +running to the window as if in expectation of seeing him. She was +too +restless to lie down or sleep, and after she and Katy had +lunched, +proposed that they should go out on the beach for a while.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps we may come across Ned," she remarked.</p> + +<p>They did not come across Ned, but there was no lack of +other +delightful objects to engage their attention. The sands were +smooth +and hard as a floor. Soft pink lights were beginning to tinge +the +western sky. To the north shone the peaks of the maritime Alps, +and +the same rosy glow caught them here and there, and warmed their +grays +and whites into color.</p> + +<p>"I wonder what that can be?" said Katy, indicating the rocky +point which +bounded the beach to the east, where stood a picturesque building +of +stone, with massive towers and steep pitches of roof. "It looks +half +like a house and half like a castle, but it is quite fascinating, +I +think. Do you suppose that people live there?"</p> + +<p>"We might ask," suggested Mrs. Ashe.</p> + +<p>Just then they came to a shallow river spanned by a bridge, +beside whose +pebbly bed stood a number of women who seemed to be washing +clothes by +the simple and primitive process of laying them in the water on +top of +the stones, and pounding them with a flat wooden paddle till they +were +white. Katy privately thought that the clothes stood a poor +chance of +lasting through these cleansing operations; but she did not say +so, and +made the inquiry which Mrs. Ashe had suggested, in her best +French.</p> + +<p>"Celle-là?" answered the old woman whom she had +addressed. "Mais c'est +la Pension Suisse."</p> + +<p>"A <i>pension</i>; why, that means a boarding-house," cried +Katy. "What fun +it must be to board there!"</p> + +<p>"Well, why shouldn't we board there!" said her friend. "You +know we +meant to look for rooms as soon as we were rested and had found +out a +little about the place. Let us walk on and see what the Pension +Suisse +is like. If the inside is as pleasant as the outside, we could +not do +better, I should think."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I do hope all the rooms are not already taken," said +Katy, who had +fallen in love at first sight with the Pension Suisse. She felt +quite +oppressed with anxiety as they rang the bell.</p> + +<p>The Pension Suisse proved to be quite as charming inside as +out. The +thick stone walls made deep sills and embrasures for the +casement +windows, which were furnished with red cushions to serve as seats +and +lounging-places. Every window seemed to command a view, for those +which +did not look toward the sea looked toward the mountains. The +house was +by no means full, either. Several sets of rooms were to be had; +and Katy +felt as if she had walked straight into the pages of a romance +When Mrs. +Ashe engaged for a month a delightful suite of three, a +sitting-room and +two sleeping-chambers, in a round tower, with a balcony +overhanging the +water, and a side window, from which a flight of steps led down +into a +little walled garden, nestled in among the masonry, where +tall +laurestinus and lemon trees grew, and orange and brown +wallflowers made +the air sweet. Her contentment knew no bounds.</p> + +<p>"I am so glad that I came," she told Mrs. Ashe. "I never +confessed it to +you before; but sometimes.—when we were sick at sea, you know, +and when +it would rain all the time, and after Amy caught that cold in +Paris—I +have almost wished, just for a minute or two at a time, that we +hadn't. +But now I wouldn't not have come for the world! This is +perfectly +delicious. I am glad, glad, glad we are here, and we are going to +have a +lovely time, I know."</p> + +<p>They were passing out of the rooms into the hall as she said +these +words, and two ladies who were walking up a cross passage turned +their +heads at the sound of her voice. To her great surprise Katy +recognized +Mrs. Page and Lilly.</p> + +<p>"Why, Cousin Olivia, is it you?" she cried, springing forward +with +the cordiality one naturally feels in seeing a familiar face in +a +foreign land.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Page seemed rather puzzled than cordial. She put up her +eyeglass +and did not seem to quite make out who Katy was.</p> + +<p>"It is Katy Carr, mamma," explained Lilly. "Well, Katy, this +<i>is</i> a +surprise! Who would have thought of meeting you in Nice!"</p> + +<p>There was a decided absence of rapture in Lilly's manner. She +was +prettier than ever, as Katy saw in a moment, and beautifully +dressed in +soft brown velvet, which exactly suited her complexion and +her +pale-colored wavy hair.</p> + +<p>"Katy Carr! why, so it is," admitted Mrs. Page. "It is a +surprise +indeed. We had no idea that you were abroad. What has brought you +so far +from Tunket,—Burnet, I mean? Who are you with?"</p> + +<p>"With my friend Mrs. Ashe," explained Katy, rather chilled by +this cool +reception.</p> + +<p>"Let me introduce you. Mrs. Ashe, these are my cousins Mrs. +Page and +Miss Page. Amy,—why where is Amy?"</p> + +<p>Amy had walked back to the door of the garden staircase, and +was +standing there looking down upon the flowers.</p> + +<p>Cousin Olivia bowed rather distantly. Her quick eye took in +the details +of Mrs. Ashe's travelling-dress and Katy's dark blue ulster.</p> + +<p>"Some countrified friend from that dreadful Western town where +they +live," she said to herself. "How foolish of Philip Carr to try to +send +his girls to Europe! He can't afford it, I know." Her voice was +rather +rigid as she inquired,—</p> + +<p>"And what brings you here?—to this house, I mean?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, we are coming to-morrow to stay; we have taken rooms for +a month," +explained Katy. "What a delicious-looking old place it is."</p> + +<p>"Have you?" said Lilly, in a voice which did not express any +particular +pleasure. "Why, we are staying here too."</p> + + +<a name="c7" id="c7"></a> + +<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2> + + +<p class="cb">THE PENSION SUISSE.</p> + +<p>"What do you suppose can have brought Katy Carr to Europe?" +inquired +Lilly, as she stood in the window watching the three figures walk +slowly +down the sands. "She is the last person I expected to turn up +here. I +supposed she was stuck in that horrid place—what is the name +of +it?—where they live, for the rest of her life."</p> + +<p>"I confess I am surprised at meeting her myself," rejoined +Mrs. Page. "I +had no idea that her father could afford so expensive a +journey."</p> + +<p>"And who is this woman that she has got along with her?"</p> + +<p>"I have no idea, I'm sure. Some Western friend, I +suppose."</p> + +<p>"Dear me, I wish they were going to some other house than +this," said +Lilly, discontentedly. "If they were at the Rivoir, for instance, +or one +of those places at the far end of the beach, we shouldn't need to +see +anything of them, or even know that they were in town! It's a +real +nuisance to have people spring upon you this way, people you +don't want +to meet; and when they happen to be relations it is all the +worse. Katy +will be hanging on us all the time, I'm afraid."</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear, there is no fear of that. A little repression on +our part +will prevent her from being any trouble, I'm quite certain. But +we +<i>must</i> treat her politely, you know, Lilly; her father is my +cousin."</p> + +<p>"That's the saddest part of it! Well, there's one thing, I +shall <i>not</i> +take her with me every time we go to the frigates," said +Lilly, +decisively. "I am not going to inflict a country cousin on +Lieutenant +Worthington, and spoil all my own fun beside. So I give you +fair +warning, mamma, and you must manage it somehow."</p> + +<p>"Certainly, dear, I will. It would be a great pity to have +your visit to +Nice spoiled in any way, with the squadron here too, and that +pleasant +Mr. Worthington so very attentive."</p> + +<p>Unconscious of these plans for her suppression, Katy walked +back to the +hotel in a mood of pensive pleasure. Europe at last promised to +be as +delightful as it had seemed when she only knew it from maps and +books, +and Nice so far appeared to her the most charming place in the +world.</p> + +<p>Somebody was waiting for them at the Hotel des Anglais,—a +tall, +bronzed, good-looking somebody in uniform, with pleasant brown +eyes +beaming from beneath a gold-banded cap; at the sight of whom Amy +rushed +forward with her long locks flying, and Mrs. Ashe uttered an +exclamation +of pleasure. It was Ned Worthington, Mrs. Ashe's only brother, +whom she +had not met for two years and a half; and you can easily imagine +how +glad she was to see him.</p> + +<p>"You got my note then?" she said after the first eager +greetings were +over and she had introduced him to Katy.</p> + +<p>"Note? No. Did you write me a note?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; to Villefranche."</p> + +<p>"To the ship? I shan't get that till tomorrow. No; finding out +that you +were here is just a bit of good fortune. I came over to call on +some +friends who are staying down the beach a little way, and dropping +in to +look over the list of arrivals, as I generally do, I saw your +names; and +the porter not being able to say which way you had gone, I waited +for +you to come in."</p> + +<p>"We have been looking at such a delightful old place, the +Pension +Suisse, and have taken rooms."</p> + +<p>"The Pension Suisse, eh? Why, that was where I was going to +call. I know +some people who are staying there. It seems a pleasant house; I'm +glad +you are going there, Polly. It's first-rate luck that the ships +happen +to be here just now. I can see you every day."</p> + +<p>"But, Ned, surely you are not leaving me so soon? Surely you +will stay +and dine with us?" urged his sister, as he took up his cap.</p> + +<p>"I wish I could, but I can't to-night, Polly. You see I had +engaged to +take some ladies out to drive, and they will expect me. I had no +idea +that you would be here, or I should have kept myself free," +apologetically. "Tomorrow I will come over early, and be at your +service +for whatever you like to do."</p> + +<p>"That's right, dear boy. We shall expect you." Then, the +moment he was +gone, "Now, Katy, isn't he nice?"</p> + +<p>"Very nice, I should think," said Katy, who had watched the +brief +interview with interest. "I like his face so much, and how fond +he +is of you!"</p> + +<p>"Dear fellow! so he is. I am seven years older than he, but we +have +always been intimate. Brothers and sisters are not always +intimate, you +know,—or perhaps you don't know, for all of yours are."</p> + +<p>"Yes, indeed," said Katy, with a happy smile. "There is nobody +like +Clover and Elsie, except perhaps Johnnie and Dorry and Phil," she +added +with a laugh.</p> + +<p>The remove to the Pension Suisse was made early the next +morning. Mrs. +Page and Lilly did not appear to welcome them. Katy rather +rejoiced in +their absence, for she wanted the chance to get into order +without +interruptions.</p> + +<p>There was something comfortable in the thought that they were +to stay a +whole month in these new quarters; for so long a time, it seemed +worth +while to make them pretty and homelike. So, while Mrs. Ashe +unpacked her +own belongings and Amy's, Katy, who had a natural turn for +arranging +rooms, took possession of the little parlor, pulled the furniture +into +new positions, laid out portfolios and work-cases and their few +books, +pinned various photographs which they had bought in Oxford and +London on +the walls, and tied back the curtains to admit the sunshine. Then +she +paid a visit to the little garden, and came back with a long +branch of +laurestinus, which she trained across the mantelpiece, and a +bunch of +wallflowers for their one little vase. The maid, by her orders, +laid a +fire of wood and pine cones ready for lighting; and when all was +done +she called Mrs. Ashe to pronounce upon the effect.</p> + +<p>"It is lovely," she said, sinking into a great velvet +arm-chair which +Katy had drawn close to the seaward window. "I haven't seen +anything so +pleasant since we left home. You are a witch, Katy, and the +comfort of +my life. I am so glad I brought you! Now, pray go and unpack your +own +things, and make yourself look nice for the second breakfast. We +have +been a shabby set enough since we arrived. I saw those cousins of +yours +looking askance at our old travelling-dresses yesterday. Let us +try to +make a more respectable impression to-day."</p> + +<p>So they went down to breakfast, Mrs. Ashe in one of her new +Paris gowns, +Katy in a pretty dress of olive serge, and Amy all smiles and +ruffled +pinafore, walking hand in hand with her uncle Ned, who had just +arrived +and whose great ally she was; and Mrs. Page and Lilly, who were +already +seated at table, had much ado to conceal their somewhat +unflattering +surprise at the conjunction. For one moment Lilly's eyes opened +into a +wide stare of incredulous astonishment; then she remembered +herself, +nodded as pleasantly as she could to Mrs. Ashe and Katy, and +favored +Lieutenant Worthington with a pretty blushing smile as he went +by, while +she murmured,—</p> + +<p>"Mamma, do you see that? What does it mean?"</p> + +<p>"Why, Ned, do you know those people?" asked Mrs. Ashe at the +same +moment.</p> + +<p>"Do <i>you</i> know them!"</p> + +<p>"Yes; we met yesterday. They are connections of my friend Miss +Carr."</p> + +<p>"Really? There is not the least family likeness between them." +And Mr. +Worthington's eyes travelled deliberately from Lilly's delicate, +golden +prettiness to Katy, who, truth to say, did not shine by the +contrast.</p> + +<p>"She has a nice, sensible sort of face," he thought, "and she +looks like +a lady, but for beauty there is no comparison between the two." +Then he +turned to listen to his sister as she replied,—</p> + +<p>"No, indeed, not the least; no two girls could be less like." +Mrs. Ashe +had made the same comparison, but with quite a different result. +Katy's +face was grown dear to her, and she had not taken the smallest +fancy to +Lilly Page.</p> + +<p>Her relationship to the young naval officer, however, made a +wonderful +difference in the attitude of Mrs. Page and Lilly toward the +party. Katy +became a person to be cultivated rather than repressed, and +thenceforward there was no lack of cordiality on their part.</p> + +<p>"I want to come in and have a good talk," said Lilly, slipping +her arm +through Katy's as they left the dining-room. "Mayn't I come now +while +mamma is calling on Mrs. Ashe?" This arrangement brought her to +the side +of Lieutenant Worthington, and she walked between him and Katy +down the +hall and into the little drawing-room.</p> + +<p>"Oh, how perfectly charming! You have been fixing up ever +since you +came, haven't you? It looks like home. I wish we had a +<i>salon</i>, but +mamma thought it wasn't worth while, as we were only to be here +such a +little time. What a delicious balcony over the water, too! May I +go out +on it? Oh, Mr. Worthington, do see this!"</p> + +<p>She pushed open the half-closed window and stepped out as she +spoke. Mr. +Worthington, after hesitating a moment, followed. Katy paused +uncertain. +There was hardly room for three in the balcony, yet she did not +quite +like to leave them. But Lilly had turned her back, and was +talking in a +low tone; it was nothing more in reality than the lightest +chit-chat, +but it had the air of being something confidential; so Katy, +after +waiting a little while, retreated to the sofa, and took up her +work, +joining now and then in the conversation which Mrs. Ashe was +keeping up +with Cousin Olivia. She did not mind Lilly's ill-breeding, nor +was she +surprised at it. Mrs. Ashe was less tolerant.</p> + +<p>"Isn't it rather damp out there, Ned?" she called to her +brother; "you +had better throw my shawl round Miss Page's shoulders."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it isn't a bit damp," said Lilly, recalled to herself by +this broad +hint. "Thank you so much for thinking of it, Mrs. Ashe, but I am +just +coming in." She seated herself beside Katy, and began to question +her +rather languidly.</p> + +<p>"When did you leave home, and how were they all when you came +away?"</p> + +<p>"All well, thank you. We sailed from Boston on the 14th of +October; and +before that I spent two days with Rose Red,—you remember her? +She is +married now, and has the dearest little home and such a darling +baby."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I heard of her marriage. It didn't seem much of a match +for Mr. +Redding's daughter to make, did it? I never supposed she would +be +satisfied with anything less than a member of Congress or a +Secretary of +Legation."</p> + +<p>"Rose isn't particularly ambitious, I think, and she seems +perfectly +happy," replied Katy, flushing.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you needn't fire up in her defence; you and Clover always +did adore +Rose Red, I know, but I never could see what there was about her +that +was so wonderfully fascinating. She never had the least style, +and she +was always just as rude to me as she could be."</p> + +<p>"You were not intimate at school, but I am sure Rose was never +rude," +said Katy, with spirit.</p> + +<p>"Well, we won't fight about her at this late day. Tell me +where you have +been, and where you are going, and how long you are to stay in +Europe."</p> + +<p>Katy, glad to change the subject, complied, and the +conversation +diverged into comparison of plans and experiences. Lilly had been +in +Europe nearly a year, and had seen "almost everything," as she +phrased +it. She and her mother had spent the previous winter in Italy, +had taken +a run into Russia, "done" Switzerland and the Tyrol thoroughly, +and +France and Germany, and were soon going into Spain, and from +there to +Paris, to shop in preparation for their return home in the +spring.</p> + +<p>"Of course we shall want quantities of things," she said. "No +one will +believe that we have been abroad unless we bring home a lot of +clothes. +The <i>lingerie</i> and all that is ordered already; but the +dresses must be +made at the last moment, and we shall have a horrid time of it, +I +suppose. Worth has promised to make me two walking-suits and +two +ball-dresses, but he's very bad about keeping his word. Did you +do much +when you were in Paris, Katy?"</p> + +<p>"We went to the Louvre three times, and to Versailles and St. +Cloud," +said Katy, wilfully misunderstanding her.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I didn't mean that kind of stupid thing; I meant gowns. +What +did you buy?"</p> + +<p>"One tailor-made suit of dark blue cloth."</p> + +<p>"My! what moderation!"</p> + +<p>Shopping played a large part in Lilly's reminiscences. She +recollected +places, not from their situation or beauty or historical +associations, +or because of the works of art which they contained, but as the +places +where she bought this or that.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that dear Piazza di Spagna!" she would say; "that was +where I +found my rococo necklace, the loveliest thing you ever saw, +Katy." Or, +"Prague—oh yes, mother got the most enchanting old silver +chatelaine +there, with all kinds of things hanging to it,—needlecases and +watches +and scent-bottles, all solid, and so beautifully chased." Or +again, +"Berlin was horrid, we thought; but the amber is better and +cheaper +than anywhere else,—great strings of beads, of the largest size +and +that beautiful pale yellow, for a hundred francs. You must get +yourself +one, Katy."</p> + +<p>Poor Lilly! Europe to her was all "things." She had collected +trunks +full of objects to carry home, but of the other collections which +do not +go into trunks, she had little or none. Her mind was as empty, +her heart +as untouched as ever; the beauty and the glory and the pathos of +art and +history and Nature had been poured out in vain before her closed +and +indifferent eyes.</p> + +<p>Life soon dropped into a peaceful routine at the Pension +Suisse, which +was at the same time restful and stimulating. Katy's first act in +the +morning, as soon as she opened her eyes, was to hurry to the +window in +hopes of getting a glimpse of Corsica. She had discovered that +this +elusive island could almost always be seen from Nice at the +dawning, but +that as soon as the sun was fairly up, it vanished to appear no +more for +the rest of the day. There was something fascinating to her +imagination +in the hovering mountain outline between sea and sky. She felt as +if she +were under an engagement to be there to meet it, and she rarely +missed +the appointment. Then, after Corsica had pulled the bright mists +over +its face and melted from view, she would hurry with her dressing, +and as +soon as was practicable set to work to make the <i>salon</i> look +bright +before the coffee and rolls should appear, a little after eight +o'clock. +Mrs. Ashe always found the fire lit, the little meal cosily set +out +beside it, and Katy's happy untroubled face to welcome her when +she +emerged from her room; and the cheer of these morning repasts +made a +good beginning for the day.</p> + +<p>Then came walking and a French lesson, and a long sitting on +the beach, +while Katy worked at her home letters and Amy raced up and down +in the +sun; and then toward noon Lieutenant Ned generally appeared, and +some +scheme of pleasure was set on foot. Mrs. Ashe ignored his +evident +<i>penchant</i> for Lilly Page, and claimed his time and +attentions as hers +by right. Young Worthington was a good deal "taken" with the +pretty +Lilly; still, he had an old-time devotion for his sister and the +habit +of doing what she desired, and he yielded to her behests with no +audible +objections. He made a fourth in the carriage while they drove +over the +lovely hills which encircle Nice toward the north, to Cimiers and +the +Val de St. André, or down the coast toward Ventimiglia. He +went with +them to Monte-Carlo and Mentone, and was their escort again and +again +when they visited the great war-ships as they lay at anchor in a +bay +which in its translucent blue was like an enormous sapphire.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Page and her daughter were included in these parties more +than +once; but there was something in Mrs. Ashe's cool appropriation +of her +brother which was infinitely vexatious to Lilly, who before +her +arrival had rather looked upon Lieutenant Worthington as her +own +especial property.</p> + +<p>"I wish <i>that</i> Mrs. Ashe had stayed at home," she told +her mother. "She +quite spoils everything. Mr. Worthington isn't half so nice as he +was +before she came. I do believe she has a plan for making him fall +in love +with Katy; but there she makes a miss of it, for he doesn't seem +to care +anything about her."</p> + +<p>"Katy is a nice girl enough," pronounced her mother, "but not +of the +sort to attract a gay young man, I should fancy. I don't believe +<i>she</i> +is thinking of any such thing. You needn't be afraid, Lilly."</p> + +<p>"I'm not afraid," said Lilly, with a pout; "only it's so +provoking."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Page was quite right. Katy was not thinking of any such +thing. She +liked Ned Worthington's frank manners; she owned, quite honestly, +that +she thought him handsome, and she particularly admired the sort +of +deferential affection which he showed to Mrs. Ashe, and his nice +ways +with Amy. For herself, she was aware that he scarcely noticed her +except +as politeness demanded that he should be civil to his sister's +friend; +but the knowledge did not trouble her particularly. Her head was +full of +interesting things, plans, ideas. She was not accustomed to being +made +the object of admiration, and experienced none of the vexations +of a +neglected belle. If Lieutenant Worthington happened to talk to +her, she +responded frankly and freely; if he did not, she occupied herself +with +something else; in either case she was quite unembarrassed both +in +feeling and manner, and had none of the awkwardness which comes +from +disappointed vanity and baffled expectations, and the need +for +concealing them.</p> + +<p>Toward the close of December the officers of the flag-ship +gave a ball, +which was the great event of the season to the gay world of +Nice. +Americans were naturally in the ascendant on an American frigate; +and of +all the American girls present, Lilly Page was unquestionably +the +prettiest. Exquisitely dressed in white lace, with bands of +turquoises +on her neck and arms and in her hair, she had more partners than +she +knew what to do with, more bouquets than she could well carry, +and +compliments enough to turn any girl's head. Thrown off her guard +by her +triumphs, she indulged a little vindictive feeling which had +been +growing in her mind of late on account of what she chose to +consider +certain derelictions of duty on the part of Lieutenant +Worthington, and +treated him to a taste of neglect. She was engaged three deep +when he +asked her to dance; she did not hear when he invited her to walk; +she +turned a cold shoulder when he tried to talk, and seemed absorbed +by the +other cavaliers, naval and otherwise, who crowded about her.</p> + +<p>Piqued and surprised, Ned Worthington turned to Katy. She did +not dance, +saying frankly that she did not know how and was too tall; and +she was +rather simply dressed in a pearl-gray silk, which had been her +best gown +the winter before in Burnet, with a bunch of red roses in the +white lace +of the tucker, and another in her hand, both the gifts of little +Amy; +but she looked pleasant and serene, and there was something about +her +which somehow soothed his disturbed mind, as he offered her his +arm for +a walk on the decks.</p> + +<p>For a while they said little, and Katy was quite content to +pace up and +down in silence, enjoying the really beautiful scene,—the +moonlight on +the Bay, the deep wavering reflections of the dark hulls and +slender +spars, the fairy effect of the colored lamps and lanterns, and +the +brilliant moving maze of the dancers.</p> + +<p>"Do you care for this sort of thing?" he suddenly asked.</p> + +<p>"What sort of thing do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, all this jigging and waltzing and amusement."</p> + +<p>"I don't know how to 'jig,' but it's delightful to look on," +she +answered merrily. "I never saw anything so pretty in my +life."</p> + +<p>The happy tone of her voice and the unruffled face which she +turned upon +him quieted his irritation.</p> + +<p>"I really believe you mean it," he said; "and yet, if you +won't think me +rude to say so, most girls would consider the thing dull enough +if they +were only getting out of it what you are,—if they were not +dancing, I +mean, and nobody in particular was trying to entertain them."</p> + +<p>"But everything <i>is</i> being done to entertain me," cried +Katy. "I can't +imagine what makes you think that it could seem dull. I am in it +all, +don't you see,—I have my share—. Oh, I am stupid, I can't make +you +understand."</p> + +<p>"Yes, you do. I understand perfectly, I think; only it is such +a +different point of view from what girls in general would take." +(By +girls he meant Lilly!) "Please do not think me uncivil."</p> + +<p>"You are not uncivil at all; but don't let us talk any more +about me. +Look at the lights between the shadows of the masts on the water. +How +they quiver! I never saw anything so beautiful, I think. And how +warm it +is! I can't believe that we are in December and that it is +nearly +Christmas."</p> + +<p>"How is Polly going to celebrate her Christmas? Have you +decided?"</p> + +<p>"Amy is to have a Christmas-tree for her dolls, and two other +dolls are +coming. We went out this morning to buy things for it,—tiny +little toys +and candles fit for Lilliput. And that reminds me, do you suppose +one +can get any Christmas greens here?"</p> + +<p>"Why not? The place seems full of green."</p> + +<p>"That's just it; the summer look makes it unnatural. But I +should like +some to dress the parlor with if they could be had."</p> + +<p>"I'll see what I can find, and send you a load."</p> + +<p>I don't know why this very simple little talk should have made +an +impression on Lieutenant Worthington's mind, but somehow he did +not +forget it.</p> + +<p>"'Don't let us talk any more about me,'" he said to himself +that night +when alone in his cabin. "I wonder how long it would be before +the other +one did anything to divert the talk from herself. Some time, I +fancy." +He smiled rather grimly as he unbuckled his sword-belt. It is +unlucky +for a girl when she starts a train of reflection like this. +Lilly's +little attempt to pique her admirer had somehow missed its +mark.</p> + +<p>The next afternoon Katy in her favorite place on the beach was +at work +on the long weekly letter which she never failed to send home to +Burnet. +She held her portfolio in her lap, and her pen ran rapidly over +the +paper, as rapidly almost as her tongue would have run could +her +correspondents have been brought nearer.</p> + +<p> "Nice, December 22.</p> + +<p> "Dear Papa and everybody,—Amy and I are sitting on my old +purple + cloak, which is spread over the sand just where it was spread +the + last time I wrote you. We are playing the following game: I +am a + fairy and she is a little girl. Another fairy—not sitting on +the + cloak at present—has enchanted the little girl, and I am +telling + her various ways by which she can work out her deliverance. +At + present the task is to find twenty-four dull red pebbles of +the same + color, failing to do which she is to be changed into an owl. +When we + began to play, I was the wicked fairy; but Amy objected to +that + because I am 'so nice,' so we changed the characters. I wish +you + could see the glee in her pretty gray eyes over this +infantile game, + into which she has thrown herself so thoroughly that she +half + believes in it. 'But I needn't really be changed into an owl! +'she + says, with a good deal of anxiety in her voice.</p> + +<p> "To think that you are shivering in the first snow-storm, +or sending + the children out with their sleds and india-rubbers to slide! +How I + wish instead that you were sharing the purple cloak with Amy +and me, + and could sit all this warm balmy afternoon close to the +surf-line + which fringes this bluest of blue seas! There is plenty of +room for + you all. Not many people come down to this end of the beach, +and if + you were very good we would let you play.</p> + +<p> "Our life here goes on as delightfully as ever. Nice is +very full of + people, and there seem to be some pleasant ones among them. +Here at + the Pension Suisse we do not see a great many Americans. +The + fellow-boarders are principally Germans and Austrians with +a + sprinkling of French. (Amy has found her twenty-four red +pebbles, so + she is let off from being an owl. She is now engaged in +throwing + them one by one into the sea. Each must hit the water under +penalty + of her being turned into a Muscovy duck. She doesn't know +exactly + what a Muscovy duck is, which makes her all the more +particular + about her shots.) But, as I was saying, our little +<i>suite</i> in the + round tower is so on one side of the rest of the Pension that +it is + as good as having a house of our own. The <i>salon</i> is +very bright and + sunny; we have two sofas and a square table and a round table +and a + sort of what-not and two easy-chairs and two uneasy chairs +and a + lamp of our own and a clock. There is also a sofa-pillow. +There's + richness for you! We have pinned up all our photographs on +the + walls, including Papa's and Clovy's and that bad one of Phil +and + Johnnie making faces at each other, and three lovely red and +yellow + Japanese pictures on muslin which Rose Red put in my trunk +the last + thing, for a spot of color. There are some autumn leaves too; +and we + always have flowers and in the mornings and evenings a +fire.</p> + +<p> "Amy is now finding fifty snow-white pebbles, which when +found are + to be interred in one common grave among the shingle. If she +fails + to do this, she is to be changed to an electrical eel. The +chief + difficulty is that she loses her heart to particular pebbles. +'I + can't bury you,' I hear her saying.</p> + +<p> "To return,—we have jolly little breakfasts together in +the + <i>salon</i>. They consist of coffee and rolls, and are +served by a + droll, snappish little <i>garçon</i> with no teeth, +and an Italian-French + patois which is very hard to understand when he sputters. He +told me + the other day that he had been a <i>garçon</i> for +forty-six years, which + seemed rather a long boyhood.</p> + +<p> "The company, as we meet them at table, are rather +entertaining. + Cousin Olivia and Lilly are on their best behavior to me +because I + am travelling with Mrs. Ashe, and Mrs. Ashe is Lieutenant + Worthington's sister, and Lieutenant Worthington is Lilly's +admirer, + and they like him very much. In fact, Lilly has intimated + confidentially that she is all but engaged to him; but I am +not sure + about it, or if that was what she meant; and I fear, if it +proves + true, that dear Polly will not like it at all. She is +quite + unmanageable, and snubs Lilly continually in a polite way, +which + makes me fidgety for fear Lilly will be offended, but she +never + seems to notice it. Cousin Olivia looks very handsome and +gorgeous. + She quite takes the color out of the little Russian Countess +who + sits next to her, and who is as dowdy and meek as if she came +from + Akron or Binghampton, or any other place where countesses +are + unknown. Then there are two charming, well-bred young +Austrians. The + one who sits nearest to me is a 'Candidat' for a Doctorate of +Laws, + and speaks eight languages well. He has only studied English +for the + past six weeks, but has made wonderful progress. I wish my +French + were half as good as his English is already.</p> + +<p> "There is a very gossiping young woman on the story +beneath ours, + whom I meet sometimes in the garden, and from her I hear all +manner + of romantic tales about people in the house. One little +French girl + is dying of consumption and a broken heart, because of a +quarrel + with her lover, who is a courier; and the <i>padrona</i>, who +is young + and pretty, and has only been married a few months to our +elderly + landlord, has a story also. I forget some of the details; but +there + was a stern parent and an admirer, and a cup of cold poison, +and now + she says she wishes she were dying of consumption like +poor + Alphonsine. For all that, she looks quite fat and rosy, and I +often + see her in her best gown with a great deal of Roman scarf and +mosaic + jewelry, stationed in the doorway, 'making the Pension +look + attractive to the passers-by.' So she has a sense of duty, +though + she is unhappy.</p> + +<p> "Amy has buried all her pebbles, and says she is tired of +playing + fairy. She is now sitting with her head on my shoulder, +and + professedly studying her French verb for to-morrow, but in +reality, + I am sorry to say, she is conversing with me about +be-headings,—a + subject which, since her visit to the Tower, has exercised +a + horrible fascination over her mind. 'Do people die right +away?' she + asks. 'Don't they feel one minute, and doesn't it feel +awfully?' + There is a good deal of blood, she supposes, because there +was so + much straw laid about the block in the picture of Lady Jane +Gray's + execution, which enlivened our walls in Paris. On the whole, +I am + rather glad that a fat little white dog has come waddling +down the + beach and taken off her attention.</p> + +<p> "Speaking of Paris seems to renew the sense of fog which +we had + there. Oh, how enchanting sunshine is after weeks of gloom! I +shall + never forget how the Mediterranean looked when we saw it +first,—all + blue, and such a lovely color. There ought, according to +Morse's + Atlas, to have been a big red letter T on the water about +where we + were, but I didn't see any. Perhaps they letter it so far out +from + shore that only people in boats notice it.</p> + +<p> "Now the dusk is fading, and the odd chill which hides +under these + warm afternoons begins to be felt. Amy has received a +message + written on a mysterious white pebble to the effect—"</p> + +<p>Katy was interrupted at this point by a crunching step on the +gravel +behind her.</p> + +<p>"Good afternoon," said a voice. "Polly has sent me to fetch +you and Amy +in. She says it is growing cool."</p> + +<p>"We were just coming," said Katy, beginning to put away her +papers.</p> + +<p>Ned Worthington sat down on the cloak beside her. The distance +was now +steel gray against the sky; then came a stripe of violet, and +then a +broad sheet of the vivid iridescent blue which one sees on the +necks of +peacocks, which again melted into the long line of flashing +surf.</p> + +<p>"See that gull," he said, "how it drops plumb into the sea, as +if bound +to go through to China!"</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Hawthorne calls skylarks 'little raptures,'" replied +Katy. +"Sea-gulls seem to me like grown-up raptures."</p> + +<p>"Are you going?" said Lieutenant Worthington in a tone of +surprise, +as she rose.</p> + +<p>"Didn't you say that Polly wanted us to come in?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes; but it seems too good to leave, doesn't it? Oh, by +the way, +Miss Carr, I came across a man to-day and ordered your greens. +They will +be sent on Christmas Eve. Is that right?"</p> + +<p>"Quite right, and we are ever so much obliged to you." She +turned for a +last look at the sea, and, unseen by Ned Worthington, formed her +lips +into a "good-night." Katy had made great friends with the +Mediterranean.</p> + +<p>The promised "greens" appeared on the afternoon before +Christmas Day, in +the shape of an enormous fagot of laurel and laurestinus and +holly and +box; orange and lemon boughs with ripe fruit hanging from them, +thick +ivy tendrils whole yards long, arbutus, pepper tree, and great +branches +of acacia, covered with feathery yellow bloom. The man apologized +for +bringing so little. The gentleman had ordered two francs worth, +he said, +but this was all he could carry; he would fetch some more if the +young +lady wished! But Katy, exclaiming with delight over her wealth, +wished +no more; so the man departed, and the three friends proceeded to +turn +the little <i>salon</i> into a fairy bower. Every photograph and +picture was +wreathed in ivy, long garlands hung on either side the windows, +and the +chimney-piece and door-frames became clustering banks of leaf +and +blossom. A great box of flowers had come with the greens, and +bowls of +fresh roses and heliotrope and carnations were set everywhere; +violets +and primroses, gold-hearted brown auriculas, spikes of veronica, +all the +zones and all the seasons, combining to make the Christmas-tide +sweet, +and to turn winter topsy-turvy in the little parlor.</p> + +<p>Mabel and Mary Matilda, with their two doll visitors, sat +gravely round +the table, in the laps of their little mistresses; and Katy, +putting on +an apron and an improvised cap, and speaking Irish very fast, +served +them with a repast of rolls and cocoa, raspberry jam, and +delicious +little almond cakes. The fun waxed fast and furious; and +Lieutenant +Worthington, coming in with his hands full of parcels for the +Christmas-tree, was just in time to hear Katy remark in a strong +County +Kerry brogue,—</p> + +<p>"Och, thin indade, Miss Amy, and it's no more cake you'll be +getting out +of me the night. That's four pieces you've ate, and it's little +slape +your poor mother'll git with you a tossin' and tumblin' forenenst +her +all night long because of your big appetite."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Miss Katy, talk Irish some more!" cried the delighted +children.</p> + +<p>"Is it Irish you'd be afther having me talk, when it's me own +langwidge, +and sorrow a bit of another do I know?" demanded Katy. Then she +caught +sight of the new arrival and stopped short with a blush and a +laugh.</p> + +<p>"Come in, Mr. Worthington," she said; "we're at supper, as you +see, and +I am acting as waitress."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Uncle Ned, please go away," pleaded Amy, "or Katy will be +polite, +and not talk Irish any more."</p> + +<p>"Indade, and the less ye say about politeness the betther, +when ye're +afther ordering the jantleman out of the room in that fashion!" +said the +waitress. Then she pulled off her cap and untied her apron.</p> + +<p>"Now for the Christmas-tree," she said.</p> + +<p>It was a very little tree, but it bore some remarkable fruits; +for in +addition to the "tiny toys and candles fit for Lilliput," +various +parcels were found to have been hastily added at the last moment +for +various people. The "Natchitoches" had lately come from the +Levant, and +delightful Oriental confections now appeared for Amy and Mrs. +Ashe; +Turkish slippers, all gold embroidery; towels, with richly +decorated +ends in silks and tinsel;—all the pretty superfluities which the +East +holds out to charm gold from the pockets of her Western visitors. +A +pretty little dagger in agate and silver fell to Katy's share out +of +what Lieutenant Worthington called his "loot;" and beside, a +most +beautiful specimen of the inlaid work for which Nice is +famous,—a +looking-glass, with a stand and little doors to close it +in,—which was +a present from Mrs. Ashe. It was quite unlike a Christmas Eve at +home, +but altogether delightful; and as Katy sat next morning on the +sand, +after the service in the English church, to finish her home +letter, and +felt the sun warm on her cheek, and the perfumed air blow past as +softly +as in June, she had to remind herself that Christmas is not +necessarily +synonymous with snow and winter, but means the great central heat +and +warmth, the advent of Him who came to lighten the whole +earth.</p> + +<p>A few days after this pleasant Christmas they left Nice. All +of them +felt a reluctance to move, and Amy loudly bewailed the +necessity.</p> + +<p>"If I could stay here till it is time to go home, I shouldn't +be +homesick at all," she declared.</p> + +<p>"But what a pity it would be not to see Italy!" said her +mother. "Think +of Naples and Rome and Venice."</p> + +<p>"I don't want to think about them. It makes me feel as if I +was studying +a great long geography lesson, and it tires me so to learn +it."</p> + +<p>"Amy, dear, you're not well."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am,—quite well; only I don't want to go away from +Nice."</p> + +<p>"You only have to learn a little bit at a time of your +geography lesson, +you know," suggested Katy; "and it's a great deal nicer way to +study it +than out of a book." But though she spoke cheerfully she was +conscious +that she shared Amy's reluctance.</p> + +<p>"It's all laziness," she told herself. "Nice has been so +pleasant that +it has spoiled me."</p> + +<p>It was a consolation and made going easier that they were to +drive over +the famous Cornice Road as far as San Remo, instead of going to +Genoa +by rail as most travellers now-a-days do. They departed from +the +Pension Suisse early on an exquisite morning, fair and balmy as +June, +but with a little zest and sparkle of coolness in the air which +made it +additionally delightful. The Mediterranean was of the deepest +violet-blue; a sort of bloom of color seemed to lie upon it. The +sky +was like an arch of turquoise; every cape and headland shone +jewel-like +in the golden sunshine. The carriage, as it followed the windings +of +the road cut shelf-like on the cliffs, seemed poised between +earth and +heaven; the sea below, the mountain summits above, with a fairy +world +of verdure between. The journey was like a dream of enchantment +and +rapidly changing surprises; and when it ended in a quaint +hostelry at +San Remo, with palm-trees feathering the Bordighera Point and +Corsica, +for once seen by day, lying in bold, clear outlines against the +sunset, +Katy had to admit to herself that Nice, much as she loved it, was +not +the only, not even the most beautiful place in Europe. Already +she felt +her horizon growing, her convictions changing; and who should say +what +lay beyond?</p> + +<p>The next day brought them to Genoa, to a hotel once the +stately palace +of an archbishop, where they were lodged, all three together, in +an +enormous room, so high and broad and long that their three +little +curtained beds set behind a screen of carved wood made no +impression on +the space. There were not less than four sofas and double that +number of +arm-chairs in the room, besides a couple of monumental wardrobes; +but, +as Katy remarked, several grand pianos could still have been +moved in +without anybody's feeling crowded. On one side of them lay the +port of +Genoa, filled with craft from all parts of the world, and flying +the +flags of a dozen different nations. From the other they caught +glimpses +of the magnificent old city, rising in tier over tier of churches +and +palaces and gardens; while nearer still were narrow streets, +which +glittered with gold filigree and the shops of jewel-workers. And +while +they went in and out and gazed and wondered, Lilly Page, at the +Pension +Suisse, was saying,—</p> + +<p>"I am so glad that Katy and <i>that</i> Mrs. Ashe are gone. +Nothing has been +so pleasant since they came. Lieutenant Worthington is dreadfully +stiff +and stupid, and seems quite different from what he used to be. +But now +that we have got rid of them it will all come right again."</p> + +<p>"I really don't think that Katy was to blame," said Mrs. Page. +"She +never seemed to me to be making any effort to attract him."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Katy is sly," responded Lilly, vindictively. "She never +<i>seems</i> to +do anything, but somehow she always gets her own way. I suppose +she +thought I didn't see her keeping him down there on the beach the +other +day when he was coming in to call on us, but I did. It was just +out of +spite, and because she wanted to vex me; I know it was."</p> + +<p>"Well, dear, she's gone now, and you won't be worried with her +again," +said her mother, soothingly. "Don't pout so, Lilly, and wrinkle +up your +forehead. It's very unbecoming."</p> + +<p>"Yes, she's gone," snapped Lilly; "and as she's bound for the +East, and +we for the West, we are not likely to meet again, for which I +am +devoutly thankful."</p> + + +<a name="c8" id="c8"></a> + +<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> + +<p class="cb">ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES.</p> + +<p>"We are going to follow the track of Ulysses," said Katy, with +her eyes +fixed on the little travelling-map in her guide-book. "Do you +realize +that, Polly dear? He and his companions sailed these very seas +before +us, and we shall see the sights they saw,—Circe's Cape and the +Isles of +the Sirens, and Polyphemus himself, perhaps, who knows?"</p> + +<p>The "Marco Polo" had just cast off her moorings, and was +slowly steaming +out of the crowded port of Genoa into the heart of a still rosy +sunset. +The water was perfectly smooth; no motion could be felt but the +engine's +throb. The trembling foam of the long wake showed glancing points +of +phosphorescence here and there, while low on the eastern sky a +great +silver planet burned like a signal lamp.</p> + +<p>"Polyphemus was a horrible giant. I read about him once, and I +don't +want to see him," observed Amy, from her safe protected perch in +her +mother's lap.</p> + +<p>"He may not be so bad now as he was in those old times. Some +missionary +may have come across him and converted him. If he were good, +you +wouldn't mind his being big, would you?" suggested Katy.</p> + +<p>"N-o," replied Amy, doubtfully; "but it would take a great lot +of +missionaries to make <i>him</i> good, I should think. One all +alone would be +afraid to speak to him. We shan't really see him, shall we?"</p> + +<p>"I don't believe we shall; and if we stuff cotton in our ears +and look +the other way, we need not hear the sirens sing," said Katy, who +was in +the highest spirits.—"And oh, Polly dear, there is one +delightful thing +I forgot to tell you about. The captain says he shall stay in +Leghorn +all day to-morrow taking on freight, and we shall have plenty of +time to +run up to Pisa and see the Cathedral and the Leaning Tower +and +everything else. Now, that is something Ulysses didn't do! I am +so glad +I didn't die of measles when I was little, as Rose Red used to +say." She +gave her book a toss into the air as she spoke, and caught it +again as +it fell, very much as the Katy Carr of twelve years ago might +have done.</p> + +<p>"What a child you are!" said Mrs. Ashe, approvingly; "you +never seem out +of sorts or tired of things."</p> + +<p>"Out of sorts? I should think not! And pray why should I +be, +Polly dear?"</p> + +<p>Katy had taken to calling her friend "Polly dear" of late,—a +trick +picked up half unconsciously from Lieutenant Ned. Mrs. Ashe liked +it; +it was sisterly and intimate, she said, and made her feel +nearer +Katy's age.</p> + +<p>"Does the tower really lean?" questioned Amy,—"far over, I +mean, so +that we can see it?"</p> + +<p>"We shall know to-morrow," replied Katy. "If it doesn't, I +shall lose +all my confidence in human nature."</p> + +<p>Katy's confidence in human nature was not doomed to be +impaired. There +stood the famous tower, when they reached the Place del Duomo in +Pisa, +next morning, looking all aslant, exactly as it does in the +pictures and +the alabaster models, and seeming as if in another moment it must +topple +over, from its own weight, upon their heads. Mrs. Ashe declared +that it +was so unnatural that it made her flesh creep; and when she was +coaxed +up the winding staircase to the top, she turned so giddy that +they were +all thankful to get her safely down to firm ground again. She +turned her +back upon the tower, as they crossed the grassy space to the +majestic +old Cathedral, saying that if she thought about it any more, she +should +become a disbeliever in the attraction of gravitation, which she +had +always been told all respectable people <i>must</i> believe +in.</p> + +<p>The guide showed them the lamp swinging by a long slender +chain, before +which Galileo is said to have sat and pondered while he worked +out his +theory of the pendulum. This lamp seemed a sort of own cousin to +the +attraction of gravitation, and they gazed upon it with respect. +Then +they went to the Baptistery to see Niccolo Pisano's magnificent +pulpit +of creamy marble, a mass of sculpture supported on the backs of +lions, +and the equally lovely font, and to admire the extraordinary +sound +which their guide evoked from a mysterious echo, with which he +seemed +to be on intimate terms, for he made it say whatever he would +and +almost "answer back."</p> + +<p>It was in coming out of the Baptistery that they met with an +adventure +which Amy could never quite forget. Pisa is the mendicant city of +Italy, +and her streets are infested with a band of religious beggars who +call +themselves the Brethren of the Order of Mercy. They wear loose +black +gowns, sandals laced over their bare feet, and black cambric +masks with +holes, through which their eyes glare awfully; and they carry tin +cups +for the reception of offerings, which they thrust into the faces +of all +strangers visiting the city, whom they look upon as their lawful +prey.</p> + +<p>As our party emerged from the Baptistery, two of these +Brethren espied +them, and like great human bats came swooping down upon them with +long +strides, their black garments flying in the wind, their eyes +rolling +strangely behind their masks, and brandishing their alms-cups, +which had +"Pour les Pauvres" lettered upon them, and gave forth a clapping +sound +like a watchman's rattle. There was something terrible in +their +appearance and the rushing speed of their movements. Amy screamed +and +ran behind her mother, who visibly shrank. Katy stood her ground; +but +the bat-winged fiends in Doré's illustrations to Dante +occurred to her, +and her fingers trembled as she dropped some money in the +cups.</p> + +<p>Even mendicant friars are human. Katy ceased to tremble as she +observed +that one of them, as he retreated, walked backward for some +distance in +order to gaze longer at Mrs. Ashe, whose cheeks were flushed with +bright +pink and who was looking particularly handsome. She began to +laugh +instead, and Mrs. Ashe laughed too; but Amy could not get over +the +impression of having been attacked by demons, and often +afterward +recurred with a shudder to the time when those awful black +<i>things</i> flew +at her and she hid behind mamma. The ghastly pictures of the +Triumph of +Death, which were presently exhibited to them on the walls of the +Campo +Santo, did not tend to reassure her, and it was with quite a +pale, +scared little face that she walked toward the hotel where they +were to +lunch, and she held fast to Katy's hand.</p> + +<p>Their way led them through a narrow street inhabited by the +poorer +classes,—a dusty street with high shabby buildings on either +side and +wide doorways giving glimpses of interior courtyards, where +empty +hogsheads and barrels and rusty caldrons lay, and great wooden +trays of +macaroni were spread out in the sun to dry. Some of the macaroni +was +gray, some white, some yellow; none of it looked at all desirable +to +eat, as it lay exposed to the dust, with long lines of +ill-washed +clothes flapping above on wires stretched from one house to +another. As +is usual in poor streets, there were swarms of children; and +the +appearance of little Amy with her long bright hair falling over +her +shoulders and Mabel clasped in her arms created a great +sensation. The +children in the street shouted and exclaimed, and other children +within +the houses heard the sounds and came trooping out, while mothers +and +older sisters peeped from the doorways. The very air seemed full +of +eager faces and little brown and curly heads bobbing up and down +with +excitement, and black eyes all fixed upon big beautiful Mabel, +who with +her thick wig of flaxen hair, her blue velvet dress and +jacket, +feathered hat, and little muff, seemed to them like some strange +small +marvel from another world. They could not decide whether she was +a +living child or a make-believe one, and they dared not come near +enough +to find out; so they clustered at a little distance, pointed with +their +fingers, and whispered and giggled, while Amy, much pleased with +the +admiration shown for her darling, lifted Mabel up to view.</p> + +<p>At last one droll little girl with a white cap on her round +head seemed +to make up <i>her</i> mind, and darting indoors returned with her +doll,—a +poor little image of wood, its only garment a coarse shirt of +red +cotton. This she held out for Amy to see. Amy smiled for the +first time +since her encounter with the bat-like friars; and Katy, taking +Mabel +from her, made signs that the two dolls should kiss each other. +But +though the little Italian screamed with laughter at the idea of +a +<i>bacio</i> between two dolls, she would by no means allow it, +and hid her +treasure behind her back, blushing and giggling, and saying +something +very fast which none of them understood, while she waved two +fingers at +them with a curious gesture.</p> + +<p>"I do believe she is afraid Mabel will cast the evil eye on +her doll," +said Katy at last, with a sudden understanding as to what +this +pantomime meant.</p> + +<p>"Why, you silly thing!" cried the outraged Amy; "do you +suppose for one +moment that my child could hurt your dirty old dolly? You ought +to be +glad to have her noticed at all by anybody that's clean."</p> + +<p>The sound of the foreign tongue completed the discomfiture of +the +little Italian. With a shriek she fled, and all the other +children +after her; pausing at a distance to look back at the alarming +creatures +who didn't speak the familiar language. Katy, wishing to leave +a +pleasant impression, made Mabel kiss her waxen fingers toward +them. +This sent the children off into another fit of laughter and +chatter, +and they followed our friends for quite a distance as they +proceeded on +their way to the hotel.</p> + +<p>All that night, over a sea as smooth as glass, the "Marco +Polo" slipped +along the coasts past which the ships of Ulysses sailed in those +old +legendary days which wear so charmed a light to our modern eyes. +Katy +roused at three in the morning, and looking from her cabin window +had a +glimpse of an island, which her map showed her must be Elba, +where that +war-eagle Napoleon was chained for a while. Then she fell asleep +again, +and when she roused in full daylight the steamer was off the +coast of +Ostia and nearing the mouth of the Tiber. Dreamy mountain-shapes +rose +beyond the far-away Campagna, and every curve and indentation of +the +coast bore a name which recalled some interesting thing.</p> + +<p>About eleven a dim-drawn bubble appeared on the horizon, which +the +captain assured them was the dome of St. Peter's, nearly thirty +miles +distant. This was one of the "moments" which Clover had been fond +of +speculating about; and Katy, contrasting the real with the +imaginary +moment, could not help smiling. Neither she nor Clover had ever +supposed +that her first glimpse of the great dome was to be so little +impressive.</p> + +<p>On and on they went till the air-hung bubble disappeared; and +Amy, grown +very tired of scenery with which she had no associations, and +grown-up +raptures which she did not comprehend, squeezed herself into the +end of +the long wooden settee on which Katy sat, and began to beg for +another +story concerning Violet and Emma.</p> + +<p>"Just a little tiny CHAPTER, you know, Miss Katy, about what +they did on +New Year's Day or something. It's so dull to keep sailing and +sailing +all day and have nothing to do, and it's ever so long since you +told me +anything about them, really and truly it is!"</p> + +<p>Now, Violet and Emma, if the truth is to be told, had grown to +be the +bane of Katy's existence. She had rung the changes on their +uneventful +adventures, and racked her brains to invent more and more +details, till +her imagination felt like a dry sponge from which every possible +drop of +moisture had been squeezed. Amy was insatiable. Her interest in +the tale +never flagged; and when her exhausted friend explained that she +really +could not think of another word to say on the subject, she would +turn +the tables by asking, "Then, Miss Katy, mayn't I tell <i>you</i> +a CHAPTER?" +whereupon she would proceed somewhat in this fashion:—</p> + +<p>"It was the day before Christmas—no, we won't have it the day +before +Christmas; it shall be three days before Thanksgiving. Violet and +Emma +got up in the morning, and—well, they didn't do anything in +particular +that day. They just had their breakfasts and dinners, and played +and +studied a little, and went to bed early, you know, and the next +morning +—well, there didn't much happen that day, either; they just had +their +breakfasts and dinners, and played."</p> + +<p>Listening to Amy's stories was so much worse than telling them +to her, +that Katy in self-defence was driven to recommence her +narrations, but +she had grown to hate Violet and Emma with a deadly hatred. So +when Amy +made this appeal on the steamer's deck, a sudden resolution +took +possession of her, and she decided to put an end to these +dreadful +children once for all.</p> + +<p>"Yes, Amy," she said, "I will tell you one more story about +Violet and +Emma; but this is positively the last."</p> + +<p>So Amy cuddled close to her friend, and listened with rapt +attention as +Katy told how on a certain day just before the New Year, Violet +and Emma +started by themselves in a little sleigh drawn by a pony, to +carry to a +poor woman who lived in a lonely house high up on a mountain +slope a +basket containing a turkey, a mould of cranberry jelly, a bunch +of +celery, and a mince-pie.</p> + +<p>"They were so pleased at having all these nice things to take +to poor +widow Simpson and in thinking how glad she would be to see +them," +proceeded the naughty Katy, "that they never noticed how black +the sky +was getting to be, or how the wind howled through the bare boughs +of the +trees. They had to go slowly, for the road was up hill all the +way, and +it was hard work for the poor pony. But he was a stout little +fellow, +and tugged away up the slippery track, and Violet and Emma talked +and +laughed, and never thought what was going to happen. Just +half-way up +the mountain there was a rocky cliff which overhung the road, and +on +this cliff grew an enormous hemlock tree. The branches were +loaded with +snow, which made them much heavier than usual. Just as the sleigh +passed +slowly underneath the cliff, a violent blast of wind blew up from +the +ravine, struck the hemlock and tore it out of the ground, roots +and all. +It fell directly across the sleigh, and Violet and Emma and the +pony and +the basket with the turkey and the other things in it were all +crushed +as flat as pancakes!"</p> + +<p>"Well," said Amy, as Katy stopped, "go on! what happened +then?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing happened then," replied Katy, in a tone of awful +solemnity; +"nothing could happen! Violet and Emma were dead, the pony was +dead, the +things in the basket were broken all to little bits, and a +great +snowstorm began and covered them up, and no one knew where they +were or +what had become of them till the snow melted in the spring."</p> + +<p>With a loud shriek Amy jumped up from the bench.</p> + +<p>"No! no! no!" she cried; "they aren't dead! I won't let them +be dead!" +Then she burst into tears, ran down the stairs, locked herself +into her +mother's stateroom, and did not appear again for several +hours.</p> + +<p>Katy laughed heartily at first over this outburst, but +presently she +began to repent and to think that she had treated her pet +unkindly. She +went down and knocked at the stateroom door; but Amy would not +answer. +She called her softly through the key-hole, and coaxed and +pleaded, but +it was all in vain. Amy remained invisible till late in the +afternoon; +and when she finally crept up again to the deck, her eyes were +red with +crying, and her little face as pale and miserable as if she had +been +attending the funeral of her dearest friend.</p> + +<p>Katy's heart smote her.</p> + +<p>"Come here, my darling," she said, holding out her hand; "come +and sit +in my lap and forgive me. Violet and Emma shall not be dead. They +shall +go on living, since you care so much for them, and I will tell +stories +about them to the end of the CHAPTER."</p> + +<p>"No," said Amy, shaking her head mournfully; "you can't. +They're dead, +and they won't come to life again ever. It's all over, and I'm +so +so-o-rry."</p> + +<p>All Katy's apologies and efforts to resuscitate the story were +useless. +Violet and Emma were dead to Amy's imagination, and she could not +make +herself believe in them any more.</p> + +<p>She was too woe-begone to care for the fables of Circe and her +swine +which Katy told as they rounded the magnificent Cape Circello, +and the +isles where the sirens used to sing appealed to her in vain. The +sun +set, the stars came out; and under the beams of their countless +lamps +and the beckonings of a slender new moon, the "Marco Polo" sailed +into +the Bay of Naples, past Vesuvius, whose dusky curl of smoke could +be +seen outlined against the luminous sky, and brought her +passengers to +their landing-place.</p> + +<p>They woke next morning to a summer atmosphere full of yellow +sunshine +and true July warmth. Flower-vendors stood on every corner, and +pursued +each newcomer with their fragrant wares. Katy could not stop +exclaiming +over the cheapness of the flowers, which were thrust in at the +carriage +windows as they drove slowly up and down the streets. They were +tied +into flat nosegays, whose centre was a white camellia, encircled +with +concentric rows of pink tea rosebuds, ring after ring, till the +whole +was the size of an ordinary milk-pan; all to be had for the sum +of ten +cents! But after they had bought two or three of these +enormous +bouquets, and had discovered that not a single rose boasted an +inch of +stem, and that all were pierced with long wires through their +very +hearts, she ceased to care for them.</p> + +<p>"I would rather have one Souvenir or General Jacqueminot, with +a long +stem and plenty of leaves, than a dozen of these stiff platters +of +bouquets," Katy told Mrs. Ashe. But when they drove beyond the +city +gates, and the coachman came to anchor beneath walls overhung +with the +same roses, and she found that she might stand on the seat and +pull down +as many branches of the lovely flowers as she desired, and +gather +wallflowers for herself out of the clefts in the masonry, she +was +entirely satisfied.</p> + +<p>"This is the Italy of my dreams," she said.</p> + +<p>With all its beauty there was an underlying sense of danger +about +Naples, which interfered with their enjoyment of it. Evil smells +came +in at the windows, or confronted them as they went about the +city. +There seemed something deadly in the air. Whispered reports met +their +ears of cases of fever, which the landlords of the hotels were +doing +their best to hush up. An American gentleman was said to be lying +very +ill at one house. A lady had died the week before at another. +Mrs. Ashe +grew nervous.</p> + +<p>"We will just take a rapid look at a few of the principal +things," she +told Katy, "and then get away as fast as we can. Amy is so on my +mind +that I have no peace of my life. I keep feeling her pulse and +imagining +that she does not look right; and though I know it is all my +fancy, I am +impatient to be off. You won't mind, will you, Katy?"</p> + +<p>After that everything they did was done in a hurry. Katy felt +as if she +were being driven about by a cyclone, as they rushed from one +sight to +another, filling up all the chinks between with shopping, which +was +irresistible where everything was so pretty and so wonderfully +cheap. +She herself purchased a tortoise-shell fan and chain for Rose +Red, and +had her monogram carved upon it; a coral locket for Elsie; some +studs +for Dorry; and for her father a small, beautiful vase of bronze, +copied +from one of the Pompeian antiques.</p> + +<p>"How charming it is to have money to spend in such a place as +this!" she +said to herself with a sigh of satisfaction as she surveyed +these +delightful buyings. "I only wish I could get ten times as many +things +and take them to ten times as many people. Papa was so wise about +it. I +can't think how it is that he always knows beforehand exactly how +people +are going to feel, and what they will want!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ashe also bought a great many things for herself and Amy, +and to +take home as presents; and it was all very pleasant and +satisfactory +except for that subtle sense of danger from which they could not +escape +and which made them glad to go. "See Naples and die," says the +old +adage; and the saying has proved sadly true in the case of many +an +American traveller.</p> + +<p>Beside the talk of fever there was also a good deal of gossip +about +brigands going about, as is generally the case in Naples and +its +vicinity. Something was said to have happened to a party on one +of the +heights above Sorrento; and though nobody knew exactly what +the +something was, or was willing to vouch for the story, Mrs. Ashe +and +Katy felt a good deal of trepidation as they entered the carriage +which +was to take them to the neighborhood where the mysterious +"something" +had occurred.</p> + +<p>The drive between Castellamare and Sorrento is in reality as +safe as +that between Boston and Brookline; but as our party did not know +this +fact till afterward, it did them no good. It is also one of the +most +beautiful drives in the world, following the windings of the +exquisite +coast mile after mile, in long links of perfectly made road, +carved on +the face of sharp cliffs, with groves of oranges and lemons and +olive +orchards above, and the Bay of Naples beneath, stretching away +like a +solid sheet of lapis-lazuli, and gemmed with islands of the +most +picturesque form.</p> + +<p>It is a pity that so much beauty should have been wasted on +Mrs. Ashe +and Katy, but they were too frightened to half enjoy it. Their +carriage +was driven by a shaggy young savage, who looked quite wild enough +to be +a bandit himself. He cracked his whip loudly as they rolled +along, and +every now and then gave a long shrill whistle. Mrs. Ashe was sure +that +these were signals to his band, who were lurking somewhere on +the +olive-hung hillsides. She thought she detected him once or twice +making +signs to certain questionable-looking characters as they passed; +and she +fancied that the people they met gazed at them with an air of +commiseration, as upon victims who were being carried to +execution. Her +fears affected Katy; so, though they talked and laughed, and made +jokes +to amuse Amy, who must not be scared or led to suppose that +anything was +amiss, and to the outward view seemed a very merry party, they +were +privately quaking in their shoes all the way, and enjoying a deal +of +highly superfluous misery. And after all they reached Sorrento +in +perfect safety; and the driver, who looked so dangerous, turned +out to +be a respectable young man enough, with a wife and family to +support, +who considered a plateful of macaroni and a glass of sour red +wine as +the height of luxury, and was grateful for a small gratuity of +thirty +cents or so, which would enable him to purchase these dainties. +Mrs. +Ashe had a very bad headache next day, to pay for her fright; but +she +and Katy agreed that they had been very foolish, and resolved to +pay no +more attention to unaccredited rumors or allow them to spoil +their +enjoyment, which was a sensible resolution to make.</p> + +<p>Their hotel was perched directly over the sea. From the +balcony of their +sitting-room they looked down a sheer cliff some sixty feet high, +into +the water; their bedrooms opened on a garden of roses, with an +orange +grove beyond. Not far from them was the great gorge which cuts +the +little town of Sorrento almost in two, and whose seaward end +makes the +harbor of the place. Katy was never tired of peering down into +this +strange and beautiful cleft, whose sides, two hundred feet in +depth, are +hung with vines and trailing growths of all sorts, and seem +all +a-tremble with the fairy fronds of maiden-hair ferns growing out +of +every chink and crevice. She and Amy took walks along the coast +toward +Massa, to look off at the lovely island shapes in the bay, and +admire +the great clumps of cactus and Spanish bayonet which grew by +the +roadside; and they always came back loaded with orange-flowers, +which +could be picked as freely as apple-blossoms from New England +orchards in +the spring. The oranges themselves at that time of the year were +very +sour, but they answered as well for a romantic date, "From an +orange +grove," as if they had been the sweetest in the world.</p> + +<p>They made two different excursions to Pompeii, which is within +easy +distance of Sorrento. They scrambled on donkeys over the hills, +and had +glimpses of the far-away Calabrian shore, of the natural arch, +and the +temples of Pæstum shining in the sun many miles distant. On +Katy's +birthday, which fell toward the end of January, Mrs. Ashe let her +have +her choice of a treat; and she elected to go to the Island of +Capri, +which none of them had seen. It turned out a perfect day, with +sea and +wind exactly right for the sail, and to allow of getting into the +famous +"Blue Grotto," which can only be entered under particular +conditions of +tide and weather. And they climbed the great cliff-rise at the +island's +end, and saw the ruins of the villa built by the wicked +emperor +Tiberius, and the awful place known as his "Leap," down which, it +is +said, he made his victims throw themselves; and they lunched at a +hotel +which bore his name, and just at sunset pushed off again for the +row +home over the charmed sea. This return voyage was almost the +pleasantest +thing of all the day. The water was smooth, the moon at its full. +It was +larger and more brilliant than American moons are, and seemed to +possess +an actual warmth and color. The boatmen timed their oar-strokes +to the +cadence of Neapolitan <i>barcaroles</i> and folk-songs, full of +rhythmic +movement, which seemed caught from the pulsing tides. And when at +last +the bow grated on the sands of the Sorrento landing-place, Katy +drew a +long, regretful breath, and declared that this was her best +birthday-gift of all, better than Amy's flowers, or the +pretty +tortoise-shell locket that Mrs. Ashe had given her, better even +than the +letter from home, which, timed by happy accident, had arrived by +the +morning's post to make a bright opening for the day.</p> + +<p>All pleasant things must come to an ending.</p> + +<p>"Katy," said Mrs. Ashe, one afternoon in early February, "I +heard some +ladies talking just now in the <i>salon</i>, and they said that +Rome is +filling up very fast. The Carnival begins in less than two weeks, +and +everybody wants to be there then. If we don't make haste, we +shall not +be able to get any rooms."</p> + +<p>"Oh dear!" said Katy, "it is very trying not to be able to be +in two +places at once. I want to see Rome dreadfully, and yet I cannot +bear to +leave Sorrento. We have been very happy here, haven't we?"</p> + +<p>So they took up their wandering staves again, and departed for +Rome, +like the Apostle, "not knowing what should befall them +there."</p> + + +<a name="c9" id="c9"></a> + +<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2> + + +<p class="cb">A ROMAN HOLIDAY.</p> + +<p>"Oh dear!" said Mrs. Ashe, as she folded her letters and laid +them +aside, "I wish those Pages would go away from Nice, or else that +the +frigates were not there."</p> + +<p>"Why! what's the matter?" asked Katy, looking up from the +many-leaved +journal from Clover over which she was poring.</p> + +<p>"Nothing is the matter except that those everlasting people +haven't gone +to Spain yet, as they said they would, and Ned seems to keep on +seeing +them," replied Mrs. Ashe, petulantly.</p> + +<p>"But, dear Polly, what difference does it make? And they never +did +promise you to go on any particular time, did they?"</p> + +<p>"N-o, they didn't; but I wish they would, all the same. Not +that Ned is +such a goose as really to care anything for that foolish Lilly!" +Then +she gave a little laugh at her own inconsistency, and added, "But +I +oughtn't to abuse her when she is your cousin."</p> + +<p>"Don't mention it," said Katy, cheerfully. "But, really, I +don't see why +poor Lilly need worry you so, Polly dear."</p> + +<p>The room in which this conversation took place was on the very +topmost +floor of the Hotel del Hondo in Rome. It was large and +many-windowed; +and though there was a little bed in one corner half hidden +behind a +calico screen, with a bureau and washing-stand, and a sort of +stout +mahogany hat-tree on which Katy's dresses and jackets were +hanging, the +remaining space, with a sofa and easy-chairs grouped round a +fire, and a +round table furnished with books and a lamp, was ample enough to +make a +good substitute for the private sitting-room which Mrs. Ashe had +not +been able to procure on account of the near approach of the +Carnival and +the consequent crowding of strangers to Rome. In fact, she was +assured +that under the circumstances she was lucky in finding rooms as +good as +these; and she made the most of the assurance as a consolation +for the +somewhat unsatisfactory food and service of the hotel, and the +four long +flights of stairs which must be passed every time they needed to +reach +the dining-room or the street door.</p> + +<p>The party had been in Rome only four days, but already they +had seen a +host of interesting things. They had stood in the strange sunken +space +with its marble floor and broken columns, which is all that is +left of +the great Roman Forum. They had visited the Coliseum, at that +period +still overhung with ivy garlands and trailing greeneries, and +not, as +now, scraped clean and bare and "tidied" out of much of its +picturesqueness. They had seen the Baths of Caracalla and the +Temple of +Janus and St. Peter's and the Vatican marbles, and had driven out +on the +Campagna and to the Pamphili-Doria Villa to gather purple and +red +anemones, and to the English cemetery to see the grave of Keats. +They +had also peeped into certain shops, and attended a reception at +the +American Minister's,—in short, like most unwarned travellers, +they had +done about twice as much as prudence and experience would +have +permitted, had those worthies been consulted.</p> + +<p>All the romance of Katy's nature responded to the fascination +of the +ancient city,—the capital of the world, as it may truly be +called. The +shortest drive or walk brought them face to face with innumerable +and +unexpected delights. Now it was a wonderful fountain, with +plunging +horses and colossal nymphs and Tritons, holding cups and horns +from +which showers of white foam rose high in air to fall like rushing +rain +into an immense marble basin. Now it was an arched doorway +with +traceries as fine as lace,—sole-remaining fragment of a heathen +temple, +flung and stranded as it were by the waves of time on the squalid +shore +of the present. Now it was a shrine at the meeting of three +streets, +where a dim lamp burned beneath the effigy of the Madonna, with +always a +fresh rose beside it in a vase, and at its foot a peasant woman +kneeling +in red bodice and blue petticoat, with a lace-trimmed towel +folded over +her hair. Or again it would be a sunlit terrace lifted high on +a +hillside, and crowded with carriages full of beautifully dressed +people, +while below all Rome seemed spread out like a panorama, dim, +mighty, +majestic, and bounded by the blue wavy line of the Campagna and +the +Alban hills. Or perhaps it might be a wonderful double flight of +steps +with massive balustrades and pillars with urns, on which sat a +crowd of +figures in strange costumes and attitudes, who all looked as +though they +had stepped out of pictures, but who were in reality models +waiting for +artists to come by and engage them. No matter what it was,—a bit +of +oddly tinted masonry with a tuft of brown and orange wallflowers +hanging +upon it, or a vegetable stall where endive and chiccory and +curly +lettuces were arranged in wreaths with tiny orange gourds and +scarlet +peppers for points of color,—it was all Rome, and, by virtue of +that +word, different from any other place,—more suggestive, more +interesting, ten times more mysterious than any other could +possibly be, +so Katy thought.</p> + +<p>This fact consoled her for everything and anything,—for the +fleas, the +dirt, for the queer things they had to eat and the still queerer +odors +they were forced to smell! Nothing seemed of any particular +consequence +except the deep sense of enjoyment, and the newly discovered +world of +thought and sensation of which she had become suddenly +conscious.</p> + +<p>The only drawback to her happiness, as the days went on, was +that +little Amy did not seem quite well or like herself. She had taken +a +cold on the journey from Naples, and though it did not seem +serious, +that, or something, made her look pale and thin. Her mother said +she +was growing fast, but the explanation did not quite account for +the +wistful look in the child's eyes and the tired feeling of which +she +continually complained. Mrs. Ashe, with vague uneasiness, began +to talk +of cutting short their Roman stay and getting Amy off to the +more +bracing air of Florence. But meanwhile there was the Carnival +close at +hand, which they must by no means lose; and the feeling that +their +opportunity might be a brief one made her and Katy all the more +anxious +to make the very most of their time. So they filled the days full +with +sights to see and things to do, and came and went; sometimes +taking Amy +with them, but more often leaving her at the hotel under the care +of a +kind German chambermaid, who spoke pretty good English and to +whom Amy +had taken a fancy.</p> + +<p>"The marble things are so cold, and the old broken things make +me so +sorry," she explained; "and I hate beggars because they are +dirty, and +the stairs make my back ache; and I'd a great deal rather stay +with +Maria and go up on the roof, if you don't mind, mamma."</p> + +<p>This roof, which Amy had chosen as a playplace, covered the +whole of the +great hotel, and had been turned into a sort of upper-air garden +by the +simple process of gravelling it all over, placing trellises of +ivy here +and there, and setting tubs of oranges and oleanders and boxes of +gay +geraniums and stock-gillyflowers on the balustrades. A tame fawn +was +tethered there. Amy adopted him as a playmate; and what with his +company +and that of the flowers, the times when her mother and Katy were +absent +from her passed not unhappily.</p> + +<p>Katy always repaired to the roof as soon as they came in from +their long +mornings and afternoons of sight-seeing. Years afterward, she +would +remember with contrition how pathetically glad Amy always was to +see +her. She would put her little head on Katy's breast and hold her +tight +for many minutes without saying a word. When she did speak it was +always +about the house and the garden that she talked. She never asked +any +questions as to where Katy had been, or what she had done; it +seemed to +tire her to think about it.</p> + +<p>"I should be very lonely sometimes if it were not for my dear +little +fawn," she told Katy once. "He is so sweet that I don't miss you +and +mamma very much while I have him to play with. I call him +Florio,—don't +you think that is a pretty name? I like to stay with him a great +deal +better than to go about with you to those nasty-smelling old +churches, +with fleas hopping all over them!"</p> + +<p>So Amy was left in peace with her fawn, and the others made +haste to see +all they could before the time came to go to Florence.</p> + +<center><a name="214" id="214"></a> + + +<img alt="illusp214a.jpg (66K)" src="images/illusp214a.jpg" height="728" width="511"> + +<p class="c">[Amy was left in peace with her fawn.]</p></center> + + +<p>Katy realized one of the "moments" for which she had come to +Europe when +she stood for the first time on the balcony overhanging the +Corso, which +Mrs. Ashe had hired in company with some acquaintances made at +the +hotel, and looked down at the ebb and surge of the just-begun +Carnival. +The narrow street seemed humming with people of all sorts and +conditions. Some were masked; some were not. There were ladies +and +gentlemen in fashionable clothes, peasants in the gayest +costumes, +surprised-looking tourists in tall hats and linen dusters, +harlequins, +clowns, devils, nuns, dominoes of every color,—red, white, blue, +black; +while above, the balconies bloomed like a rose-garden with pretty +faces +framed in lace veils or picturesque hats. Flowers were +everywhere, +wreathed along the house-fronts, tied to the horses' ears, in +ladies' +hands and gentlemen's button-holes, while venders went up and +down the +street bearing great trays of violets and carnations and +camellias for +sale. The air was full of cries and laughter, and the shrill +calls of +merchants advertising their wares,—candy, fruit, birds, +lanterns, and +<i>confetti</i>, the latter being merely lumps of lime, large or +small, with +a pea or a bean embedded in each lump to give it weight. Boxes +full of +this unpleasant confection were suspended in front of each +balcony, with +tin scoops to use in ladling it out and flinging it about. +Everybody +wore or carried a wire mask as protection against this white, +incessant +shower; and before long the air became full of a fine dust which +hung +above the Corso like a mist, and filled the eyes and noses and +clothes +of all present with irritating particles.</p> + +<p>Pasquino's Car was passing underneath just as Katy and Mrs. +Ashe +arrived,—a gorgeous affair, hung with silken draperies, and +bearing as +symbol an enormous egg, in which the Carnival was supposed to be +in act +of incubation. A huge wagon followed in its wake, on which was a +house +some sixteen feet square, whose sole occupant was a gentleman +attended +by five servants, who kept him supplied with <i>confetti</i>, +which he +showered liberally on the heads of the crowd. Then came a car in +the +shape of a steamboat, with a smoke-pipe and sails, over which +flew the +Union Jack, and which was manned with a party wearing the dress +of +British tars. The next wagon bore a company of jolly maskers +equipped +with many-colored bladders, which they banged and rattled as they +went +along. Following this was a troupe of beautiful circus +horses, +cream-colored with scarlet trappings, or sorrel with blue, ridden +by +ladies in pale green velvet laced with silver, or blue velvet and +gold. +Another car bore a bird-cage which was an exact imitation of +St. +Peter's, within which perched a lonely old parrot. This device +evidently +had a political signification, for it was alternately hissed +and +applauded as it went along. The whole scene was like a +brilliant, +rapidly shifting dream; and Katy, as she stood with lips apart +and eyes +wide open with wonderment and pleasure, forgot whether she was in +the +body or not,—forgot everything except what was passing before +her gaze.</p> + +<p>She was roused by a stinging shower of lime-dust. An +Englishman in the +next balcony had take courteous advantage of her preoccupation, +and had +flung a scoopful of <i>confetti</i> in her undefended face! It is +generally +Anglo-Saxons of the less refined class, English or Americans, who +do +these things at Carnival times. The national love of a rough joke +comes +to the surface, encouraged by the license of the moment, and all +the +grace and prettiness of the festival vanish. Katy laughed, and +dusted +herself as well as she could, and took refuge behind her mask; +while a +nimble American boy of the party changed places with her, and +thenceforward made that particular Englishman his special target, +plying +such a lively and adroit shovel as to make Katy's assailant rue +the hour +when he evoked this national reprisal. His powdered head and +rather +clumsy efforts to retaliate excited shouts of laughter from +the +adjoining balconies. The young American, fresh from tennis and +college +athletics, darted about and dodged with an agility impossible to +his +heavily built foe; and each effective shot and parry on his side +was +greeted with little cries of applause and the clapping of hands +on the +part of those who were watching the contest.</p> + +<p>Exactly opposite them was a balcony hung with white silk, in +which sat a +lady who seemed to be of some distinction; for every now and then +an +officer in brilliant uniform, or some official covered with +orders and +stars, would be shown in by her servants, bow before her with the +utmost +deference, and after a little conversation retire, kissing her +gloved +hand as he went. The lady was a beautiful person, with lustrous +black +eyes and dark hair, over which a lace mantilla was fastened with +diamond +stars. She wore pale blue with white flowers, and altogether, as +Katy +afterward wrote to Clover, reminded her exactly of one of +those +beautiful princesses whom they used to play about in their +childhood and +quarrel over, because every one of them wanted to be the Princess +and +nobody else.</p> + +<p>"I wonder who she is," said Mrs. Ashe in a low tone. "She +might be +almost anybody from her looks. She keeps glancing across to us, +Katy. Do +you know, I think she has taken a fancy to you."</p> + +<p>Perhaps the lady had; for just then she turned her head and +said a word +to one of her footmen, who immediately placed something in her +hand. It +was a little shining bonbonniere, and rising she threw it +straight at +Katy. Alas! it struck the edge of the balcony and fell into the +street +below, where it was picked up by a ragged little peasant girl in +a red +jacket, who raised a pair of astonished eyes to the heavens, as +if sure +that the gift must have fallen straight from thence. Katy bent +forward +to watch its fate, and went through a little pantomime of regret +and +despair for the benefit of the opposite lady, who only laughed, +and +taking another from her servant flung with better aim, so that it +fell +exactly at Katy's feet. This was a gilded box in the shape of +a +mandolin, with sugar-plums tucked cunningly away inside. Katy +kissed +both her hands in acknowledgment for the pretty toy, and tossed +back a +bunch of roses which she happened to be wearing in her dress. +After that +it seemed the chief amusement of the fair unknown to throw +bonbons at +Katy. Some went straight and some did not; but before the +afternoon +ended, Katy had quite a lapful of confections and +trifles,—roses, +sugared almonds, a satin casket, a silvered box in the shape of +a +horseshoe, a tiny cage with orange blossoms for birds on the +perches, a +minute gondola with a <i>marron glacée</i> by way of +passenger, and, +prettiest of all, a little ivory harp strung with enamelled +violets +instead of wires. For all these favors she had nothing better to +offer, +in return, than a few long-tailed bonbons with gay streamers of +ribbon. +These the lady opposite caught very cleverly, rarely missing one, +and +kissing her hand in thanks each time.</p> + +<p>"Isn't she exquisite?" demanded Katy, her eyes shining +with +excitement. "Did you ever see any one so lovely in your life, +Polly +dear? I never did. There, now! she is buying those birds to set +them +free, I do believe."</p> + +<p>It was indeed so. A vender of larks had, by the aid of a long +staff, +thrust a cage full of wretched little prisoners up into the +balcony; and +"Katy's lady," as Mrs. Ashe called her, was paying for the whole. +As +they watched she opened the cage door, and with the sweetest look +on her +face encouraged the birds to fly away. The poor little creatures +cowered +and hesitated, not knowing at first what use to make of their +new +liberty; but at last one, the boldest of the company, hopped to +the door +and with a glad, exultant chirp flew straight upward. Then the +others, +taking courage from his example, followed, and all were lost to +view in +the twinkling of an eye.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you angel!" cried Katy, leaning over the edge of the +balcony and +kissing both hands impulsively, "I never saw any one so sweet as +you are +in my life. Polly dear, I think carnivals are the most +perfectly +bewitching things in the world. How glad I am that this lasts a +week, +and that we can come every day. Won't Amy be delighted with +these +bonbons! I do hope my lady will be here tomorrow."</p> + +<p>How little she dreamed that she was never to enter that +balcony again! +How little can any of us see what lies before us till it comes so +near +that we cannot help seeing it, or shut our eyes, or turn +away!</p> + +<p>The next morning, almost as soon as it was light, Mrs. Ashe +tapped at +Katy's door. She was in her dressing-gown, and her eyes looked +large and +frightened.</p> + +<p>"Amy is ill," she cried. "She has been hot and feverish all +night, and +she says that her head aches dreadfully. What shall I do, Katy? +We +ought to have a doctor at once, and I don't know the name even of +any +doctor here."</p> + +<p>Katy sat up in bed, and for one bewildered moment did not +speak. Her +brain felt in a whirl of confusion; but presently it cleared, and +she +saw what to do.</p> + +<p>"I will write a note to Mrs. Sands," she said. Mrs. Sands was +the wife +of the American Minister, and one of the few acquaintances they +had +made since they came to Rome. "You remember how nice she was the +other +day, and how we liked her; and she has lived here so long that +of +course she must know all about the doctors. Don't you think that +is the +best thing to do!"</p> + +<p>"The very best," said Mrs. Ashe, looking relieved. "I wonder I +did not +think of it myself, but I am so confused that I can't think. +Write the +note at once, please, dear Katy. I will ring your bell for you, +and then +I must hurry back to Amy."</p> + +<p>Katy made haste with the note. The answer came promptly in +half an hour, +and by ten o'clock the physician recommended appeared. Dr. Hilary +was a +dark little Italian to all appearance; but his mother had been +a +Scotch-woman, and he spoke English very well,—a great comfort to +poor +Mrs. Ashe, who knew not a word of Italian and not a great deal +of +French. He felt Amy's pulse for a long time, and tested her +temperature; +but he gave no positive opinion, only left a prescription, and +said that +he would call later in the day and should then be able to judge +more +clearly what the attack was likely to prove.</p> + +<p>Katy augured ill from this reserve. There was no talk of going +to the +Carnival that afternoon; no one had any heart for it. Instead, +Katy +spent the time in trying to recollect all she had ever heard +about the +care of sick people,—what was to be done first and what +next,—and in +searching the shops for a feather pillow, which luxury Amy +was +imperiously demanding. The pillows of Roman hotels are, as a +general +thing, stuffed with wool, and very hard.</p> + +<p>"I won't have this horrid pillow any longer," poor Amy was +screaming. +"It's got bricks in it. It hurts the back of my neck. Take it +away, +mamma, and give me a nice soft American pillow. I won't have this +a +minute longer. Don't you hear me, mamma! Take it away!"</p> + +<p>So, while Mrs. Ashe pacified Amy to the best of her ability, +Katy +hurried out in quest of the desired pillow. It proved almost +an +unattainable luxury; but at last, after a long search, she +secured an +air-cushion, a down cushion about twelve inches square, and one +old +feather pillow which had come from some auction, and had +apparently lain +for years in the corner of the shop. When this was encased in a +fresh +cover of Canton flannel, it did very well, and stilled Amy's +complaints +a little; but all night she grew worse, and when Dr. Hilary came +next +day, he was forced to utter plainly the dreaded words "Roman +fever." Amy +was in for an attack,—a light one he hoped it might be,—but +they had +better know the truth and make ready for it.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ashe was utterly overwhelmed by this verdict, and for the +first +bewildered moments did not know which way to turn. Katy, happily, +kept +a steadier head. She had the advantage of a little preparation +of +thought, and had decided beforehand what it would be necessary to +do +"in case." Oh, that fateful "in case"! The doctor and she +consulted +together, and the result was that Katy sought out the padrona of +the +establishment, and without hinting at the nature of Amy's +attack, +secured some rooms just vacated, which were at the end of a +corridor, +and a little removed from the rooms of other people. There was a +large +room with corner windows, a smaller one opening from it, and +another, +still smaller, close by, which would serve as a storeroom or +might do +for the use of a nurse.</p> + +<p>These rooms, without much consultation with Mrs. Ashe,—who +seemed +stunned and sat with her eyes fixed on Amy, just answering, +"Certainly, +dear, anything you say," when applied to,—Katy had arranged +according +to her own ideas of comfort and hygienic necessity, as learned +from Miss +Nightingale's excellent little book on nursing. From the larger +room she +had the carpet, curtains, and nearly all the furniture taken +away, the +floor scrubbed with hot soapsuds, and the bed pulled out from the +wall +to allow of a free circulation of air all round it. The smaller +one she +made as comfortable as possible for the use of Mrs. Ashe, +choosing for +it the softest sofa and the best mattresses that were obtainable; +for +she knew that her friend's strength was likely to be severely +tried if +Amy's illness proved serious. When all was ready, Amy, well +wrapped in +her coverings, was carried down the entry and laid in the fresh +bed with +the soft pillows about her; and Katy, as she went to and fro, +conveying +clothes and books and filling drawers, felt that they were +perhaps +making arrangements for a long, hard trial of faith and +spirits.</p> + +<p>By the next day the necessity of a nurse became apparent, and +in the +afternoon Katy started out in a little hired carriage in search +of one. +She had a list of names, and went first to the English nurses; +but +finding them all engaged, she ordered the coachman to drive to a +convent +where there was hope that a nursing sister might be procured.</p> + +<p>Their route lay across the Corso. So utterly had the Carnival +with all +its gay follies vanished from her mind, that she was for a +moment +astonished at finding herself entangled in a motley crowd, so +dense +that the coachman was obliged to rein in his horses and stand +still for +some time.</p> + +<p>There were the same masks and dominos, the same picturesque +peasant +costumes which had struck her as so gay and pretty only three +days +before. The same jests and merry laughter filled the air, but +somehow +it all seemed out of tune. The sense of cold, lonely fear that +had +taken possession of her killed all capacity for merriment; +the +apprehension and solicitude of which her heart was full made the +gay +chattering and squeaking of the crowd sound harsh and unfeeling. +The +bright colors affronted her dejection; she did not want to see +them. +She lay back in the carriage, trying to be patient under the +detention, +and half shut her eyes.</p> + +<p>A shower of lime dust aroused her. It came from a party of +burly figures +in white cotton dominos, whose carriage had been stayed by the +crowd +close to her own. She signified by gestures that she had no +<i>confetti</i> +and no protection, that she "was not playing," in fact; but her +appeal +made no difference. The maskers kept on shovelling lime all over +her +hair and person and the carriage, and never tired of the sport +till an +opportune break in the procession enabled their vehicle to move +on.</p> + +<p>Katy was shaking their largesse from her dress and parasol as +well as +she could, when an odd gibbering sound close to her ear, and +the +laughter of the crowd attracted her attention to the back of +the +carriage. A masker attired as a scarlet devil had climbed into +the hood, +and was now perched close behind her. She shook her head at him; +but he +only shook his in return, and chattered and grimaced, and bent +over till +his fiery mask almost grazed her shoulder. There was no hope but +in good +humor, as she speedily realized; and recollecting that in her +shopping-bag one or two of the Carnival bonbons still remained, +she took +these out and offered them in the hope of propitiating him. The +fiend +bit one to insure that it was made of sugar and not lime, while +the +crowd laughed more than ever; then, seeming satisfied, he made +Katy a +little speech in rapid Italian, of which she did not comprehend a +word, +kissed her hand, jumped down from the carriage and disappeared in +the +crowd to her great relief.</p> + +<p>Presently after that the driver spied an opening, of which he +took +advantage. They were across the Corso now, the roar and rush of +the +Carnival dying into silence as they drove rapidly on; and Katy, +as she +finished wiping away the last of the lime dust, wiped some tears +from +her cheeks as well.</p> + +<p>"How hateful it all was!" she said to herself. Then she +remembered a +sentence read somewhere, "How heavily roll the wheels of other +people's +joys when your heart is sorrowful!" and she realized that it is +true.</p> + +<p>The convent was propitious, and promised to send a sister next +morning, +with the proviso that every second day she was to come back to +sleep and +rest. Katy was too thankful for any aid to make objections, and +drove +home with visions of saintly nuns with pure pale faces full of +peace and +resignation, such as she had read of in books, floating before +her eyes.</p> + +<p>Sister Ambrogia, when she appeared next day, did not exactly +realize +these imaginations. She was a plump little person, with rosy +cheeks, a +pair of demure black eyes, and a very obstinate mouth and chin. +It soon +appeared that natural inclination combined with the rules of her +convent +made her theory of a nurse's duties a very limited one.</p> + +<p>If Mrs. Ashe wished her to go down to the office with an +order, she was +told: "We sisters care for the sick; we are not allowed to +converse with +porters and hotel people."</p> + +<p>If Katy suggested that on the way home she should leave a +prescription +at the chemist's, it was: "We sisters are for nursing only; we do +not +visit shops." And when she was asked if she could make beef tea, +she +replied calmly but decisively, "We sisters are not cooks."</p> + +<p>In fact, all that Sister Ambrogia seemed able or willing to +do, beyond +the bathing of Amy's face and brushing her hair, which she +accomplished +handily, was to sit by the bedside telling her rosary, or plying +a +little ebony shuttle in the manufacture of a long strip of +tatting. Even +this amount of usefulness was interfered with by the fact that +Amy, who +by this time was in a semi-delirious condition, had taken an +aversion to +her at the first glance, and was not willing to be left with her +for a +single moment.</p> + +<p>"I won't stay here alone with Sister Embroidery," she would +cry, if her +mother and Katy went into the next room for a moment's rest or a +private +consultation; "I hate Sister Embroidery! Come back, mamma, come +back +this moment! She's making faces at me, and chattering just like +an old +parrot, and I don't understand a word she says. Take Sister +Embroidery +away, mamma, I tell you! Don't you hear me? Come back, I +say!"</p> + +<p>The little voice would be raised to a shrill scream; and Mrs. +Ashe and +Katy, hurrying back, would find Amy sitting up on her pillow with +wet, +scarlet-flushed cheeks and eyes bright with fever, ready to +throw +herself out of bed; while, calm as Mabel, whose curly head lay on +the +pillow beside her little mistress, Sister Ambrogia, unaware of +the +intricacies of the English language, was placidly telling her +beads and +muttering prayers to herself. Some of these prayers, I do not +doubt, +related to Amy's recovery if not to her conversion, and were well +meant; +but they were rather irritating under the circumstances!</p> + + +<a name="c10" id="c10"></a> + +<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2> + + +<p class="cb">CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN.</p> + +<p>When the first shock is over and the inevitable realized and +accepted, +those who tend a long illness are apt to fall into a routine of +life +which helps to make the days seem short. The apparatus of nursing +is got +together. Every day the same things need to be done at the same +hours +and in the same way. Each little appliance is kept at hand; and +sad and +tired as the watchers may be, the very monotony and regularity of +their +proceedings give a certain stay for their thoughts to rest +upon.</p> + +<p>But there was little of this monotony to help Mrs. Ashe and +Katy through +with Amy's illness. Small chance was there for regularity or +exact +system; for something unexpected was always turning up, and +needful +things were often lacking. The most ordinary comforts of the +sick-room, +or what are considered so in America, were hard to come by, and +much of +Katy's time was spent in devising substitutes to take their +places.</p> + +<p>Was ice needed? A pailful of dirty snow would be brought in, +full of +straws, sticks, and other refuse, which had apparently been +scraped from +the surface of the street after a frosty night. Not a particle of +it +could be put into milk or water; all that could be done was to +make the +pail serve the purpose of a refrigerator, and set bowls and +tumblers in +it to chill.</p> + +<p>Was a feeding-cup wanted? It came of a cumbrous and antiquated +pattern, +which the infant Hercules may have enjoyed, but which the modern +Amy +abominated and rejected. Such a thing as a glass tube could not +be found +in all Rome. Bed-rests were unknown. Katy searched in vain for +an +India-rubber hot-water bag.</p> + +<p>But the greatest trial of all was the beef tea. It was Amy's +sole food, +and almost her only medicine; for Dr. Hilary believed in leaving +Nature +pretty much to herself in cases of fever. The kitchen of the +hotel sent +up, under that name, a mixture of grease and hot water, which +could not +be given to Amy at all. In vain Katy remonstrated and explained +the +process. In vain did she go to the kitchen herself to translate +a +carefully written recipe to the cook, and to slip a shining +five-franc +piece in his hand, which it was hoped would quicken his energies +and +soften his heart. In vain did she order private supplies of the +best of +beef from a separate market. The cooks stole the beef and ignored +the +recipe; and day after day the same bottle-full of greasy liquid +came +upstairs, which Amy would not touch, and which would have done +her no +good had she swallowed it all. At last, driven to desperation, +Katy +procured a couple of stout bottles, and every morning slowly +and +carefully cut up two pounds of meat into small pieces, sealed the +bottle +with her own seal ring, and sent it down to be boiled for a +specified +time. This answered better, for the thieving cook dared not +tamper with +her seal; but it was a long and toilsome process, and consumed +more time +than she well knew how to spare,—for there were continual +errands to be +done which no one could attend to but herself, and the +interminable +flights of stairs taxed her strength painfully, and seemed to +grow +longer and harder every day.</p> + +<p>At last a good Samaritan turned up in the shape of an American +lady with +a house of her own, who, hearing of their plight from Mrs. +Sands, +undertook to send each day a supply of strong, perfectly made +beef tea, +from her own kitchen, for Amy's use. It was an inexpressible +relief, and +the lightening of this one particular care made all the rest seem +easier +of endurance.</p> + +<p>Another great relief came, when, after some delay, Dr. Hilary +succeeded +in getting an English nurse to take the places of the +unsatisfactory +Sister Ambrogia and her substitute, Sister Agatha, whom Amy in +her +half-comprehending condition persisted in calling "Sister +Nutmeg +Grater." Mrs. Swift was a tall, wiry, angular person, who seemed +made of +equal parts of iron and whalebone. She was never tired; she could +lift +anybody, do anything; and for sleep she seemed to have a sort +of +antipathy, preferring to sit in an easy-chair and drop off into +little +dozes, whenever it was convenient, to going regularly to bed for +a +night's rest.</p> + +<p>Amy took to her from the first, and the new nurse managed +her +beautifully. No one else could soothe her half so well during +the +delirious period, when the little shrill voice seemed never to be +still, +and went on all day and all night in alternate raving or +screaming or, +what was saddest of all to hear, low pitiful moans. There was +no +shutting in these sounds. People moved out of the rooms below and +on +either side, because they could get no sleep; and till the +arrival of +Nurse Swift, there was no rest for poor Mrs. Ashe, who could not +keep +away from her darling for a moment while that mournful wailing +sounded +in her ears.</p> + +<p>Somehow the long, dry Englishwoman seemed to have a mesmeric +effect on +Amy, who was never quite so violent after she arrived. Katy was +more +thankful for this than can well be told; for her great +underlying +dread—a dread she dared not whisper plainly even to herself—was +that +"Polly dear" might break down before Amy was better, and then +what +<i>should</i> they do?</p> + +<p>She took every care that was possible of her friend. She made +her eat; +she made her lie down. She forced daily doses of quinine and +port-wine +down her throat, and saved her every possible step. But no one, +however +affectionate and willing, could do much to lift the crushing +burden of +care, which was changing Mrs. Ashe's rosy fairness to wan pallor +and +laying such dark shadows under the pretty gray eyes. She had +taken small +thought of looks since Amy's illness. All the little touches +which had +made her toilette becoming, all the crimps and fluffs, had +disappeared; +yet somehow never had she seemed to Katy half so lovely as now in +the +plain black gown which she wore all day long, with her hair +tucked into +a knot behind her ears. Her real beauty of feature and outline +seemed +only enhanced by the rigid plainness of her attire, and the charm +of +true expression grew in her face. Never had Katy admired and +loved her +friend so well as during those days of fatigue and wearing +suspense, or +realized so strongly the worth of her sweetness of temper, +her +unselfishness and power of devoting herself to other people.</p> + +<p>"Polly bears it wonderfully," she wrote her father; "she was +all broken +down for the first day or two, but now her courage and patience +are +surprising. When I think how precious Amy is to her and how +lonely her +life would be if she were to die, I can hardly keep the tears out +of my +eyes. But Polly does not cry. She is quiet and brave and almost +cheerful +all the time, keeping herself busy with what needs to be done; +she never +complains, and she looks—oh, so pretty! I think I never knew how +much +she had in her before."</p> + +<p>All this time no word had come from Lieutenant Worthington. +His sister +had written him as soon as Amy was taken ill, and had twice +telegraphed +since, but no answer had been received, and this strange silence +added +to the sense of lonely isolation and distance from home and help +which +those who encounter illness in a foreign land have to bear.</p> + +<p>So first one week and then another wore themselves away +somehow. The +fever did not break on the fourteenth day, as had been hoped, and +must +run for another period, the doctor said; but its force was +lessened, and +he considered that a favorable sign. Amy was quieter now and did +not +rave so constantly, but she was very weak. All her pretty hair +had been +shorn away, which made her little face look tiny and sharp. +Mabel's +golden wig was sacrificed at the same time. Amy had insisted upon +it, +and they dared not cross her.</p> + +<p>"She has got a fever, too, and it's a great deal badder than +mine is," +she protested. "Her cheeks are as hot as fire. She ought to have +ice on +her head, and how can she when her bang is so thick? Cut it all +off, +every bit, and then I will let you cut mine."</p> + +<p>"You had better give ze child her way," said Dr. Hilary. +"She's in no +state to be fretted with triffles [trifles, the doctor meant], +and in ze +end it will be well; for ze fever infection might harbor in zat +doll's +head as well as elsewhere, and I should have to disinfect it, +which +would be bad for ze skin of her."</p> + +<p>"She isn't a doll," cried Amy, overhearing him; "she's my +child, and you +sha'n't call her names." She hugged Mabel tight in her arms, and +glared +at Dr. Hilary defiantly.</p> + +<p>So Katy with pitiful fingers slashed away at Mabel's blond wig +till her +head was as bare as a billiard-ball; and Amy, quite content, +patted her +child while her own locks were being cut, and murmured, "Perhaps +your +hair will all come out in little round curls, darling, as Johnnie +Carr's +did;" then she fell into one of the quietest sleeps she had yet +had.</p> + +<p>It was the day after this that Katy, coming in from a round of +errands, +found Mrs. Ashe standing erect and pale, with a frightened look +in her +eyes, and her back against Amy's door, as if defending it from +somebody. +Confronting her was Madame Frulini, the <i>padrona</i> of the +hotel. Madame's +cheeks were red, and her eyes bright and fierce; she was +evidently in a +rage about something, and was pouring out a torrent of excited +Italian, +with now and then a French or English word slipped in by way +of +punctuation, and all so rapidly that only a trained ear could +have +followed or grasped her meaning.</p> + +<p>"What is the matter?" asked Katy, in amazement.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Katy, I am so glad you have come," cried poor Mrs. Ashe. +"I can +hardly understand a word that this horrible woman says, but I +think she +wants to turn us out of the hotel, and that we shall take Amy to +some +other place. It would be the death of her,—I know it would. I +never, +never will go, unless the doctor says it is safe. I oughtn't +to,—I +couldn't; she can't make me, can she, Katy?"</p> + +<p>"Madame," said Katy,—and there was a flash in her eyes before +which the +landlady rather shrank,—"what is all this? Why do you come to +trouble +madame while her child is so ill?"</p> + +<p>Then came another torrent of explanation which didn't explain; +but Katy +gathered enough of the meaning to make out that Mrs. Ashe was +quite +correct in her guess, and that Madame Frulini was requesting, +nay, +insisting, that they should remove Amy from the hotel at once. +There +were plenty of apartments to be had now that the Carnival was +over, she +said,—her own cousin had rooms close by,—it could easily be +arranged, +and people were going away from the Del Mondo every day because +there +was fever in the house. Such a thing could not be, it should +not +be,—the landlady's voice rose to a shriek, "the child must +go!"</p> + +<p>"You are a cruel woman," said Katy, indignantly, when she had +grasped +the meaning of the outburst. "It is wicked, it is cowardly, to +come thus +and attack a poor lady under your roof who has so much already to +bear. +It is her only child who is lying in there,—her only one, do +you +understand, madame?—and she is a widow. What you ask might kill +the +child. I shall not permit you or any of your people to enter that +door +till the doctor comes, and then I shall tell him how you have +behaved, +and we shall see what he will say." As she spoke she turned the +key of +Amy's door, took it out and put it in her pocket, then faced +the +<i>padrona</i> steadily, looking her straight in the eyes.</p> + +<p>"Mademoiselle," stormed the landlady, "I give you my word, +four people +have left this house already because of the noises made by little +miss. +More will go. I shall lose my winter's profit,—all of it,—all; +it will +be said there is fever at the Del Mondo,—no one will hereafter +come to +me. There are lodgings plenty, comfortable,—oh, so comfortable! +I will +not have my season ruined by a sickness; no, I will not!"</p> + +<p>Madame Frulini's voice was again rising to a scream.</p> + +<p>"Be silent!" said Katy, sternly; "you will frighten the child. +I am +sorry that you should lose any customers, madame, but the fever +is here +and we are here, and here we must stay till it is safe to go. The +child +shall not be moved till the doctor gives permission. Money is not +the +only thing in the world! Mrs. Ashe will pay anything that is fair +to +make up your losses to you, but you must leave this room now, and +not +return till Dr. Hilary is here."</p> + +<p>Where Katy found French for all these long coherent speeches, +she could +never afterward imagine. She tried to explain it by saying +that +excitement inspired her for the moment, but that as soon as the +moment +was over the inspiration died away and left her as speechless +and +confused as ever. Clover said it made her think of the miracle +of +Balaam; and Katy merrily rejoined that it might be so, and that +no +donkey in any age of the world could possibly have been more +grateful +than was she for the sudden gift of speech.</p> + +<p>"But it is not the money,—it is my prestige," declared the +landlady.</p> + +<p>"Thank Heaven! here is the doctor now," cried Mrs. Ashe.</p> + +<p>The doctor had in fact been standing in the doorway for +several moments +before they noticed him, and had overheard part of the colloquy +with +Madame Frulini. With him was some one else, at the sight of whom +Mrs. +Ashe gave a great sob of relief. It was her brother, at last.</p> + +<p>When Italian meets Italian, then comes the tug of expletive. +It did not +seem to take one second for Dr. Hilary to whirl the +<i>padrona</i> out into +the entry, where they could be heard going at each other like +two +furious cats. Hiss, roll, sputter, recrimination, objurgation! In +five +minutes Madame Frulini was, metaphorically speaking, on her +knees, and +the doctor standing over her with drawn sword, making her take +back +every word she had said and every threat she had uttered.</p> + +<p>"Prestige of thy miserable hotel!" he thundered; "where will +that be +when I go and tell the English and Americans—all of whom I know, +every +one!—how thou hast served a countrywoman of theirs in thy house? +Dost +thou think thy prestige will help thee much when Dr. Hilary has +fixed a +black mark on thy door! I tell thee no; not a stranger shalt thou +have +next year to eat so much as a plate of macaroni under thy base +roof! I +will advertise thy behavior in all the foreign papers,—in +Figaro, in +Galignani, in the Swiss Times, and the English one which is read +by all +the nobility, and the Heraldo of New York, which all Americans +peruse—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, doctor—pardon me—I regret what I said—I am +afflicted—"</p> + +<p>"I will post thee in the railroad stations," continued the +doctor, +implacably; "I will bid my patients to write letters to all +their +friends, warning them against thy flea-ridden Del Mondo; I will +apprise +the steamboat companies at Genoa and Naples. Thou shalt see what +comes +of it,—truly, thou shalt see."</p> + +<p>Having thus reduced Madame Frulini to powder, the doctor +now +condescended to take breath and listen to her appeals for mercy; +and +presently he brought her in with her mouth full of protestations +and +apologies, and assurances that the ladies had mistaken her +meaning, she +had only spoken for the good of all; nothing was further from +her +intention than that they should be disturbed or offended in any +way, and +she and all her household were at the service of "the little sick +angel +of God." After which the doctor dismissed her with an air of +contemptuous tolerance, and laid his hand on the door of Amy's +room. +Behold, it was locked!</p> + +<p>"Oh, I forgot," cried Katy, laughing; and she pulled the key +out of +her pocket.</p> + +<p>"You are a hee-roine, mademoiselle," said Dr. Hilary. "I +watched you as +you faced that tigress, and your eyes were like a swordsman's as +he +regards his enemy's rapier."</p> + +<p>"Oh, she was so brave, and such a help!" said Mrs. Ashe, +kissing her +impulsively. "You can't think how she has stood by me all +through, Ned, +or what a comfort she has been."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I can," said Ned Worthington, with a warm, grateful look +at Katy. +"I can believe anything good of Miss Carr."</p> + +<p>"But where have <i>you</i> been all this time?" said Katy, who +felt this +flood of compliment to be embarrassing; "we have so wondered at +not +hearing from you."</p> + +<p>"I have been off on a ten-days' leave to Corsica for +moufflon-shooting," +replied Mr. Worthington. "I only got Polly's telegrams and +letters day +before yesterday, and I came away as soon as I could get my +leave +extended. It was a most unlucky absence. I shall always regret +it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it is all right now that you have come," his sister said, +leaning +her head on his arm with a look of relief and rest which was good +to +see. "Everything will go better now, I am sure."</p> + +<p>"Katy Carr has behaved like a perfect angel," she told her +brother when +they were alone.</p> + +<p>"She is a trump of a girl. I came in time for part of that +scene with +the landlady, and upon my word she was glorious! I didn't suppose +she +could look so handsome."</p> + +<p>"Have the Pages left Nice yet?" asked his sister, rather +irrelevantly.</p> + +<p>"No,—at least they were there on Thursday, but I think that +they were +to start to-day."</p> + +<p>Mr. Worthington answered carelessly, but his face darkened as +he spoke. +There had been a little scene in Nice which he could not forget. +He was +sitting in the English garden with Lilly and her mother when +his +sister's telegrams were brought to him; and he had read them +aloud, +partly as an explanation for the immediate departure which they +made +necessary and which broke up an excursion just arranged with the +ladies +for the afternoon. It is not pleasant to have plans interfered +with; and +as neither Mrs. Page nor her daughter cared personally for little +Amy, +it is not strange that disappointment at the interruption of +their +pleasure should have been the first impulse with them. Still, +this did +not excuse Lilly's unstudied exclamation of "Oh, bother!" and +though she +speedily repented it as an indiscretion, and was properly +sympathetic, +and "hoped the poor little thing would soon be better," Amy's +uncle +could not forget the jarring impression. It completed a process +of +disenchantment which had long been going on; and as hearts are +sometimes +caught at the rebound, Mrs. Ashe was not so far astray when she +built +certain little dim sisterly hopes on his evident admiration for +Katy's +courage and this sudden awakening to a sense of her good +looks.</p> + +<p>But no space was left for sentiment or match-making while +still Amy's +fate hung in the balance, and all three of them found plenty to +do +during the next fortnight. The fever did not turn on the +twenty-first +day, and another weary week of suspense set in, each day bringing +a +decrease of the dangerous symptoms, but each day as well marking +a +lessening in the childish strength which had been so long and +severely +tested. Amy was quite conscious now, and lay quietly, sleeping a +great +deal and speaking seldom. There was not much to do but to wait +and hope; +but the flame of hope burned low at times, as the little life +flickered +in its socket, and seemed likely to go out like a wind-blown +torch.</p> + +<p>Now and then Lieutenant Worthington would persuade his sister +to go +with him for a few minutes' drive or walk in the fresh air, from +which +she had so long been debarred, and once or twice he prevailed on +Katy +to do the same; but neither of them could bear to be away long +from +Amy's bedside.</p> + +<p>Intimacy grows fast when people are thus united by a common +anxiety, +sharing the same hopes and fears day after day, speaking and +thinking of +the same thing. The gay young officer at Nice, who had counted so +little +in Katy's world, seemed to have disappeared, and the gentle, +considerate, tender-hearted fellow who now filled his place was +quite a +different person in her eyes. Katy began to count on Ned +Worthington as +a friend who could be trusted for help and sympathy and +comprehension, +and appealed to and relied upon in all emergencies. She was quite +at +ease with him now, and asked him to do this and that, to come and +help +her, or to absent himself, as freely as if he had been Dorry or +Phil.</p> + +<p>He, on his part, found this easy intimacy charming. In the +reaction of +his temporary glamour for the pretty Lilly, Katy's very +difference from +her was an added attraction. This difference consisted, as much +as +anything else, in the fact that she was so truly in earnest in +what she +said and did. Had Lilly been in Katy's place, she would probably +have +been helpful to Mrs. Ashe and kind to Amy so far as in her lay; +but the +thought of self would have tinctured all that she did and said, +and the +need of keeping to what was tasteful and becoming would have +influenced +her in every emergency, and never have been absent from her +mind.</p> + +<p>Katy, on the contrary, absorbed in the needs of the moment, +gave little +heed to how she looked or what any one was thinking about her. +Her habit +of neatness made her take time for the one thorough daily +dressing,—the +brushing of hair and freshening of clothes, which were customary +with +her; but, this tax paid to personal comfort, she gave little +further +heed to appearances. She wore an old gray gown, day in and day +out, +which Lilly would not have put on for half an hour without a +large +bribe, so unbecoming was it; but somehow Lieutenant Worthington +grew to +like the gray gown as a part of Katy herself. And if by chance +he +brought a rose in to cheer the dim stillness of the sick-room, +and she +tucked it into her buttonhole, immediately it was as though she +were +decked for conquest. Pretty dresses are very pretty on pretty +people,—they certainly play an important part in this queer +little +world of ours; but depend upon it, dear girls, no woman ever +has +established so distinct and clear a claim on the regard of her +lover as +when he has ceased to notice or analyze what she wears, and just +accepts +it unquestioningly, whatever it is, as a bit of the dear human +life +which has grown or is growing to be the best and most delightful +thing +in the world to him.</p> + +<p>The gray gown played its part during the long anxious night +when they +all sat watching breathlessly to see which way the tide would +turn with +dear little Amy. The doctor came at midnight, and went away to +come +again at dawn. Mrs. Swift sat grim and watchful beside the pillow +of her +charge, rising now and then to feel pulse and skin, or to put a +spoonful +of something between Amy's lips. The doors and windows stood open +to +admit the air. In the outer room all was hushed. A dim Roman +lamp, fed +with olive oil, burned in one corner behind a screen. Mrs. Ashe +lay on +the sofa with her eyes closed, bearing the strain of suspense +in +absolute silence. Her brother sat beside her, holding in his one +of the +hot hands whose nervous twitches alone told of the surgings of +hope and +fear within. Katy was resting in a big chair near by, her wistful +eyes +fixed on Amy's little figure seen in the dim distance, her ears +alert +for every sound from the sick-room.</p> + +<p>So they watched and waited. Now and then Ned Worthington or +Katy would +rise softly, steal on tiptoe to the bedside, and come back to +whisper to +Mrs. Ashe that Amy had stirred or that she seemed to be asleep. +It was +one of the nights which do not come often in a lifetime, and +which +people never forget. The darkness seems full of meaning; the +hush, of +sound. God is beyond, holding the sunrise in his right hand, +holding the +sun of our earthly hopes as well,—will it dawn in sorrow or in +joy? We +dare not ask, we can only wait.</p> + +<p>A faint stir of wind and a little broadening of the light +roused Katy +from a trance of half-understood thoughts. She crept once more +into +Amy's room. Mrs. Swift laid a warning finger on her lips; Amy +was +sleeping, she said with a gesture. Katy whispered the news to the +still +figure on the sofa, then she went noiselessly out of the room. +The great +hotel was fast asleep; not a sound stirred the profound silence +of the +dark halls. A longing for fresh air led her to the roof.</p> + +<p>There was the dawn just tingeing the east. The sky, even thus +early, +wore the deep mysterious blue of Italy. A fresh <i>tramontana</i> +was +blowing, and made Katy glad to draw her shawl about her.</p> + +<p>Far away in the distance rose the Alban Hills above the dim +Campagna, +with the more lofty Sabines beyond, and Soracte, clear cut +against the +sky like a wave frozen in the moment of breaking. Below lay the +ancient +city, with its strange mingling of the old and the new, of past +things +embedded in the present; or is it the present thinly veiling the +rich +and mighty past,—who shall say?</p> + +<p>Faint rumblings of wheels and here and there a curl of smoke +showed that +Rome was waking up. The light insensibly grew upon the darkness. +A pink +flush lit up the horizon. Florio stirred in his lair, stretched +his +dappled limbs, and as the first sun-ray glinted on the roof, +raised +himself, crossed the gravelled tiles with soundless feet, and ran +his +soft nose into Katy's hand. She fondled him for Amy's sake as she +stood +bent over the flower-boxes, inhaling the scent of the mignonette +and +gilly-flowers, with her eyes fixed on the distance; but her heart +was at +home with the sleepers there, and a rush of strong desire stirred +her. +Would this dreary time come to an end presently, and should they +be set +at liberty to go their ways with no heavy sorrow to press them +down, to +be care-free and happy again in their own land?</p> + +<p>A footstep startled her. Ned Worthington was coming over the +roof on +tiptoe as if fearful of disturbing somebody. His face looked +resolute +and excited.</p> + +<p>"I wanted to tell you," he said in a hushed voice, "that the +doctor is +here, and he says Amy has no fever, and with care may be +considered out +of danger."</p> + +<p>"Thank God!" cried Katy, bursting into tears. The long +fatigue, the +fears kept in check so resolutely, the sleepless night just +passed, had +their revenge now, and she cried and cried as if she could never +stop, +but with all the time such joy and gratitude in her heart! She +was +conscious that Ned had his arm round her and was holding both her +hands +tight; but they were so one in the emotion of the moment that it +did not +seem strange.</p> + +<p>"How sweet the sun looks!" she said presently, releasing +herself, with a +happy smile flashing through her tears; "it hasn't seemed really +bright +for ever so long. How silly I was to cry! Where is dear Polly? I +must go +down to her at once. Oh, what does she say?"</p> + + +<a name="c11" id="c11"></a> + +<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2> + +<p class="cb">NEXT.</p> + +<p>Lieut. Worthington's leave had nearly expired. He must rejoin +his +ship; but he waited till the last possible moment in order to +help his +sister through the move to Albano, where it had been decided that +Amy +should go for a few days of hill air before undertaking the +longer +journey to Florence.</p> + +<p>It was a perfect morning in late March when the pale little +invalid was +carried in her uncle's strong arms, and placed in the carriage +which was +to take them to the old town on the mountain slopes which they +had seen +shining from far away for so many weeks past. Spring had come in +her +fairest shape to Italy. The Campagna had lost its brown and tawny +hues +and taken on a tinge of fresher color. The olive orchards were +budding +thickly. Almond boughs extended their dazzling shapes across the +blue +sky. Arums and acanthus and ivy filled every hollow, roses nodded +from +over every gate, while a carpet of violets and cyclamen and +primroses +stretched over the fields and freighted every wandering wind +with +fragrance.</p> + +<p>When once the Campagna with its long line of aqueducts, +arches, and +hoary tombs was left behind, and the carriage slowly began to +mount the +gradual rises of the hill, Amy revived. With every breath of the +fresher +air her eyes seemed to brighten and her voice to grow stronger. +She held +Mabel up to look at the view; and the sound of her laugh, faint +and +feeble as it was, was like music to her mother's ears.</p> + +<p>Amy wore a droll little silk-lined cap on her head, over which +a downy +growth of pale-brown fuzz was gradually thickening. Already it +showed a +tendency to form into tiny rings, which to Amy, who had always +hankered +for curls, was an extreme satisfaction. Strange to say, the same +thing +exactly had happened to Mabel; her hair had grown out into soft +little +round curls also! Uncle Ned and Katy had ransacked Rome for +this +baby-wig, which filled and realized all Amy's hopes for her +child. On +the same excursion they had bought the materials for the pretty +spring +suit which Mabel wore, for it had been deemed necessary to +sacrifice +most of her wardrobe as a concession to possible fever-germs. +Amy +admired the pearl-colored dress and hat, the fringed jacket and +little +lace-trimmed parasol so much, that she was quite consoled for the +loss +of the blue velvet costume and ermine muff which had been the +pride of +her heart ever since they left Paris, and whose destruction they +had +scarcely dared to confess to her.</p> + +<p>So up, up, up, they climbed till the gateway of the old town +was passed, +and the carriage stopped before a quaint building once the +residence of +the Bishop of Albano, but now known as the Hôtel de la +Poste. Here they +alighted, and were shown up a wide and lofty staircase to their +rooms, +which were on the sunny side of the house, and looked across a +walled +garden, where roses and lemon trees grew beside old fountains +guarded by +sculptured lions and heathen divinities with broken noses and a +scant +supply of fingers and toes, to the Campagna, purple with distance +and +stretching miles and miles away to where Rome sat on her seven +hills, +lifting high the Dome of St. Peter's into the illumined air.</p> + +<p>Nurse Swift said that Amy must go to bed at once, and have a +long rest. +But Amy nearly wept at the proposal, and declared that she was +not a bit +tired and couldn't sleep if she went to bed ever so much. The +change of +air had done her good already, and she looked more like herself +than for +many weeks past. They compromised their dispute on a sofa, where +Amy, +well wrapped up, was laid, and where, in spite of her +protestations, she +presently fell asleep, leaving the others free to examine and +arrange +their new quarters.</p> + +<p>Such enormous rooms as they were! It was quite a journey to go +from one +side of them to another. The floors were of stone, with squares +of +carpet laid down over them, which looked absurdly small for the +great +spaces they were supposed to cover. The beds and tables were of +the +usual size, but they seemed almost like doll furniture because +the +chambers were so big. A quaint old paper, with an enormous +pattern of +banyan trees and pagodas, covered the walls, and every now and +then +betrayed by an oblong of regular cracks the existence of a hidden +door, +papered to look exactly like the rest of the wall.</p> + +<p>These mysterious doors made Katy nervous, and she never rested +till she +had opened every one of them and explored the places they led to. +One +gave access to a queer little bathroom. Another led, through a +narrow +dark passage, to a sort of balcony or loggia overhanging the +garden. A +third ended in a dusty closet with an artful chink in it from +which you +could peep into what had been the Bishop's drawing-room but which +was +now turned into the dining-room of the hotel. It seemed made +for +purposes of espial; and Katy had visions of a long line of +reverend +prelates with their ears glued to the chink, overhearing what was +being +said about them in the apartment beyond.</p> + +<p>The most surprising of all she did not discover till she was +going to +bed on the second night after their arrival, when she thought she +knew +all about the mysterious doors and what they led to. A little +unexplained draught of wind made her candle flicker, and betrayed +the +existence of still another door so cunningly hid in the wall +pattern +that she had failed to notice it. She had quite a creepy feeling +as she +drew her dressing-gown about her, took a light, and entered the +narrow +passage into which it opened. It was not a long passage, and +ended +presently in a tiny oratory. There was a little marble altar, +with a +kneeling-step and candlesticks and a great crucifix above. Ends +of wax +candles still remained in the candlesticks, and bunches of dusty +paper +flowers filled the vases which stood on either side of them. A +faded +silk cushion lay on the step. Doubtless the Bishop had often +knelt +there. Katy felt as if she were the first person to enter the +place +since he went away. Her common-sense told her that in a hotel +bedroom +constantly occupied by strangers for years past, some one +<i>must</i> have +discovered the door and found the little oratory before her; +but +common-sense is sometimes less satisfactory than romance. Katy +liked to +think that she was the first, and to "make believe" that no one +else +knew about it; so she did so, and invented legends about the +place which +Amy considered better than any fairy story.</p> + +<p>Before he left them Lieutenant Worthington had a talk with his +sister +in the garden. She rather forced this talk upon him, for +various +things were lying at her heart about which she longed for +explanation; +but he yielded so easily to her wiles that it was evident he was +not +averse to the idea.</p> + +<p>"Come, Polly, don't beat about the bush any longer," he said +at last, +amused and a little irritated at her half-hints and little +feminine +<i>finesses</i>. "I know what you want to ask; and as there's no +use +making a secret of it, I will take my turn in asking. Have I any +chance, +do you think?"</p> + +<p>"Any chance?—about Katy, do you mean? Oh, Ned, you make me so +happy."</p> + +<p>"Yes; about her, of course."</p> + +<p>"I don't see why you should say 'of course,'" remarked his +sister, with +the perversity of her sex, "when it's only five or six weeks ago +that I +was lying awake at night for fear you were being gobbled up by +that +Lilly Page."</p> + +<p>"There was a little risk of it," replied her brother, +seriously. "She's +awfully pretty and she dances beautifully, and the other fellows +were +all wild about her, and—well, you know yourself how such things +go. I +can't see now what it was that I fancied so much about her, I +don't +suppose I could have told exactly at the time; but I can tell +without +the smallest trouble what it is in—the other."</p> + +<p>"In Katy? I should think so," cried Mrs. Ashe, emphatically; +"the two +are no more to be compared than—than—well, bread and syllabub! +You can +live on one, and you can't live on the other."</p> + +<p>"Come, now, Miss Page isn't so bad as that. She is a nice girl +enough, +and a pretty girl too,—prettier than Katy; I'm not so far gone +that I +can't see that. But we won't talk about her, she's not in the +present +question at all; very likely she'd have had nothing to say to me +in any +case. I was only one out of a dozen, and she never gave me reason +to +suppose that she cared more for me than the rest. Let us talk +about this +friend of yours; have I any chance at all, do you think, +Polly?"</p> + +<p>"Ned, you are the dearest boy! I would rather have Katy for a +sister +than any one else I know. She's so nice all through,—so true and +sweet +and satisfactory."</p> + +<p>"She is all that and more; she's a woman to tie to for life, +to be +perfectly sure of always. She would make a splendid wife for any +man. +I'm not half good enough for her; but the question is,—and you +haven't +answered it yet, Polly,—what's my chance?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said his sister, slowly.</p> + +<p>"Then I must ask herself, and I shall do so to-day."</p> + +<p>"I don't know," repeated Mrs. Ashe. "'She is a woman, +therefore to be +won:' and I don't think there is any one ahead of you; that is +the best +hope I have to offer, Ned. Katy never talks of such things; and +though +she's so frank, I can't guess whether or not she ever thinks +about them. +She likes you, however, I am sure of that. But, Ned, it will not +be wise +to say anything to her yet."</p> + +<p>"Not say anything? Why not?"</p> + +<p>"No. Recollect that it is only a little while since she looked +upon you +as the admirer of another girl, and a girl she doesn't like very +much, +though they are cousins. You must give her time to get over +that +impression. Wait awhile; that's my advice, Ned."</p> + +<p>"I'll wait any time if only she will say yes in the end. But +it's hard +to go away without a word of hope, and it's more like a man to +speak +out, it seems to me."</p> + +<p>"It's too soon," persisted his sister. "You don't want her to +think +you a fickle fellow, falling in love with a fresh girl every time +you +go into port, and falling out again when the ship sails. Sailors +have +a bad reputation for that sort of thing. No woman cares to win a +man +like that."</p> + +<p>"Great Scott! I should think not! Do you mean to say that is +the way my +conduct appears to her, Polly?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't mean just that; but wait, dear Ned, I am sure it +is +better."</p> + +<p>Fortified by this sage counsel, Lieutenant Worthington went +away next +morning, without saying anything to Katy in words, though perhaps +eyes +and tones may have been less discreet. He made them promise that +some +one should send a letter every day about Amy; and as Mrs. +Ashe +frequently devolved the writing of these bulletins upon Katy, and +the +replies came in the shape of long letters, she found herself +conducting +a pretty regular correspondence without quite intending it. +Ned +Worthington wrote particularly nice letters. He had the knack, +more +often found in women than men, of giving a picture with a few +graphic +touches, and indicating what was droll or what was characteristic +with +a single happy phrase. His letters grew to be one of Katy's +pleasures; +and sometimes, as Mrs. Ashe watched the color deepen in her +cheeks +while she read, her heart would bound hopefully within her. But +she was +a wise woman in her way, and she wanted Katy for a sister very +much; so +she never said a word or looked a look to startle or surprise +her, but +left the thing to work itself out, which is the best course +always in +love affairs.</p> + +<p>Little Amy's improvement at Albano was something remarkable. +Mrs. Swift +watched over her like a lynx. Her vigilance never relaxed. Amy +was made +to eat and sleep and walk and rest with the regularity of a +machine; and +this exact system, combined with the good air, worked like a +charm. The +little one gained hour by hour. They could absolutely see her +growing +fat, her mother declared. Fevers, when they do not kill, +operate +sometimes as spring bonfires do in gardens, burning up all the +refuse +and leaving the soil free for the growth of fairer things; and +Amy +promised in time to be only the better and stronger for her +hard +experience.</p> + +<p>She had gained so much before the time came to start for +Florence, that +they scarcely dreaded the journey; but it proved worse than +their +expectations. They had not been able to secure a carriage to +themselves, +and were obliged to share their compartment with two English +ladies, and +three Roman Catholic priests, one old, the others young. The +older +priest seemed to be a person of some consequence; for quite a +number of +people came to see him off, and knelt for his blessing devoutly +as the +train moved away. The younger ones Katy guessed to be seminary +students +under his charge. Her chief amusement through the long dusty +journey was +in watching the terrible time that one of these young men was +having +with his own hat. It was a large three-cornered black affair, +with sharp +angles and excessively stiff; and a perpetual struggle seemed to +be +going on between it and its owner, who was evidently unhappy when +it was +on his head and still more unhappy when it was anywhere else. If +he +perched it on his knees it was sure to slide away from him and +fall with +a thump on the floor, whereupon he would pick it up, blushing +furiously +as he did so. Then he would lay it on the seat when the train +stopped at +a station, and jump out with an air of relief; but he invariably +forgot, +and sat down upon it when he returned, and sprang up with a look +of +horror at the loud crackle it made; after which he would tuck it +into +the baggage-rack overhead, from which it would presently +descend, +generally into the lap of one of the staid English ladies, who +would +hand it back to him with an air of deep offence, remarking to +her +companion,—</p> + +<p>"I never knew anything like it. Fancy! that makes four times +that hat +has fallen on me. The young man is a feedgit! He's the most +feegitty +creature I ever saw in my life."</p> + +<p>The young <i>seminariat</i> did not understand a word she +said; but the +tone needed no interpreter, and set him to blushing more +painfully than +ever. Altogether, the hat was never off his mind for a moment. +Katy +could see that he was thinking about it, even when he was +thumbing his +Breviary and making believe to read.</p> + +<p>At last the train, steaming down the valley of the Arno, +revealed fair +Florence sitting among olive-clad hills, with Giotto's +beautiful +Bell-tower, and the great, many-colored, soft-hued Cathedral, and +the +square tower of the old Palace, and the quaint bridges over the +river, +looking exactly as they do in the photographs; and Katy would +have felt +delighted, in spite of dust and fatigue, had not Amy looked so +worn out +and exhausted. They were seriously troubled about her, and for +the +moment could think of nothing else. Happily the fatigue did no +permanent +harm, and a day or two of rest made her all right again. By +good +fortune, a nice little apartment in the modern quarter of the +city had +been vacated by its winter occupants the very day of their +arrival, and +Mrs. Ashe secured it for a month, with all its conveniences +and +advantages, including a maid named Maria, who had been servant to +the +just departed tenants.</p> + +<p>Maria was a very tall woman, at least six feet two, and had a +splendid +contralto voice, which she occasionally exercised while busy over +her +pots and pans. It was so remarkable to hear these grand arias +and +recitatives proceeding from a kitchen some eight feet square, +that Katy +was at great pains to satisfy her curiosity about it. By aid of +the +dictionary and much persistent questioning, she made out that +Maria in +her youth had received a partial training for the opera; but in +the end +it was decided that she was too big and heavy for the stage, and +the +poor "giantess," as Amy named her, had been forced to abandon +her +career, and gradually had sunk to the position of a +maid-of-all-work. +Katy suspected that heaviness of mind as well as of body must +have stood +in her way; for Maria, though a good-natured giantess, was by no +means +quick of intelligence.</p> + +<p>"I do think that the manner in which people over here can make +homes for +themselves at five minutes' notice is perfectly delightful," +cried Katy, +at the end of their first day's housekeeping. "I wish we could do +the +same in America. How cosy it looks here already!"</p> + +<p>It was indeed cosy. Their new domain consisted of a parlor in +a corner, +furnished in bright yellow brocade, with windows to south and +west; a +nice little dining-room; three bedrooms, with dimity-curtained +beds; a +square entrance hall, lighted at night by a tall slender brass +lamp +whose double wicks were fed with olive oil; and the aforesaid +tiny +kitchen, behind which was a sleeping cubby, quite too small to be +a good +fit for the giantess. The rooms were full of +conveniences,—easy-chairs, +sofas, plenty of bureaus and dressing-tables, and corner +fireplaces like +Franklin stoves, in which odd little fires burned on cool days, +made of +pine cones, cakes of pressed sawdust exactly like Boston brown +bread cut +into slices, and a few sticks of wood thriftily adjusted, for +fuel is +worth its weight in gold in Florence. Katy's was the smallest of +the +bedrooms, but she liked it best of all for the reason that its +one big +window opened on an iron balcony over which grew a Banksia +rose-vine +with a stem as thick as her wrist. It was covered just now with +masses +of tiny white blossoms, whose fragrance was inexpressibly +delicious and +made every breath drawn in their neighborhood a delight. The +sun +streamed in on all sides of the little apartment, which filled +a +narrowing angle at the union of three streets; and from one +window and +another, glimpses could be caught of the distant heights about +the +city,—San Miniato in one direction, Bellosguardo in another, and +for +the third the long olive-hung ascent of Fiesole, crowned by its +gray +cathedral towers.</p> + +<p>It was astonishing how easily everything fell into train about +the +little establishment. Every morning at six the English baker left +two +small sweet brown loaves and a dozen rolls at the door. Then +followed +the dairyman with a supply of tiny leaf-shaped pats of freshly +churned +butter, a big flask of milk, and two small bottles of thick +cream, with +a twist of vine leaf in each by way of a cork. Next came a +<i>contadino</i> +with a flask of red Chianti wine, a film of oil floating on top +to keep +it sweet. People in Florence must drink wine, whether they like +it or +not, because the lime-impregnated water is unsafe for use without +some +admixture.</p> + +<p>Dinner came from a <i>trattoria</i>, in a tin box, with a pan +of coals inside +to keep it warm, which box was carried on a man's head. It was +furnished +at a fixed price per day,—a soup, two dishes of meat, two +vegetables, +and a sweet dish; and the supply was so generous as always to +leave +something toward next day's luncheon. Salad, fruit, and fresh +eggs Maria +bought for them in the old market. From the confectioners came +loaves of +<i>pane santo</i>, a sort of light cake made with arrowroot +instead of flour; +and sometimes, by way of treat, a square of <i>pan forte da +Siena</i>, +compounded of honey, almonds, and chocolate,—a mixture as +pernicious +as it is delicious, and which might take a medal anywhere for the +sure +production of nightmares.</p> + +<p>Amy soon learned to know the shops from which these delicacies +came. +She had her favorites, too, among the strolling merchants who +sold +oranges and those little sweet native figs, dried in the sun +without +sugar, which are among the specialties of Florence. They, in +their +turn, learned to know her and to watch for the appearance of her +little +capped head and Mabel's blond wig at the window, lingering about +till +she came, and advertising their wares with musical modulations, +so +appealing that Amy was always running to Katy, who acted as +housekeeper, to beg her to please buy this or that, "because it +is my +old man, and he wants me to so much."</p> + +<p>"But, chicken, we have plenty of figs for to-day."</p> + +<p>"No matter; get some more, please do. I'll eat them all; +really, I +will."</p> + +<p>And Amy was as good as her word. Her convalescent appetite was +something +prodigious.</p> + +<p>There was another branch of shopping in which they all took +equal +delight. The beauty and the cheapness of the Florence flowers are +a +continual surprise to a stranger. Every morning after breakfast +an old +man came creaking up the two long flights of stairs which led to +Mrs. +Ashe's apartment, tapped at the door, and as soon as it opened, +inserted +a shabby elbow and a large flat basket full of flowers. Such +flowers! +Great masses of scarlet and cream-colored tulips, and white and +gold +narcissus, knots of roses of all shades, carnations, heavy-headed +trails +of wistaria, wild hyacinths, violets, deep crimson and orange +ranunculus, <i>giglios</i>, or wild irises,—the Florence emblem, +so deeply +purple as to be almost black,—anemones, spring-beauties, faintly +tinted +wood-blooms tied in large loose nosegays, ivy, fruit +blossoms,—everything that can be thought of that is fair and +sweet. +These enticing wares the old man would tip out on the table. Mrs. +Ashe +and Katy would select what they wanted, and then the process +of +bargaining would begin, without which no sale is complete in +Italy. The +old man would name an enormous price, five times as much as he +hoped to +get. Katy would offer a very small one, considerably less than +she +expected to give. The old man would dance with dismay, wring his +hands, +assure them that he should die of hunger and all his family with +him if +he took less than the price named; he would then come down half a +franc +in his demand. So it would go on for five minutes, ten, sometimes +for a +quarter of an hour, the old man's price gradually descending, and +Katy's +terms very slowly going up, a cent or two at a time. Next the +giantess +would mingle with the fray. She would bounce out of her kitchen, +berate +the flower-vender, snatch up his flowers, declare that they smelt +badly, +fling them down again, pouring out all the while a voluble tirade +of +reproaches and revilings, and looking so enormous in her +excitement that +Katy wondered that the old man dared to answer her at all. +Finally, +there would be a sudden lull. The old man would shrug his +shoulders, and +remarking that he and his wife and his aged grandmother must go +without +bread that day since it was the Signora's will, take the money +offered +and depart, leaving such a mass of flowers behind him that Katy +would +begin to think that they had paid an unfair price for them and to +feel a +little rueful, till she observed that the old man was absolutely +dancing +downstairs with rapture over the good bargain he had made, and +that +Maria was black with indignation over the extravagance of her +ladies!</p> + +<p>"The Americani are a nation of spend-thrifts," she would +mutter to +herself, as she quickened the charcoal in her droll little range +by +fanning it with a palm-leaf fan; "they squander money like water. +Well, +all the better for us Italians!" with a shrug of her +shoulders.</p> + +<p>"But, Maria, it was only sixteen cents that we paid, and look +at those +flowers! There are at least half a bushel of them."</p> + +<p>"Sixteen cents for garbage like that! The Signorina would +better let me +make her bargains for her. <i>Già! Già!</i> No +Italian lady would have paid +more than eleven sous for such useless <i>roba</i>. It is evident +that the +Signorina's countrymen eat gold when at home, they think so +little of +casting it away!"</p> + +<p>Altogether, what with the comfort and quiet of this little +home, the +numberless delightful things that there were to do and to see, +and +Viessieux's great library, from which they could draw books at +will +to make the doing and seeing more intelligible, the month at +Florence passed only too quickly, and was one of the times to +which +they afterward looked back with most pleasure. Amy grew +steadily +stronger, and the freedom from anxiety about her after their +long +strain of apprehension was restful and healing beyond expression +to +both mind and body.</p> + +<p>Their very last excursion of all, and one of the pleasantest, +was to the +old amphitheatre at Fiesole; and it was while they sat there in +the soft +glow of the late afternoon, tying into bunches the violets which +they +had gathered from under walls whose foundations antedate Rome +itself, +that a cheery call sounded from above, and an unexpected +surprise +descended upon them in the shape of Lieutenant Worthington, who +having +secured another fifteen days' furlough, had come to take his +sister on +to Venice.</p> + +<p>"I didn't write you that I had applied for leave," he +explained, +"because there seemed so little chance of my getting off again so +soon; +but as luck had it, Carruthers, whose turn it was, sprained his +ankle +and was laid up, and the Commodore let us exchange. I made all +the +capital I could out of Amy's fever; but upon my word, I felt like +a +humbug when I came upon her and Mrs. Swift in the Cascine just +now, as I +was hunting for you. How she has picked up! I should never have +known +her for the same child."</p> + +<p>"Yes, she seems perfectly well again, and as strong as before +she had +the fever, though that dear old Goody Swift is just as careful of +her as +ever. She would not let us bring her here this afternoon, for +fear we +should stay out till the dew fell. Ned, it is perfectly +delightful that +you were able to come. It makes going to Venice seem quite a +different +thing, doesn't it, Katy?"</p> + +<p>"I don't want it to seem quite different, because going to +Venice was +always one of my dreams," replied Katy, with a little laugh.</p> + +<p>"I hope at least it doesn't make it seem less pleasant," said +Mr. +Worthington, as his sister stopped to pick a violet.</p> + +<p>"No, indeed, I am glad," said Katy; "we shall all be seeing it +for +the first time, too, shall we not? I think you said you had +never +been there." She spoke simply and frankly, but she was conscious +of +an odd shyness.</p> + +<p>"I simply couldn't stand it any longer," Ned Worthington +confided to his +sister when they were alone. "My head is so full of her that I +can't +attend to my work, and it came to me all of a sudden that this +might be +my last chance. You'll be getting north before long, you know, +to +Switzerland and so on, where I cannot follow you. So I made a +clean +breast of it to the Commodore; and the good old fellow, who has a +soft +spot in his heart for a love-story, behaved like a brick, and +made it +all straight for me to come away."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ashe did not join in these commendations of the +Commodore; her +attention was fixed on another part of her brother's +discourse.</p> + +<p>"Then you won't be able to come to me again? I sha'n't see you +again +after this!" she exclaimed. "Dear me! I never realized that +before. What +shall I do without you?"</p> + +<p>"You will have Miss Carr. She is a host in herself," suggested +Ned +Worthington. His sister shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Katy is a jewel," she remarked presently; "but somehow one +wants a man +to call upon. I shall feel lost without you, Ned."</p> + +<p>The month's housekeeping wound up that night with a "thick +tea" in honor +of Lieutenant Worthington's arrival, which taxed all the +resources of +the little establishment. Maria was sent out hastily to buy +<i>pan forte +da Siena</i> and <i>vino d'Asti</i>, and fresh eggs for an +omelette, and +chickens' breasts smothered in cream from the restaurant, and +artichokes +for a salad, and flowers to garnish all; and the guest ate and +praised +and admired; and Amy and Mabel sat on his knee and explained +everything +to him, and they were all very happy together. Their merriment +was so +infectious that it extended to the poor giantess, who had been +very +pensive all day at the prospect of losing her good place, and who +now +raised her voice in the grand aria from "Orfeo," and made the +kitchen +ring with the passionate demand "Che farò senza Eurydice?" +The splendid +notes, full of fire and lamentation, rang out across the +saucepans as +effectively as if they had been footlights; and Katy, rising +softly, +opened the kitchen door a little way that they might not lose a +sound.</p> + +<p>The next day brought them to Venice. It was a "moment," +indeed, as Katy +seated herself for the first time in a gondola, and looked from +beneath +its black hood at the palace walls on the Grand Canal, past which +they +were gliding. Some were creamy white and black, some +orange-tawny, +others of a dull delicious ruddy color, half pink, half red; but +all, in +build and ornament, were unlike palaces elsewhere. High on the +prow +before her stood the gondolier, his form defined in dark outline +against +the sky, as he swayed and bent to his long oar, raising his head +now and +again to give a wild musical cry, as warning to other +approaching +gondolas. It was all like a dream. Ned Worthington sat beside +her, +looking more at the changes in her expressive face than at the +palaces. +Venice was as new to him as to Katy; but she was a new feature in +his +life also, and even more interesting than Venice. They seemed to +float +on pleasures for the next ten days. Their arrival had been +happily timed +to coincide with a great popular festival which for nearly a week +kept +Venice in a state of continual brilliant gala. All the days were +spent +on the water, only landing now and then to look at some famous +building +or picture, or to eat ices in the Piazza with the lovely +façade of St. +Mark's before them. Dining or sleeping seemed a sheer waste of +time! The +evenings were spent on the water too; for every night, +immediately after +sunset, a beautiful drifting pageant started from the front of +the +Doge's Palace to make the tour of the Grand Canal, and our +friends +always took a part in it. In its centre went a barge hung +with +embroideries and filled with orange trees and musicians. This +was +surrounded by a great convoy of skiffs and gondolas bearing +colored +lanterns and pennons and gay awnings, and managed by gondoliers +in +picturesque uniforms. All these floated and shifted and swept +on +together with a sort of rhythmic undulation as if keeping time to +the +music, while across their path dazzling showers and arches of +colored +fire poured from the palace fronts and the hotels. Every movement +of the +fairy flotilla was repeated in the illuminated water, every +torch-tip +and scarlet lantern and flake of green or rosy fire; above all +the +bright full moon looked down as if surprised. It was magically +beautiful +in effect. Katy felt as if her previous sober ideas about life +and +things had melted away. For the moment the world was turned +topsy-turvy. +There was nothing hard or real or sordid left in it; it was just +a fairy +tale, and she was in the middle of it as she had longed to be in +her +childhood. She was the Princess, encircled by delights, as when +she and +Clover and Elsie played in "Paradise,"—only, this was better; +and, dear +me! who was this Prince who seemed to belong to the story and to +grow +more important to it every day?</p> + +<p>Fairy tales must come to ending. Katy's last CHAPTER closed +with a +sudden turn-over of the leaf when, toward the end of this +happy +fortnight, Mrs. Ashe came into her room with the face of one who +has +unpleasant news to communicate.</p> + +<p>"Katy," she began, "should you be <i>awfully</i> disappointed, +should +you consider me a perfect wretch, if I went home now instead of +in +the autumn?"</p> + +<p>Katy was too much astonished to reply.</p> + +<p>"I am grown such a coward, I am so knocked up and weakened by +what I +suffered in Rome, that I find I cannot face the idea of going on +to +Germany and Switzerland alone, without Ned to take care of me. +You are a +perfect angel, dear, and I know that you would do all you could +to make +it easy for me, but I am such a fool that I do not dare. I think +my +nerves must have given way," she continued half tearfully; "but +the very +idea of shifting for myself for five months longer makes me so +miserably +homesick that I cannot endure it. I dare say I shall repent +afterward, +and I tell myself now how silly it is; but it's no use,—I shall +never +know another easy moment till I have Amy safe again in America +and under +your father's care."</p> + +<p>"I find," she continued after another little pause, "that we +can go down +with Ned to Genoa and take a steamer there which will carry us +straight +to New York without any stops. I hate to disappoint you +dreadfully, +Katy, but I have almost decided to do it. Shall you mind very +much? Can +you ever forgive me?" She was fairly crying now.</p> + +<p>Katy had to swallow hard before she could answer, the sense +of +disappointment was so sharp; and with all her efforts there was +almost a +sob in her voice as she said,—</p> + +<p>"Why yes, indeed, dear Polly, there is nothing to forgive. You +are +perfectly right to go home if you feel so." Then with another +swallow +she added: "You have given me the loveliest six months' treat +that ever +was, and I should be a greedy girl indeed if I found fault +because it is +cut off a little sooner than we expected."</p> + +<p>"You are so dear and good not to be vexed," said her friend, +embracing +her. "It makes me feel doubly sorry about disappointing you. +Indeed I +wouldn't if I could help it, but I simply can't. I <i>must</i> go +home. +Perhaps we'll come back some day when Amy is grown up, or safely +married +to somebody who will take good care of her!"</p> + +<p>This distant prospect was but a poor consolation for the +immediate +disappointment. The more Katy thought about it the sorrier did +she feel. +It was not only losing the chance—very likely the only one she +would +ever have—of seeing Switzerland and Germany; it was all sorts of +other +little things besides. They must go home in a strange ship with +a +captain they did not know, instead of in the "Spartacus," as they +had +planned; and they should land in New York, where no one would be +waiting +for them, and not have the fun of sailing into Boston Bay and +seeing +Rose on the wharf, where she had promised to be. Furthermore, +they must +pass the hot summer in Burnet instead of in the cool Alpine +valleys; and +Polly's house was let till October. She and Amy would have to +shift for +themselves elsewhere. Perhaps they would not be in Burnet at all. +Oh +dear, what a pity it was! what a dreadful pity!</p> + +<p>Then, the first shock of surprise and discomfiture over, other +ideas +asserted themselves; and as she realized that in three weeks +more, or +four at the longest, she was to see papa and Clover and all her +dear +people at home, she began to feel so very glad that she could +hardly +wait for the time to come. After all, there was nothing in Europe +quite +so good as that.</p> + +<p>"No, I'm not sorry," she told herself; "I am glad. Poor Polly! +it's no +wonder she feels nervous after all she has gone through. I hope I +wasn't +cross to her! And it will be <i>very</i> nice to have Lieutenant +Worthington +to take care of us as far as Genoa."</p> + +<p>The next three days were full of work. There was no more +floating in +gondolas, except in the way of business. All the shopping which +they had +put off must be done, and the trunks packed for the voyage. Every +one +recollected last errands and commissions; there was continual +coming and +going and confusion, and Amy, wild with excitement, popping up +every +other moment in the midst of it all, to demand of everybody if +they were +not glad that they were going back to America.</p> + +<p>Katy had never yet bought her gift from old Mrs. Redding. She +had +waited, thinking continually that she should see something more +tempting +still in the next place they went to; but now, with the sense +that there +were to be no more "next places," she resolved to wait no longer, +and +with a hundred francs in her pocket, set forth to choose +something from +among the many tempting things for sale in the Piazza. A bracelet +of old +Roman coins had caught her fancy one day in a bric-à-brac +shop, and she +walked straight toward it, only pausing by the way to buy a pale +blue +iridescent pitcher at Salviate's for Cecy Slack, and see it +carefully +rolled in seaweed and soft paper.</p> + +<p>The price of the bracelet was a little more than she expected, +and quite +a long process of bargaining was necessary to reduce it to the +sum she +had to spend. She had just succeeded and was counting out the +money when +Mrs. Ashe and her brother appeared, having spied her from the +opposite +side of the Piazza, where they were choosing last photographs at +Naga's. +Katy showed her purchase and explained that it was a present; +"for of +course I should never walk out in cold blood and buy a bracelet +for +myself," she said with a laugh.</p> + +<p>"This is a fascinating little shop," said Mrs. Ashe. "I +wonder +what is the price of that queer old chatelaine with the +bottles +hanging from it."</p> + +<p>The price was high; but Mrs. Ashe was now tolerably conversant +with +shopping Italian, which consists chiefly of a few words repeated +many +times over, and it lowered rapidly under the influence of her +<i>troppo's</i> +and <i>è molto caro's</i>, accompanied with telling little +shrugs and looks +of surprise. In the end she bought it for less than two thirds of +what +had been originally asked for it. As she put the parcel in her +pocket, +her brother said,—</p> + +<p>"If you have done your shopping now, Polly, can't you come out +for a +last row?"</p> + +<p>"Katy may, but I can't," replied Mrs. Ashe. "The man promised +to bring +me gloves at six o'clock, and I must be there to pay for them. +Take +her down to the Lido, Ned. It's an exquisite evening for the +water, +and the sunset promises to be delicious. You can take the time, +can't +you, Katy?"</p> + +<p>Katy could.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ashe turned to leave them, but suddenly stopped +short.</p> + +<p>"Katy, look! Isn't that a picture!"</p> + +<p>The "picture" was Amy, who had come to the Piazza with Mrs. +Swift, to +feed the doves of St. Mark's, which was one of her favorite +amusements. +These pretty birds are the pets of all Venice, and so accustomed +to +being fondled and made much of by strangers, that they are +perfectly +tame. Amy, when her mother caught sight of her, was sitting on +the +marble pavement, with one on her shoulder, two perched on the +edge of +her lap, which was full of crumbs, and a flight of others +circling round +her head. She was looking up and calling them in soft tones. +The +sunlight caught the little downy curls on her head and made +them +glitter. The flying doves lit on the pavement, and crowded round +her, +their pearl and gray and rose-tinted and white feathers, their +scarlet +feet and gold-ringed eyes, making a shifting confusion of colors, +as +they hopped and fluttered and cooed about the little maid, +unstartled +even by her clear laughter. Close by stood Nurse Swift, observant +and +grimly pleased.</p> + +<p>The mother looked on with happy tears in her eyes. "Oh, Katy, +think +what she was a few weeks ago and look at her now! Can I ever +be +thankful enough?"</p> + +<p>She squeezed Katy's hand convulsively and walked away, turning +her head +now and then for another glance at Amy and the doves; while Ned +and Katy +silently crossed to the landing and got into a gondola. It was +the +perfection of a Venice evening, with silver waves lapsing and +lulling +under a rose and opal sky; and the sense that it was their last +row on +those enchanted waters made every moment seem doubly +precious.</p> + +<p>I cannot tell you exactly what it was that Ned Worthington +said to Katy +during that row, or why it took so long to say it that they did +not get +in till after the sun was set, and the stars had come out to peep +at +their bright, glinting faces, reflected in the Grand Canal. In +fact, no +one can tell; for no one overheard, except Giacomo, the brown +yellow-jacketed gondolier, and as he did not understand a word +of +English he could not repeat the conversation. Venetian boatmen, +however, +know pretty well what it means when a gentleman and lady, both +young, +find so much to say in low tones to each other under the gondola +hood, +and are so long about giving the order to return; and Giacomo, +deeply +sympathetic, rowed as softly and made himself as imperceptible as +he +could,—a display of tact which merited the big silver piece with +which +Lieutenant Worthington "crossed his palm" on landing.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ashe had begun to look for them long before they +appeared, but I +think she was neither surprised nor sorry that they were so late. +Katy +kissed her hastily and went away at once,—"to pack," she +said,—and +Ned was equally undemonstrative; but they looked so happy, both +of them, +that "Polly dear" was quite satisfied and asked no questions.</p> + +<p>Five days later the parting came, when the "Florio" steamer +put into the +port of Genoa for passengers. It was not an easy good-by to say. +Mrs. +Ashe and Amy both cried, and Mabel was said to be in deep +affliction +also. But there were alleviations. The squadron was coming home +in the +autumn, and the officers would have leave to see their friends, +and of +course Lieutenant Worthington must come to Burnet—to visit his +sister. +Five months would soon go, he declared; but for all the +cheerful +assurance, his face was rueful enough as he held Katy's hand in a +long +tight clasp while the little boat waited to take him ashore.</p> + +<p>After that it was just a waiting to be got through with till +they +sighted Sandy Hook and the Neversinks,—a waiting varied with +peeps at +Marseilles and Gibraltar and the sight of a whale or two and one +distant +iceberg. The weather was fair all the way, and the ocean smooth. +Amy was +never weary of lamenting her own stupidity in not having taken +Maria +Matilda out of confinement before they left Venice.</p> + +<p>"That child has hardly been out of the trunk since we +started," she +said. "She hasn't seen anything except a little bit of Nice. I +shall +really be ashamed when the other children ask her about it. I +think I +shall play that she was left at boarding-school and didn't come +to +Europe at all! Don't you think that would be the best way, +mamma?"</p> + +<p>"You might play that she was left in the States-prison for +having done +something naughty," suggested Katy; but Amy scouted this +idea.</p> + +<p>"She never does naughty things," she said, "because she never +does +anything at all. She's just stupid, poor child! It's not her +fault."</p> + +<p>The thirty-six hours between New York and Burnet seemed longer +than all +the rest of the journey put together, Katy thought. But they +ended at +last, as the "Lake Queen" swung to her moorings at the familiar +wharf, +where Dr. Carr stood surrounded with all his boys and girls just +as they +had stood the previous October, only that now there were no +clouds on +anybody's face, and Johnnie was skipping up and down for joy +instead of +grief. It was a long moment while the plank was being lowered +from the +gangway; but the moment it was in place, Katy darted across, +first +ashore of all the passengers, and was in her father's arms.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ashe and Amy spent two or three days with them, while +looking up +temporary quarters elsewhere; and so long as they stayed all +seemed a +happy confusion of talking and embracing and exclaiming, and +distributing of gifts. After they went away things fell into +their +customary train, and a certain flatness became apparent. +Everything had +happened that could happen. The long-talked-of European journey +was +over. Here was Katy at home again, months sooner than they +expected; yet +she looked remarkably cheerful and content! Clover could not +understand +it; she was likewise puzzled to account for one or two +private +conversations between Katy and papa in which she had not been +invited to +take part, and the occasional arrival of a letter from "foreign +parts" +about whose contents nothing was said.</p> + +<p>"It seems a dreadful pity that you had to come so soon," she +said one +day when they were alone in their bedroom. "It's delightful to +have you, +of course; but we had braced ourselves to do without you till +October, +and there are such lots of delightful things that you could have +been +doing and seeing at this moment."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, indeed," replied Katy, but not at all as if she +were +particularly disappointed.</p> + +<p>"Katy Carr, I don't understand you," persisted Clover. "Why +don't you +feel worse about it? Here you have lost five months of the +most +splendid time you ever had, and you don't seem to mind it a bit! +Why, +if I were in your place my heart would be perfectly broken. And +you +needn't have come, either; that's the worst of it. It was just a +whim +of Polly's. Papa says Amy might have stayed as well as not. Why +aren't +you sorrier, Katy?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because I had so much as it +was,—enough to +last all my life, I think, though I <i>should</i> like to go +again. You can't +imagine what beautiful pictures are put away in my memory."</p> + +<p>"I don't see that you had so awfully much," said the +aggravated Clover; +"you were there only a little more than six months,—for I don't +count +the sea,—and ever so much of that time was taken up with nursing +Amy. +You can't have any pleasant pictures of <i>that</i> part of +it."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I have, some."</p> + +<p>"Well, I should really like to know what. There you were in a +dark room, +frightened to death and tired to death, with only Mrs. Ashe and +the old +nurse to keep you company—Oh, yes, that brother was there part +of the +time; I forgot him—"</p> + +<p>Clover stopped short in sudden amazement. Katy was standing +with her +back toward her, smoothing her hair, but her face was reflected +in the +glass. At Clover's words a sudden deep flush had mounted in +Katy's +cheeks. Deeper and deeper it burned as she became conscious of +Clover's +astonished gaze, till even the back of her neck was pink. Then, +as if +she could not bear it any longer, she put the brush down, turned, +and +fled out of the room; while Clover, looking after her, exclaimed +in a +tone of sudden comical dismay,—</p> + +<p>"What does it mean? Oh, dear me! is that what Katy is going to +do next?"</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What Katy Did Next, by Susan Coolidge + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT KATY DID NEXT *** + +***** This file should be named 8995-h.htm or 8995-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/8/9/9/8995/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles +Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: What Katy Did Next + +Author: Susan Coolidge + +Posting Date: January 31, 2012 [EBook #8995] +Release Date: September, 2005 +First Posted: August 31, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT KATY DID NEXT *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles +Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: She paid a visit to the little garden. +FRONTISPIECE.] + + +WHAT KATY DID NEXT + +BY + +SUSAN COOLIDGE + + + +This Story is Dedicated + +TO + +THE MANY LITTLE GIRLS + +(SOME OF THEM GROWN TO BE GREAT GIRLS NOW), + +_Who, during the last twelve years, have begged that something +more might be told them about KATY CARR, and what she did after +leaving school._ + + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + +I. AN UNEXPECTED GUEST + +II. AN INVITATION + +III. ROSE AND ROSEBUD + +IV. ON THE "SPARTACUS" + +V. STORY-BOOK ENGLAND + +VI. ACROSS THE CHANNEL + +VII. THE PENSION SUISSE + +VIII. ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES + +IX. A ROMAN HOLIDAY + +X. CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN + +XI. NEXT + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +SHE PAID A VISIT TO THE LITTLE GARDEN + +"SHE WAS HAVING THE MEASLES ON THE +BACK SHELF OF THE CLOSET, YOU KNOW" + +KATY WAS FEEDING GRETCHEN OUT OF A BIG +BOWL FULL OF BREAD AND MILK + +AMY WAS LEFT IN PEACE WITH HER FAWN + + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +AN UNEXPECTED GUEST. + + +The September sun was glinting cheerfully into a pretty bedroom +furnished with blue. It danced on the glossy hair and bright eyes of two +girls, who sat together hemming ruffles for a white muslin dress. The +half-finished skirt of the dress lay on the bed; and as each crisp +ruffle was completed, the girls added it to the snowy heap, which looked +like a drift of transparent clouds or a pile of foamy white-of-egg +beaten stiff enough to stand alone. + +These girls were Clover and Elsie Carr, and it was Clover's first +evening dress for which they were hemming ruffles. It was nearly two +years since a certain visit made by Johnnie to Inches Mills, of which +some of you have read in "Nine Little Goslings;" and more than three +since Clover and Katy had returned home from the boarding-school at +Hillsover. + +Clover was now eighteen. She was a very small Clover still, but it would +have been hard to find anywhere a prettier little maiden than she had +grown to be. Her skin was so exquisitely fair that her arms and wrists +and shoulders, which were round and dimpled like a baby's, seemed cut +out of daisies or white rose leaves. Her thick, brown hair waved and +coiled gracefully about her head. Her smile was peculiarly sweet; and +the eyes, always Clover's chief beauty, had still that pathetic look +which made them irresistible to tender-hearted people. + +Elsie, who adored Clover, considered her as beautiful as girls in +books, and was proud to be permitted to hem ruffles for the dress in +which she was to burst upon the world. Though, as for that, not much +"bursting" was possible in Burnet, where tea-parties of a middle-aged +description, and now and then a mild little dance, represented "gayety" +and "society." Girls "came out" very much, as the sun comes out in the +morning,--by slow degrees and gradual approaches, with no particular +one moment which could be fixed upon as having been the crisis of the +joyful event. + +"There," said Elsie, adding another ruffle to the pile on the +bed,--"there's the fifth done. It's going to be ever so pretty, I think. +I'm glad you had it all white; it's a great deal nicer." + +"Cecy wanted me to have a blue bodice and sash," said Clover, "but I +wouldn't. Then she tried to persuade me to get a long spray of pink +roses for the skirt." + +"I'm so glad you didn't! Cecy was always crazy about pink roses. I only +wonder she didn't wear them when she was married!" + +Yes; the excellent Cecy, who at thirteen had announced her intention to +devote her whole life to teaching Sunday School, visiting the poor, and +setting a good example to her more worldly contemporaries, had actually +forgotten these fine resolutions, and before she was twenty had become +the wife of Sylvester Slack, a young lawyer in a neighboring town! +Cecy's wedding and wedding-clothes, and Cecy's house-furnishing had been +the great excitement of the preceding year in Burnet; and a fresh +excitement had come since in the shape of Cecy's baby, now about two +months old, and named "Katherine Clover," after her two friends. This +made it natural that Cecy and her affairs should still be of interest in +the Carr household; and Johnnie, at the time we write of, was making her +a week's visit. + +"She _was_ rather wedded to them," went on Clover, pursuing the subject +of the pink roses. "She was almost vexed when I wouldn't buy the spray. +But it cost lots, and I didn't want it in the least, so I stood firm. +Besides, I always said that my first party dress should be plain white. +Girls in novels always wear white to their first balls; and fresh +flowers are a great deal prettier, any way, than artificial. Katy says +she'll give me some violets to wear." + +"Oh, will she? That will be lovely!" cried the adoring Elsie. "Violets +look just like you, somehow. Oh, Clover, what sort of a dress do you +think I shall have when I grow up and go to parties and things? Won't it +be awfully interesting when you and I go out to choose it?" + +Just then the noise of some one running upstairs quickly made the +sisters look up from their work. Footsteps are very significant at +times, and these footsteps suggested haste and excitement. + +Another moment, the door opened, and Katy dashed in, calling out, +"Papa!--Elsie, Clover, where's papa?" + +"He went over the river to see that son of Mr. White's who broke his +leg. Why, what's the matter?" asked Clover. + +"Is somebody hurt?" inquired Elsie, startled at Katy's agitated looks. + +"No, not hurt, but poor Mrs. Ashe is in such trouble." + +Mrs. Ashe, it should be explained, was a widow who had come to Burnet +some months previously, and had taken a pleasant house not far from the +Carrs'. She was a pretty, lady-like woman, with a particularly graceful, +appealing manner, and very fond of her one child, a little girl. Katy +and papa both took a fancy to her at once; and the families had grown +neighborly and intimate in a short time, as people occasionally do when +circumstances are favorable. + +"I'll tell you all about it in a minute," went on Katy. "But first I +must find Alexander, and send him off to meet papa and beg him to hurry +home." She went to the head of the stairs as she spoke, and called +"Debby! Debby!" Debby answered. Katy gave her direction, and then came +back again to the room where the other two were sitting. + +"Now," she said, speaking more collectedly, "I must explain as fast as I +can, for I have got to go back. You know that Mrs. Ashe's little nephew +is here for a visit, don't you?" + +"Yes, he came on Saturday." + +"Well, he was ailing all day yesterday, and to-day he is worse, and she +is afraid it is scarlet-fever. Luckily, Amy was spending the day with +the Uphams yesterday, so she scarcely saw the boy at all; and as soon +as her mother became alarmed, she sent her out into the garden to play, +and hasn't let her come indoors since, so she can't have been exposed +to any particular danger yet. I went by the house on my way down +street, and there sat the poor little thing all alone in the arbor, +with her dolly in her lap, looking so disconsolate. I spoke to her over +the fence, and Mrs. Ashe heard my voice, and opened the upstairs window +and called to me. She said Amy had never had the fever, and that the +very idea of her having it frightened her to death. She is such a +delicate child, you know." + +"Oh, poor Mrs. Ashe!" cried Clover; "I am so sorry for her! Well, Katy, +what did you do?" + +"I hope I didn't do wrong, but I offered to bring Amy here. Papa won't +object, I am almost sure." + +"Why, of course he won't. Well?" + +"I am going back now to fetch Amy. Mrs. Ashe is to let Ellen, who hasn't +been in the room with the little boy, pack a bagful of clothes and put +it out on the steps, and I shall send Alexander for it by and by. You +can't think how troubled poor Mrs. Ashe was. She couldn't help crying +when she said that Amy was all she had left in the world. And I nearly +cried too, I was so sorry for her. She was so relieved when I said that +we would take Amy. You know she has a great deal of confidence in papa." + +"Yes, and in you too. Where will you put Amy to sleep, Katy?" + +"What do you think would be best? In Dorry's room?" + +"I think she'd better come in here with you, and I'll go into Dorry's +room. She is used to sleeping with her mother, you know, and she would +be lonely if she were left to herself." + +"Perhaps that will be better, only it is a great bother for you, +Clovy dear." + +"I don't mind," responded Clover, cheerfully. "I rather like to change +about and try a new room once in a while. It's as good as going on a +journey--almost." + +She pushed aside the half-finished dress as she spoke, opened a drawer, +took out its contents, and began to carry them across the entry to +Dorry's room, doing everything with the orderly deliberation that was +characteristic of whatever Clover did. Her preparations were almost +complete before Katy returned, bringing with her little Amy Ashe. + +Amy was a tall child of eight, with a frank, happy face, and long light +hair hanging down her back. She looked like the pictures of "Alice in +Wonderland;" but just at that moment it was a very woful little Alice +indeed that she resembled, for her cheeks were stained with tears and +her eyes swollen with recent crying. + +"Why, what is the matter?" cried kind little Clover, taking Amy in her +arms, and giving her a great hug. "Aren't you glad that you are coming +to make us a visit? We are." + +"Mamma didn't kiss me for good-by," sobbed the little girl. "She didn't +come downstairs at all. She just put her head out of the window and +said, 'Good-by; Amy, be very good, and don't make Miss Carr any +trouble,' and then she went away. I never went anywhere before without +kissing mamma for good-by." + +"Mamma was afraid to kiss you for fear she might give you the fever," +explained Katy, taking her turn as a comforter. "It wasn't because she +forgot. She felt worse about it than you did, I imagine. You know the +thing she cares most for is that you shall not be ill as your cousin +Walter is. She would rather do anything than have that happen. As soon +as he gets well she will kiss you dozens of times, see if she doesn't. +Meanwhile, she says in this note that you must write her a little letter +every day, and she will hang a basket by a string out of the window, and +you and I will go and drop the letters into the basket, and stand by the +gate and see her pull it up. That will be funny, won't it? We will play +that you are my little girl, and that you have a real mamma and a +make-believe mamma." + +"Shall I sleep with you?" demanded Amy, + +"Yes, in that bed over there." + +"It's a pretty bed," pronounced Amy after examining it gravely for a +moment. "Will you tell me a story every morning?" + +[Illustration: "She was having the measles on the back shelf of the +closet, you know."] + +"If you don't wake me up too early. My stories are always sleepy +till seven o'clock. Let us see what Ellen has packed in that bag, +and then I'll give you some drawers of your own, and we will put the +things away." + +The bag was full of neat little frocks and underclothes stuffed hastily +in all together. Katy took them out, smoothing the folds, and crimping +the tumbled ruffles with her fingers. As she lifted the last skirt, Amy, +with a cry of joy, pounced on something that lay beneath it. + +"It is Maria Matilda," she said, "I'm glad of that. I thought Ellen +would forget her, and the poor child wouldn't know what to do with me +and her little sister not coming to see her for so long. She was having +the measles on the back shelf of the closet, you know, and nobody would +have heard her if she had cried ever so loud." + +"What a pretty face she has!" said Katy, taking the doll out of +Amy's hands. + +"Yes, but not so pretty as Mabel. Miss Upham says that Mabel is the +prettiest child she ever saw. Look, Miss Clover," lifting the other doll +from the table where she had laid it; "hasn't she got _sweet_ eyes? +She's older than Maria Matilda, and she knows a great deal more. She's +begun on French verbs!" + +"Not really! Which ones?" + +"Oh, only 'J'aime, tu aimes, il aime,' you know,--the same that our +class is learning at school. She hasn't tried any but that. Sometimes +she says it quite nicely, but sometimes she's very stupid, and I have to +scold her." Amy had quite recovered her spirits by this time. + +"Are these the only dolls you have?" + +"Oh, please don't call them _that!_" urged Amy. "It hurts their feelings +dreadfully. I never let them know that they are dolls. They think that +they are real children, only sometimes when they are very bad I use the +word for a punishment. I've got several other children. There's old +Ragazza. My uncle named her, and she's made of rag, but she has such bad +rheumatism that I don't play with her any longer; I just give her +medicine. Then there's Effie Deans, she's only got one leg; and Mopsa +the Fairy, she's a tiny one made out of china; and Peg of +Linkinvaddy,--but she don't count, for she's all come to pieces." + +"What very queer names your children have!" said Elsie, who had come in +during the enumeration. + +"Yes; Uncle Ned named them. He's a very funny uncle, but he's nice. He's +always so much interested in my children." + +"There's papa now!" cried Katy; and she ran downstairs to meet him. + +"Did I do right?" she asked anxiously after she had told her story. + +"Yes, my dear, perfectly right," replied Dr. Carr. "I only hope Amy was +taken away in time. I will go round at once to see Mrs. Ashe and the +boy; and, Katy, keep away from me when I come back, and keep the others +away, till I have changed my coat." + +It is odd how soon and how easily human beings accustom themselves to a +new condition of things. When sudden illness comes, or sudden sorrow, or +a house is burned up, or blown down by a tornado, there are a few hours +or days of confusion and bewilderment, and then people gather up their +wits and their courage and set to work to repair damages. They clear +away ruins, plant, rebuild, very much as ants whose hill has been +trodden upon, after running wildly about for a little while, begin all +together to reconstruct the tiny cone of sand which is so important in +their eyes. In a very short time the changes which at first seem so sad +and strange become accustomed and matter-of-course things which no +longer surprise us. + +It seemed to the Carrs after a few days as if they had always had Amy in +the house with them. Papa's daily visit to the sick-room, their +avoidance of him till after he had "changed his coat," Amy's lessons and +games of play, her dressing and undressing, the walks with the +make-believe mamma, the dropping of notes into the little basket, seemed +part of a system of things which had been going on for a long, long +time, and which everybody would miss should they suddenly stop. + +But they by no means suddenly stopped. Little Walter Ashe's case proved +to be rather a severe one; and after he had begun to mend, he caught +cold somehow and was taken worse again. There were some serious +symptoms, and for a few days Dr. Carr did not feel sure how things would +turn. He did not speak of his anxiety at home, but kept silence and a +cheerful face, as doctors know how to do. Only Katy, who was more +intimate with her father than the rest, guessed that things were going +gravely at the other house, and she was too well trained to ask +questions. The threatening symptoms passed off, however, and little +Walter slowly got better; but it was a long convalescence, and Mrs. Ashe +grew thin and pale before he began to look rosy. There was no one on +whom she could devolve the charge of the child. His mother was dead; his +father, an overworked business man, had barely time to run up once a +week to see about him; there was no one at his home but a housekeeper, +in whom Mrs. Ashe had not full confidence. So the good aunt denied +herself the sight of her own child, and devoted her strength and time to +Walter; and nearly two months passed, and still little Amy remained at +Dr. Carr's. + +She was entirely happy there. She had grown very fond of Katy, and was +perfectly at home with the others. Phil and Johnnie, who had returned +from her visit to Cecy, were by no means too old or too proud to be +play-fellows to a child of eight; and with all the older members of the +family Amy was a chosen pet. Debby baked turnovers, and twisted cinnamon +cakes into all sorts of fantastic shapes to please her; Alexander would +let her drive if she happened to sit on the front seat of the carryall; +Dr. Carr was seldom so tired that he could not tell her a story,--and +nobody told such nice stories as Dr. Carr, Amy thought; Elsie invented +all manner of charming games for the hour before bedtime; Clover made +wonderful capes and bonnets for Mabel and Maria Matilda; and Katy--Katy +did all sorts of things. + +Katy had a peculiar gift with children which is not easy to define. Some +people possess it, and some do not; it cannot be learned, it comes by +nature. She was bright and firm and equable all at once. She both amused +and influenced them. There was something about her which excited the +childish imagination, and always they felt her sympathy. Amy was a +tractable child, and intelligent beyond her age, but she was never quite +so good with any one as with Katy. She followed her about like a little +lover; she lavished upon her certain special words and caresses which +she gave to no one else; and would kneel on her lap, patting Katy's +shoulders with her soft hand, and cooing up into her face like a happy +dove, for a half-hour together. Katy laughed at these demonstrations, +but they pleased her very much. She loved to be loved, as all +affectionate people do, but most of all to be loved by a child. + +At last, the long convalescence ended, Walter was carried away to his +father, with every possible precaution against fatigue and exposure, and +an army of workpeople was turned into Mrs. Ashe's house. Plaster was +scraped and painted, wall-papers torn down, mattresses made over, and +clothing burned. At last Dr. Carr pronounced the premises in a sanitary +condition, and Mrs. Ashe sent for her little girl to come home again. + +Amy was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing her mother; but at the last +moment she clung to Katy and cried as if her heart would break. + +"I want you too," she said. "Oh, if Dr. Carr would only let you come and +live with me and mamma, I should be so happy! I shall be so lone-ly!" + +"Nonsense!" cried Clover. "Lonely with mamma, and those poor children of +yours who have been wondering all these weeks what has become of you! +They'll want a great deal of attention at first, I am sure; medicine and +new clothes and whippings,--all manner of things. You remember I +promised to make a dress for Effie Deans out of that blue and brown +plaid like Johnnie's balmoral. I mean to begin it to-morrow." + +"Oh, will you?"--forgetting her grief--"that will be lovely. The skirt +needn't be _very_ full, you know. Effie doesn't walk much, because of +only having one leg. She will be _so_ pleased, for she hasn't had a new +dress I don't know when." + +Consoled by the prospect of Effie's satisfaction, Amy departed quite +cheerfully, and Mrs. Ashe was spared the pain of seeing her only child +in tears on the first evening of their reunion. But Amy talked so +constantly of Katy, and seemed to love her so much, that it put a plan +into her mother's head which led to important results, as the next +chapter will show. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +AN INVITATION. + + +It is a curious fact, and makes life very interesting, that, generally +speaking, none of us have any expectation that things are going to +happen till the very moment when they do happen. We wake up some morning +with no idea that a great happiness is at hand, and before night it has +come, and all the world is changed for us; or we wake bright and +cheerful, with never a guess that clouds of sorrow are lowering in our +sky, to put all the sunshine out for a while, and before noon all is +dark. Nothing whispers of either the joy or the grief. No instinct bids +us to delay or to hasten the opening of the letter or telegram, or the +lifting of the latch of the door at which stands the messenger of good +or ill. And because it may be, and often is, happy tidings that come, +and joyful things which happen, each fresh day as it dawns upon us is +like an unread story, full of possible interest and adventure, to be +made ours as soon as we have cut the pages and begun to read. + +Nothing whispered to Katy Carr, as she sat at the window mending a long +rent in Johnnie's school coat, and saw Mrs. Ashe come in at the side +gate and ring the office bell, that the visit had any special +significance for her. Mrs. Ashe often did come to the office to consult +Dr. Carr. Amy might not be quite well, Katy thought, or there might be a +letter with something about Walter in it, or perhaps matters had gone +wrong at the house, where paperers and painters were still at work. So +she went calmly on with her darning, drawing the "ravelling," with which +her needle was threaded, carefully in and out, and taking nice even +stitches without one prophetic thrill or tremor; while, if only she +could have looked through the two walls and two doors which separated +the room in which she sat from the office, and have heard what Mrs. Ashe +was saying, the school coat would have been thrown to the winds, and for +all her tall stature and propriety, she would have been skipping with +delight and astonishment. For Mrs. Ashe was asking papa to let her do +the very thing of all others that she most longed to do; she was asking +him to let Katy go with her to Europe! + +"I am not very well," she told the Doctor. "I got tired and run down +while Walter was ill, and I don't seem to throw it off as I hoped I +should. I feel as if a change would do me good. Don't you think so +yourself?" + +"Yes, I do," Dr. Carr admitted. + +"This idea of Europe is not altogether a new one," continued Mrs. Ashe. +"I have always meant to go some time, and have put it off, partly +because I dreaded going alone, and didn't know anybody whom I exactly +wanted to take with me. But if you will let me have Katy, Dr. Carr, it +will settle all my difficulties. Amy loves her dearly, and so do I; she +is just the companion I need; if I have her with me, I sha'n't be afraid +of anything. I do hope you will consent." + +"How long do you mean to be away?" asked Dr. Carr, divided between +pleasure at these compliments to Katy and dismay at the idea of +losing her. + +"About a year, I think. My plans are rather vague as yet; but my idea +was to spend a few weeks in Scotland and England first,--I have some +cousins in London who will be good to us; and an old friend of mine +married a gentleman who lives on the Isle of Wight; perhaps we might go +there. Then we could cross over to France and visit Paris and a few +other places; and before it gets cold go down to Nice, and from there to +Italy. Katy would like to see Italy. Don't you think so?" + +"I dare say she would," said Dr. Carr, with a smile. "She would be a +queer girl if she didn't." + +"There is one reason why I thought Italy would be particularly pleasant +this winter for me and for her too," went on Mrs. Ashe; "and that is, +because my brother will be there. He is a lieutenant in the navy, you +know, and his ship, the 'Natchitoches,' is one of the Mediterranean +squadron. They will be in Naples by and by, and if we were there at the +same time we should have Ned to go about with; and he would take us to +the receptions on the frigate, and all that, which would be a nice +chance for Katy. Then toward spring I should like to go to Florence and +Venice, and visit the Italian lakes and Switzerland in the early summer. +But all this depends on your letting Katy go. If you decide against it, +I shall give the whole thing up. But you won't decide against +it,"--coaxingly,--"you will be kinder than that. I will take the best +possible care of her, and do all I can to make her happy, if only you +will consent to lend her to me; and I shall consider it _such_ a favor. +And it is to cost you nothing. You understand, Doctor, she is to be my +guest all through. That is a point I want to make clear in the outset; +for she goes for my sake, and I cannot take her on any other conditions. +Now, Dr. Carr, please, please! I am sure you won't deny me, when I have +so set my heart upon having her." + +Mrs. Ashe was very pretty and persuasive, but still Dr. Carr hesitated. +To send Katy for a year's pleasuring in Europe was a thing that had +never occurred to his mind as possible. The cost alone would have +prevented; for country doctors with six children are not apt to be rich +men, even in the limited and old-fashioned construction of the word +"wealth." It seemed equally impossible to let her go at Mrs. Ashe's +expense; at the same time, the chance was such a good one, and Mrs. Ashe +so much in earnest and so urgent, that it was difficult to refuse point +blank. He finally consented to take time for consideration before making +his decision. + +"I will talk it over with Katy," he said. "The child ought to have a say +in the matter; and whatever we decide, you must let me thank you in her +name as well as my own for your great kindness in proposing it." + +"Doctor, I'm not kind at all, and I don't want to be thanked. My desire +to take Katy with me to Europe is purely selfish. I am a lonely person," +she went on; "I have no mother or sister, and no cousins of my own age. +My brother's profession keeps him at sea; I scarcely ever see him. I +have no one but a couple of old aunts, too feeble in health to travel +with me or to be counted on in case of any emergency. You see, I am a +real case for pity." + +Mrs. Ashe spoke gayly, but her brown eyes were dim with tears as she +ended her little appeal. Dr. Carr, who was soft-hearted where women were +concerned, was touched. Perhaps his face showed it, for Mrs. Ashe added +in a more hopeful tone,-- + +"But I won't tease any more. I know you will not refuse me unless you +think it right and necessary; and," she continued mischievously, "I have +great faith in Katy as an ally. I am pretty sure that she will say that +she wants to go." + +And indeed Katy's cry of delight when the plan was proposed to her said +that sufficiently, without need of further explanation. To go to Europe +for a year with Mrs. Ashe and Amy seemed simply too delightful to be +true. All the things she had heard about and read about--cathedrals, +pictures, Alpine peaks, famous places, famous people--came rushing into +her mind in a sort of bewildering tide as dazzling as it was +overwhelming. Dr. Carr's objections, his reluctance to part with her, +melted before the radiance of her satisfaction. He had no idea that +Katy would care so much about it. After all, it was a great +chance,--perhaps the only one of the sort that she would ever have. +Mrs. Ashe could well afford to give Katy this treat, he knew; and it +was quite true what she said, that it was a favor to her as well as to +Katy. This train of reasoning led to its natural results. Dr. Carr +began to waver in his mind. + +But, the first excitement over, Katy's second thoughts were more sober +ones. How could papa manage without her for a whole year, she asked +herself. He would miss her, she well knew, and might not the charge of +the house be too much for Clover? The preserves were almost all made, +that was one comfort; but there were the winter clothes to be seen to; +Dorry needed new flannels, Elsie's dresses must be altered over for +Johnnie,--there were cucumbers to pickle, the coal to order! A host of +housewifely cares began to troop through Katy's mind, and a little +pucker came into her forehead, and a worried look across the face which +had been so bright a few minutes before. Strange to say, it was that +little pucker and the look of worry which decided Dr. Carr. + +"She is only twenty-one," he reflected; "hardly out of childhood. I +don't want her to settle into an anxious, drudging state and lose her +youth with caring for us all. She shall go; though how we are to manage +without her I don't see. Little Clover will have to come to the fore, +and show what sort of stuff there is in her." + +"Little Clover" came gallantly "to the fore" when the first shock of +surprise was over, and she had relieved her mind with one long private +cry over having to do without Katy for a year. Then she wiped her eyes, +and began to revel unselfishly in the idea of her sister's having so +great a treat. Anything and everything seemed possible to secure it for +her; and she made light of all Katy's many anxieties and apprehensions. + +"My dear child, I know a flannel undershirt when I see one, just as well +as you do," she declared. "Tucks in Johnnie's dress, forsooth! why, of +course. Ripping out a tuck doesn't require any superhuman ingenuity! +Give me your scissors, and I'll show you at once. Quince marmalade? +Debby can make that. Hers is about as good as yours; and if it wasn't, +what should we care, as long as you are ascending Mont Blanc, and +hob-nobbing with Michael Angelo and the crowned heads of Europe? I'll +make the spiced peaches! I'll order the kindling! And if there ever +comes a time when I feel lost and can't manage without advice, I'll go +across to Mrs. Hall. Don't worry about us. We shall get on happily and +easily; in fact, I shouldn't be surprised if I developed such a turn for +housekeeping, that when you come back the family refused to change, and +you had just to sit for the rest of your life and twirl your thumbs and +watch me do it! Wouldn't that be fine?" and Clover laughed merrily. "So, +Katy darling, cast that shadow from your brow, and look as a girl ought +to look who's going to Europe. Why, if it were I who were going, I +should simply stand on my head every moment of the time!" + +"Not a very convenient position for packing," said Katy, smiling. + +"Yes, it is, if you just turn your trunk upside down! When I think of +all the delightful things you are going to do, I can hardly sit still. I +_love_ Mrs. Ashe for inviting you." + +"So do I," said Katy, soberly. "It was the kindest thing! I can't think +why she did it." + +"Well, I can," replied Clover, always ready to defend Katy even against +herself. "She did it because she wanted you, and she wanted you because +you are the dearest old thing in the world, and the nicest to have +about. You needn't say you're not, for you are! Now, Katy, don't waste +another thought on such miserable things as pickles and undershirts. We +shall get along perfectly well, I do assure you. Just fix your mind +instead on the dome of St. Peter's, or try to fancy how you'll feel the +first time you step into a gondola or see the Mediterranean. There will +be a moment! I feel a forty-horse power of housekeeping developing +within me; and what fun it will be to get your letters! We shall fetch +out the Encyclopaedia and the big Atlas and the 'History of Modern +Europe,' and read all about everything you see and all the places you +go to; and it will be as good as a lesson in geography and history and +political economy all combined, only a great deal more interesting! We +shall stick out all over with knowledge before you come back; and this +makes it a plain duty to go, if it were only for our sakes." With these +zealous promises, Katy was forced to be content. Indeed, contentment +was not difficult with such a prospect of delight before her. When once +her little anxieties had been laid aside, the idea of the coming +journey grew in pleasantness every moment. Night after night she and +papa and the children pored over maps and made out schemes for travel +and sight-seeing, every one of which was likely to be discarded as soon +as the real journey began. But they didn't know that, and it made no +real difference. Such schemes are the preliminary joys of travel, and +it doesn't signify that they come to nothing after they have served +their purpose. + +Katy learned a great deal while thus talking over what she was to see +and do. She read every scrap she could lay her hand on which related to +Rome or Florence or Venice or London. The driest details had a charm for +her now that she was likely to see the real places. She went about with +scraps of paper in her pocket, on which were written such things as +these: "Forum. When built? By whom built? More than one?" "What does +_Cenacola_ mean?" "Cecilia Metella. Who was she?" "Find out about Saint +Catherine of Siena." "Who was Beatrice Cenci?" How she wished that she +had studied harder and more carefully before this wonderful chance came +to her. People always wish this when they are starting for Europe; and +they wish it more and more after they get there, and realize of what +value exact ideas and information and a fuller knowledge of the foreign +languages are to all travellers; how they add to the charm of everything +seen, and enhance the ease of everything done. + +All Burnet took an interest in Katy's plans, and almost everybody had +some sort of advice or help, or some little gift to offer. Old Mrs. +Worrett, who, though fatter than ever, still retained the power of +locomotion, drove in from Conic Section in her roomy carryall with the +present of a rather obsolete copy of "Murray's Guide," in faded red +covers, which her father had used in his youth, and which she was sure +Katy would find convenient; also a bottle of Brown's Jamaica Ginger, in +case of sea-sickness. Debby's sister-in-law brought a bundle of dried +chamomile for the same purpose. Some one had told her it was the +"handiest thing in the world to take along with you on them steamboats." +Cecy sent a wonderful old-gold and scarlet contrivance to hang on the +wall of the stateroom. There were pockets for watches, and pockets for +medicines, and pockets for handkerchief and hairpins,--in short, there +were pockets for everything; besides a pincushion with "Bon Voyage" in +rows of shining pins, a bottle of eau-de-cologne, a cake of soap, and a +hammer and tacks to nail the whole up with. Mrs. Hall's gift was a warm +and very pretty woollen wrapper of dark blue flannel, with a pair of +soft knitted slippers to match. Old Mr. Worrett sent a note of advice, +recommending Katy to take a quinine pill every day that she was away, +never to stay out late, because the dews "over there" were said to be +unwholesome, and on no account to drink a drop of water which had not +been boiled. + +From Cousin Helen came a delightful travelling-bag, light and strong at +once, and fitted up with all manner of nice little conveniences. Miss +Inches sent a "History of Europe" in five fat volumes, which was so +heavy that it had to be left at home. In fact, a good many of Katy's +presents had to be left at home, including a bronze paper-weight in the +shape of a griffin, a large pair of brass screw candlesticks, and an +ormolu inkstand with a pen-rest attached, which weighed at least a pound +and a half. These Katy laid aside to enjoy after her return. Mrs. Ashe +and Cousin Helen had both warned her of the inconvenient consequences of +weight in baggage; and by their advice she had limited herself to a +single trunk of moderate size, besides a little flat valise for use in +her stateroom. + +Clover's gift was a set of blank books for notes, journals, etc. In one +of these, Katy made out a list of "Things I must see," "Things I must +do," "Things I would like to see," "Things I would like to do." Another +she devoted to various good shopping addresses which had been given her; +for though she did not expect to do any shopping herself, she thought +Mrs. Ashe might find them useful. Katy's ideas were still so simple and +unworldly, and her experience of life so small, that it had not occurred +to her how very tantalizing it might be to stand in front of shop +windows full of delightful things and not be able to buy any of them. +She was accordingly overpowered with surprise, gratitude, and the sense +of sudden wealth, when about a week before the start her father gave her +three little thin strips of paper, which he told her were circular +notes, and worth a hundred dollars apiece. He also gave her five English +sovereigns. + +"Those are for immediate use," he said. "Put the notes away carefully, +and don't lose them. You had better have them cashed one at a time as +you require them. Mrs. Ashe will explain how. You will need a gown or so +before you come back, and you'll want to buy some photographs and so on, +and there will be fees--" + +"But, papa," protested Katy, opening wide her candid eyes, "I didn't +expect you to give me any money, and I'm afraid you are giving me too +much. Do you think you can afford it? Really and truly, I don't want to +buy things. I shall see everything, you know, and that's enough." + +Her father only laughed. + +"You'll be wiser and greedier before the year is out, my dear," he +replied. "Three hundred dollars won't go far, as you'll find. But it's +all I can spare, and I trust you to keep within it, and not come home +with any long bills for me to pay." + +"Papa! I should think not!" cried Katy, with unsophisticated horror. + +One very interesting thing was to happen before they sailed, the thought +of which helped both Katy and Clover through the last hard days, when +the preparations were nearly complete, and the family had leisure to +feel dull and out of spirits. Katy was to make Rose Red a visit. + +Rose had by no means been idle during the three years and a half which +had elapsed since they all parted at Hillsover, and during which the +girls had not seen her. In fact, she had made more out of the time than +any of the rest of them, for she had been engaged for eighteen months, +had been married, and was now keeping house near Boston with a little +Rose of her own, who, she wrote to Clover, was a perfect angel, and more +delicious than words could say! Mrs. Ashe had taken passage in the +"Spartacus," sailing from Boston; and it was arranged that Katy should +spend the last two days before sailing, with Rose, while Mrs. Ashe and +Amy visited an old aunt in Hingham. To see Rose in her own home, and +Rose's husband, and Rose's baby, was only next in interest to seeing +Europe. None of the changes in her lot seemed to have changed her +particularly, to judge by the letter she sent in reply to Katy's +announcing her plans, which letter ran as follows:-- + +"LONGWOOD, September 20. + +"My dearest child,--Your note made me dance with delight. I stood on my +head waving my heels wildly to the breeze till Deniston thought I must +be taken suddenly mad; but when I explained he did the same. It is too +enchanting, the whole of it. I put it at the head of all the nice things +that ever happened, except my baby. Write the moment you get this by +what train you expect to reach Boston, and when you roll into the +station you will behold two forms, one tall and stalwart, the other +short and fatsome, waiting for you. They will be those of Deniston and +myself. Deniston is not beautiful, but he is good, and he is prepared to +_adore_ you. The baby is both good and beautiful, and you will adore +her. I am neither; but you know all about me, and I always did adore you +and always shall. I am going out this moment to the butcher's to order a +calf fatted for your special behoof; and he shall be slain and made into +cutlets the moment I hear from you. My funny little house, which is +quite a dear little house too, assumes a new interest in my eyes from +the fact that you so soon are to see it. It is somewhat queer, as you +might know my house would be; but I think you will like it. + +"I saw Silvery Mary the other day and told her you were coming. She is +the same mouse as ever. I shall ask her and some of the other girls to +come out to lunch on one of your days. Good-by, with a hundred and fifty +kisses to Clovy and the rest. + +"Your loving + +"ROSE RED." + +"She never signs herself Browne, I observe," said Clover, as she +finished the letter. + +"Oh, Rose Red Browne would sound too funny. Rose Red she must stay till +the end of the chapter; no other name could suit her half so well, and I +can't imagine her being called anything else. What fun it will be to see +her and little Rose!" + +"And Deniston Browne," put in Clover. + +"Somehow I find it rather hard to take in the fact that there is a +Deniston Browne," observed Katy. + +"It will be easier after you have seen him, perhaps." + +The last day came, as last days will. Katy's trunk, most carefully +and exactly packed by the united efforts of the family, stood in the +hall, locked and strapped, not to be opened again till the party +reached London. This fact gave it a certain awful interest in the +eyes of Phil and Johnnie, and even Elsie gazed upon it with respect. +The little valise was also ready; and Dorry, the neat-handed, had +painted a red star on both ends of both it and the trunk, that they +might be easily picked from among a heap of luggage. He now proceeded +to prepare and paste on two square cards, labelled respectively, +"Hold" and "State-room." Mrs. Hall had told them that this was the +correct thing to do. + +Mrs. Ashe had been full of business likewise in putting her house to +rights for a family who had rented it for the time of her absence, and +Katy and Clover had taken a good many hours from their own preparations +to help her. All was done at last; and one bright morning in October, +Katy stood on the wharf with her family about her, and a lump in her +throat which made it difficult to speak to any of them. She stood so +very still and said so very little, that a bystander not acquainted with +the circumstances might have dubbed her "unfeeling;" while the fact was +that she was feeling too much! + +The first bell rang. Katy kissed everybody quietly and went on board +with her father. Her parting from him, hardest of all, took place in the +midst of a crowd of people; then he had to leave her, and as the wheels +began to revolve she went out on the side deck to have a last glimpse of +the home faces. There they were: Elsie crying tumultuously, with her +head on papa's coat-sleeve; John laughing, or trying to laugh, with big +tears running down her cheeks the while; and brave little Clover waving +her handkerchief encouragingly, but with a very sober look on her face. +Katy's heart went out to the little group with a sudden passion of +regret and yearning. Why had she said she would go? What was all Europe +in comparison with what she was leaving? Life was so short, how could +she take a whole year out of it to spend away from the people she loved +best? If it had been left to her to choose, I think she would have flown +back to the shore then and there, and given up the journey, I also think +she would have been heartily sorry a little later, had she done so. + +But it was not left for her to choose. Already the throb of the engines +was growing more regular and the distance widening between the great +boat and the wharf. Gradually the dear faces faded into distance; and +after watching till the flutter of Clover's handkerchief became an +undistinguishable speck, Katy went to the cabin with a heavy heart. But +there were Mrs. Ashe and Amy, inclined to be homesick also, and in need +of cheering; and Katy, as she tried to brighten them, gradually grew +bright herself, and recovered her hopeful spirits. Burnet pulled less +strongly as it got farther away, and Europe beckoned more brilliantly +now that they were fairly embarked on their journey. The sun shone, the +lake was a beautiful, dazzling blue, and Katy said to herself, "After +all, a year is not very long, and how happy I am going to be!" + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +ROSE AND ROSEBUD. + + +Thirty-six hours later the Albany train, running smoothly across the +green levels beyond the Mill Dam, brought the travellers to Boston. + +Katy looked eagerly from the window for her first glimpse of the city of +which she had heard so much. "Dear little Boston! How nice it is to see +it again!" she heard a lady behind her say; but why it should be called +"little Boston" she could not imagine. Seen from the train, it looked +large, imposing, and very picturesque, after flat Burnet with its one +bank down to the edge of the lake. She studied the towers, steeples, and +red roofs crowding each other up the slopes of the Tri-Mountain, and the +big State House dome crowning all, and made up her mind that she liked +the looks of it better than any other city she had ever seen. + +The train slackened its speed, ran for a few moments between rows of +tall, shabby brick walls, and with a long, final screech of its whistle +came to halt in the station-house. Every one made a simultaneous rush +for the door; and Katy and Mrs. Ashe, waiting to collect their books and +bags, found themselves wedged into their seats and unable to get out. It +was a confusing moment, and not comfortable; such moments never are. + +But the discomfort brightened into a sense of relief as, looking out of +the window, Katy caught sight of a face exactly opposite, which had +evidently caught sight of her,--a fresh, pretty face, with light, waving +hair, pink cheeks all a-dimple, and eyes which shone with laughter and +welcome. It was Rose herself, not a bit changed during the years since +they parted. A tall young man stood beside her, who must, of course, be +her husband, Deniston Browne. + +"There is Rose Red," cried Katy to Mrs. Ashe. "Oh, doesn't she look dear +and natural? Do wait and let me introduce you. I want you to know her." + +But the train had come in a little behind time, and Mrs. Ashe was +afraid of missing the Hingham boat; so she only took a hasty peep +from the window at Rose, pronounced her to be charming-looking, +kissed Katy hurriedly, reminded her that they must be on the steamer +punctually at twelve o'clock the following Saturday, and was gone, +with Amy beside her; so that Katy, following last of all the +slow-moving line of passengers, stepped all alone down from the +platform into the arms of Rose Red. + +"You darling!" was Rose's first greeting. "I began to think you meant +to spend the night in the car, you were so long in getting out. Well, +how perfectly lovely this is! Deniston, here is Katy; Katy, this is +my husband." + +Rose looked about fifteen as she spoke, and so absurdly young to have a +"husband," that Katy could not help laughing as she shook hands with +"Deniston;" and his own eyes twinkled with fun and evident recognition +of the same joke. He was a tall young man, with a pleasant, "steady" +face, and seemed to be infinitely amused, in a quiet way, with +everything which his wife said and did. + +"Let us make haste and get out of this hole," went on Rose. "I can +scarcely see for the smoke. Deniston, dear, please find the cab, and +have Katy's luggage put on it. I am wild to get her home, and exhibit +baby before she chews up her new sash or does something else that is +dreadful, to spoil her looks. I left her sitting in state, Katy, with +all her best clothes on, waiting to be made known to you." + +"My large trunk is to go straight to the steamer," explained Katy, as +she gave her checks to Mr. Browne. "I only want the little one taken out +to Longwood, please." + +"Now, this is cosey," remarked Rose, when they were seated in the cab +with Katy's bag at their feet. "Deniston, my love, I wish you were going +out with us. There's a nice little bench here all ready and vacant, +which is just suited to a man of your inches. You won't? Well, come in +the early train, then. Don't forget.--Now, isn't he just as nice as I +told you he was?" she demanded, the moment the cab began to move. + +"He looks very nice indeed, as far as I can judge in three minutes and +a quarter." + +"My dear, it ought not to take anybody of ordinary discernment a minute +and a quarter to perceive that he is simply the dearest fellow that ever +lived," said Rose. "I discovered it three seconds after I first beheld +him, and was desperately in love with him before he had fairly finished +his first bow after introduction." + +"And was he equally prompt?" asked Katy. + +"He says so," replied Rose, with a pretty blush. "But then, you know, he +could hardly say less after such a frank confession on my part. It is no +more than decent of him to make believe, even if it is not true. Now, +Katy, look at Boston, and see if you don't _love_ it!" + +The cab had now turned into Boylston Street; and on the right hand lay +the Common, green as summer after the autumn rains, with the elm arches +leafy still. Long, slant beams of afternoon sun were filtering through +the boughs and falling across the turf and the paths, where people were +walking and sitting, and children and babies playing together. It was a +delightful scene; and Katy received an impression of space and cheer and +air and freshness, which ever after was associated with her recollection +of Boston. + +Rose was quite satisfied with her raptures as they drove through Charles +Street, between the Common and the Public Garden, all ablaze with autumn +flowers, and down the length of Beacon Street with the blue bay shining +between the handsome houses on the water side. Every vestibule and +bay-window was gay with potted plants and flower-boxes; and a concourse +of happy-looking people, on foot, on horseback, and in carriages, was +surging to and fro like an equal, prosperous tide, while the sunlight +glorified all. + +"'Boston shows a soft Venetian side,'" quoted Katy, after a while. "I +know now what Mr. Lowell meant when he wrote that. I don't believe there +is a more beautiful place in the world." + +"Why, of course there isn't," retorted Rose, who was a most devoted +little Bostonian, in spite of the fact that she had lived in Washington +nearly all her life. "I've not seen much beside, to be sure, but that is +no matter; I know it is true. It is the dream of my life to come into +the city to live. I don't care what part I live in,--West End, South +End, North End; it's all one to me, so long as it is Boston!" + +"But don't you like Longwood?" asked Katy, looking out admiringly at the +pretty places set amid vines and shrubberies, which they were now +passing. "It looks so very pretty and pleasant." + +"Yes, it's well enough for any one who has a taste for natural +beauties," replied Rose. "I haven't; I never had. There is nothing I +hate so much as Nature! I'm a born cockney. I'd rather live in one room +over Jordan and Marsh's, and see the world wag past, than be the owner +of the most romantic villa that ever was built, I don't care where it +may be situated." + +The cab now turned in at a gate and followed a curving drive bordered +with trees to a pretty stone house with a porch embowered with Virginia +creepers, before which it stopped. + +"Here we are!" cried Rose, springing out. "Now, Katy, you mustn't even +take time to sit down before I show you the dearest baby that ever was +sent to this sinful earth. Here, let me take your bag; come straight +upstairs, and I will exhibit her to you." + +They ran up accordingly, and Rose took Katy into a large sunny nursery, +where, tied with pink ribbon into a little basket-chair and watched over +by a pretty young nurse, sat a dear, fat, fair baby, so exactly like +Rose in miniature that no one could possibly have mistaken the +relationship. The baby began to laugh and coo as soon as it caught sight +of its gay little mother, and exhibited just such another dimple as +hers, in the middle of a pink cheek. Katy was enchanted. + +"Oh, you darling!" she said. "Would she come to me, do you think, Rose?" + +"Why, of course she shall," replied Rose, picking up the baby as if she +had been a pillow, and stuffing her into Katy's arms head first. "Now, +just look at her, and tell me if ever you saw anything so enchanting in +the whole course of your life before? Isn't she big? Isn't she +beautiful? Isn't she good? Just see her little hands and her hair! She +never cries except when it is clearly her duty to cry. See her turn her +head to look at me! Oh, you angel!" And seizing the long-suffering baby, +she smothered it with kisses. "I never, never, never did see anything so +sweet. Smell her, Katy! Doesn't she smell like heaven?" + +Little Rose was indeed a delicious baby, all dimples and good-humor and +violet-powder, with a skin as soft as a lily's leaf, and a happy +capacity for allowing herself to be petted and cuddled without +remonstrance. Katy wanted to hold her all the time; but this Rose would +by no means permit; in fact, I may as well say at once that the two +girls spent a great part of their time during the visit in fighting for +the possession of the baby, who looked on at the struggle, and smiled on +the victor, whichever it happened to be, with all the philosophic +composure of Helen of Troy. She was so soft and sunny and equable, that +it was no more trouble to care for and amuse her than if she had been a +bird or a kitten; and, as Rose remarked, it was "ten times better fun." + +"I was never allowed as much doll as I wanted in my infancy," she said. +"I suppose I tore them to pieces too soon; and they couldn't give me tin +ones to play with, as they did wash-bowls when I broke the china ones." + +"Were you such a very bad child?" asked Katy. + +"Oh, utterly depraved, I believe. You wouldn't think so now, would you? +I recollect some dreadful occasions at school. Once I had my head pinned +up in my apron because I _would_ make faces at the other scholars, and +they laughed; but I promptly bit a bay-window through the apron, and ran +my tongue out of it till they laughed worse than ever. The teacher used +to send me home with notes fastened to my pinafore with things like this +written in them: 'Little Frisk has been more troublesome than usual +to-day. She has pinched all the younger children, and bent the bonnets +of all the older ones. We hope to see an amendment soon, or we do not +know what we shall do.'" + +"Why did they call you Little Frisk?" inquired Katy, after she had +recovered from the laugh which Rose's reminiscences called forth. + +"It was a term of endearment, I suppose; but somehow my family never +seemed to enjoy it as they ought. I cannot understand," she went on +reflectively, "why I had not sense enough to suppress those awful +little notes. It would have been so easy to lose them on the way home, +but somehow it never occurred to me. Little Rose will be wiser than +that; won't you, my angel? She will tear up the horrid notes--mammy +will show her how!" + +All the time that Katy was washing her face and brushing the dust of the +railway from her dress, Rose sat by with the little Rose in her lap, +entertaining her thus. When she was ready, the droll little mamma tucked +her baby under her arm and led the way downstairs to a large square +parlor with a bay-window, through which the westering sun was shining. +It was a pretty room, and had a flavor about it "just like Rose," Katy +declared. No one else would have hung the pictures or looped back the +curtains in exactly that way, or have hit upon the happy device of +filling the grate with a great bunch of marigolds, pale brown, golden, +and orange, to simulate the fire, which would have been quite too warm +on so mild an evening. Morris papers and chintzes and "artistic" shades +of color were in their infancy at that date; but Rose's taste was in +advance of her time, and with a foreshadowing of the coming "reaction," +she had chosen a "greenery, yallery" paper for her walls, against which +hung various articles which looked a great deal queerer then than they +would to-day. There was a mandolin, picked up at some Eastern sale, a +warming-pan in shining brass from her mother's attic, two old samplers +worked in faded silks, and a quantity of gayly tinted Japanese fans and +embroideries. She had also begged from an old aunt at Beverly Farms a +couple of droll little armchairs in white painted wood, with covers of +antique needle-work. One had "Chit" embroidered on the middle of its +cushion; the other, "Chat." These stood suggestively at the corners of +the hearth. + +"Now, Katy," said Rose, seating herself in "Chit," "pull up 'Chat' and +let us begin." + +So they did begin, and went on, interrupted only by Baby Rose's coos and +splutters, till the dusk fell, till appetizing smells floated through +from the rear of the house, and the click of a latch-key announced Mr. +Browne, come home just in time for dinner. + +The two days' visit went only too quickly. There is nothing more +fascinating to a girl than the menage of a young couple of her own age. +It is a sort of playing at real life without the cares and the sense of +responsibility that real life is sure to bring. Rose was an adventurous +housekeeper. She was still new to the position, she found it very +entertaining, and she delighted in experiments of all sorts. If they +turned out well, it was good fun; if not, that was funnier still! Her +husband, for all his serious manner, had a real boy's love of a lark, +and he aided and abetted her in all sorts of whimsical devices. They +owned a dog who was only less dear than the baby, a cat only less dear +than the dog, a parrot whose education required constant supervision, +and a hutch of ring-doves whose melancholy little "whuddering" coos were +the delight of Rose the less. The house seemed astir with young life all +over. The only elderly thing in it was the cook, who had the reputation +of a dreadful temper; only, unfortunately, Rose made her laugh so much +that she never found time to be cross. + +Katy felt quite an old, experienced person amid all this movement and +liveliness and cheer. It seemed to her that nobody in the world could +possibly be having such a good time as Rose; but Rose did not take the +same view of the situation. + +"It's all very well now," she said, "while the warm weather lasts; but +in winter Longwood is simply grewsome. The wind never stops blowing day +nor night. It howls and it roars and it screams, till I feel as if every +nerve in my body were on the point of snapping in two. And the snow, +ugh! And the wind, ugh! And burglars! Every night of our lives they +come,--or I think they come,--and I lie awake and hear them sharpening +their tools and forcing the locks and murdering the cook and kidnapping +Baby, till I long to die, and have done with them forever! Oh, Nature is +the most unpleasant thing!" + +"Burglars are not Nature," objected Katy. + +"What are they, then? Art? High Art? Well, whatever they are, I do not +like them. Oh, if ever the happy day comes when Deniston consents to +move into town, I never wish to set my eyes on the country again as long +as I live, unless--well, yes, I should like to come out just once more +in the horse-cars and _kick_ that elm-tree by the fence! The number of +times that I have lain awake at night listening to its creaking!" + +"You might kick it without waiting to have a house in town." + +"Oh, I shouldn't dare as long as we are living here! You never know what +Nature may do. She has ways of her own of getting even with people," +remarked her friend, solemnly. + +No time must be lost in showing Boston to Katy, Rose said. So the +morning after her arrival she was taken in bright and early to see the +sights. There were not quite so many sights to be seen then as there are +today. The Art Museum had not got much above its foundations; the new +Trinity Church was still in the future; but the big organ and the bronze +statue of Beethoven were in their glory, and every day at high noon a +small straggling audience wandered into Music Hall to hear the +instrument played. To this extempore concert Katy was taken, and to +Faneuil Hall and the Athenaeum, to Doll and Richards's, where was an +exhibition of pictures, to the Granary Graveyard, and the Old South. +Then the girls did a little shopping; and by that time they were quite +tired enough to make the idea of luncheon agreeable, so they took the +path across the Common to the Joy Street Mall. + +Katy was charmed by all she had seen. The delightful nearness of so many +interesting things surprised her. She perceived what is one of Boston's +chief charms,--that the Common and its surrounding streets make a +natural centre and rallying-point for the whole city; as the heart is +the centre of the body and keeps up a quick correspondence and regulates +the life of all its extremities. The stately old houses on Beacon +Street, with their rounded fronts, deep window-casements, and here and +there a mauve or a lilac pane set in the sashes, took her fancy greatly; +and so did the State House, whose situation made it sufficiently +imposing, even before the gilding of the dome. + +Up the steep steps of the Joy Street Mall they went, to the house on Mt. +Vernon Street which the Reddings had taken on their return from +Washington nearly three years before. Rose had previously shown Katy the +site of the old family house on Summer Street, where she was born, now +given over wholly to warehouses and shops. Their present residence was +one of those wide old-fashioned brick houses on the crest of the hill, +whose upper windows command the view across to the Boston Highlands; in +the rear was a spacious yard, almost large enough to be called a garden, +walled in with ivies and grapevines, under which were long beds full of +roses and chrysanthemums and marigolds and mignonette. + +Rose carried a latch-key in her pocket, which she said had been one of +her wedding-gifts; with this she unlocked the front door and let Katy +into a roomy white-painted hall. + +"We will go straight through to the back steps," she said. "Mamma is +sure to be sitting there; she always sits there till the first frost; +she says it makes her think of the country. How different people are! I +don't want to think of the country, but I'm never allowed to forget it +for a moment. Mamma is so fond of those steps and the garden." + +There, to be sure, Mrs. Redding was found sitting in a wicker-work +chair under the shade of the grapevines, with a big basket of mending +at her side. It looked so homely and country-like to find a person +thus occupied in the middle of a busy city, that Katy's heart warmed +to her at once. + +Mrs. Redding was a fair little woman, scarcely taller than Rose and very +much like her. She gave Katy a kind welcome. + +"You do not seem like a stranger," she said, "Rose has told us so much +about you and your sister. Sylvia will be very disappointed not to see +you. She went off to make some visits when we broke up in the country, +and is not to be home for three weeks yet." + +Katy was disappointed, too, for she had heard a great deal about Sylvia +and had wished very much to meet her. She was shown her picture, from +which she gathered that she did not look in the least like Rose; for +though equally fair, her fairness was of the tall aquiline type, quite +different from Rose's dimpled prettiness. In fact, Rose resembled her +mother, and Sylvia her father; they were only alike in little +peculiarities of voice and manner, of which a portrait did not enable +Katy to judge. + +The two girls had a cosey little luncheon with Mrs. Redding, after which +Rose carried Katy off to see the house and everything in it which was in +any way connected with her own personal history,--the room where she +used to sleep, the high-chair in which she sat as a baby and which was +presently to be made over to little Rose, the sofa where Deniston +offered himself, and the exact spot on the carpet on which she had stood +while they were being married! Last of all,-- + +"Now you shall see the best and dearest thing in the whole house," +she said, opening the door of a room in the second story.-- +"Grandmamma, here is my friend Katy Carr, whom you have so often +heard me tell about." + +It was a large pleasant room, with a little wood-fire blazing in a +grate, by which, in an arm-chair full of cushions, with a +Solitaire-board on a little table beside her, sat a sweet old lady. +This was Rose's father's mother. She was nearly eighty; but she was +beautiful still, and her manner had a gracious old-fashioned courtesy +which was full of charm. She had been thrown from a carriage the year +before, and had never since been able to come downstairs or to mingle +in the family life. + +"They come to me instead," she told Katy. "There is no lack of pleasant +company," she added; "every one is very good to me. I have a reader for +two hours a day, and I read to myself a little, and play Patience and +Solitaire, and never lack entertainment." + +There was something restful in the sight of such a lovely specimen of +old age. Katy realized, as she looked at her, what a loss it had been +to her own life that she had never known either of her grandparents. +She sat and gazed at old Mrs. Redding with a mixture of regret and +fascination. She longed to hold her hand, and kiss her, and play with +her beautiful silvery hair, as Rose did. Rose was evidently the old +lady's peculiar darling. They were on the most intimate terms; and +Rose dimpled and twinkled, and made saucy speeches, and told all her +little adventures and the baby's achievements, and made jests, and +talked nonsense as freely as to a person of her own age. It was a +delightful relation. + +"Grandmamma has taken a fancy to you, I can see," she told Katy, as they +drove back to Longwood. "She always wants to know my friends; and she +has her own opinions about them, I can tell you." + +"Do you really think she liked me?" said Katy, warmly. "I am so glad +if she did, for I _loved_ her. I never saw a really beautiful old +person before." + +"Oh, there's nobody like her," rejoined Rose. "I can't imagine what it +would be not to have her." Her merry little face was quite sad and +serious as she spoke. "I wish she were not so old," she added with a +sigh. "If we could only put her back twenty years! Then, perhaps, she +would live as long as I do." + +But, alas! there is no putting back the hands on the dial of time, no +matter how much we may desire it. + +The second day of Katy's visit was devoted to the luncheon-party of +which Rose had written in her letter, and which was meant to be a +reunion or "side chapter" of the S.S.U.C. Rose had asked every old +Hillsover girl who was within reach. There was Mary Silver, of course, +and Esther Dearborn, both of whom lived in Boston; and by good luck +Alice Gibbons happened to be making Esther a visit, and Ellen Gray came +in from Waltham, where her father had recently been settled over a +parish, so that all together they made six of the original nine of the +society; and Quaker Row itself never heard a merrier confusion of +tongues than resounded through Rose's pretty parlor for the first hour +after the arrival of the guests. + +There was everybody to ask after, and everything to tell. The girls all +seemed wonderfully unchanged to Katy, but they professed to find her +very grown up and dignified. + +"I wonder if I am," she said. "Clover never told me so. But perhaps she +has grown dignified too." + +"Nonsense!" cried Rose; "Clover could no more be dignified than my baby +could. Mary Silver, give me that child this moment! I never saw such a +greedy thing as you are; you have kept her to yourself at least a +quarter of an hour, and it isn't fair." + +"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Mary, laughing and covering her mouth with +her hand exactly in her old, shy, half-frightened way. + +"We only need Mrs. Nipson to make our little party complete," went on +Rose, "or dear Miss Jane! What has become of Miss Jane, by the way? Do +any of you know?" + +"Oh, she is still teaching at Hillsover and waiting for her missionary. +He has never come back. Berry Searles says that when he goes out to walk +he always walks away from the United States, for fear of diminishing the +distance between them." + +"What a shame!" said Katy, though she could not help laughing. "Miss +Jane was really quite nice,--no, not nice exactly, but she had good +things about her." + +"Had she!" remarked Rose, satirically. "I never observed them. It +required eyes like yours, real 'double million magnifying-glasses of +h'extra power,' to find them out. She was all teeth and talons as far +as I was concerned; but I think she really did have a softish spot in +her old heart for you, Katy, and it's the only good thing I ever knew +about her." + +"What has become of Lilly Page?" asked Ellen. + +"She's in Europe with her mother. I dare say you'll meet, Katy, and what +a pleasure that will be! And have you heard about Bella? she's teaching +school in the Indian Territory. Just fancy that scrap teaching school!" + +"Isn't it dangerous?" asked Mary Silver. + +"Dangerous? How? To her scholars, do you mean? Oh, the Indians! Well, +her scalp will be easy to identify if she has adhered to her favorite +pomatum; that's one comfort," put in naughty Rose. + +It was a merry luncheon indeed, as little Rose seemed to think, for she +laughed and cooed incessantly. The girls were enchanted with her, and +voted her by acclamation an honorary member of the S.S.U.C. Her health +was drunk in Apollinaris water with all the honors, and Rose returned +thanks in a droll speech. The friends told each other their histories +for the past three years; but it was curious how little, on the whole, +most of them had to tell. Though, perhaps, that was because they did not +tell all; for Alice Gibbons confided to Katy in a whisper that she +strongly suspected Esther of being engaged, and at the same moment Ellen +Gray was convulsing Rose by the intelligence that a theological student +from Andover was "very attentive" to Mary Silver. + +"My dear, I don't believe it," Rose said, "not even a theological +student would dare! and if he did, I am quite sure Mary would consider +it most improper. You must be mistaken, Ellen." + +"No, I'm not mistaken; for the theological student is my second cousin, +and his sister told me all about it. They are not engaged exactly, but +she hasn't said no; so he hopes she will say yes." + +"Oh, she'll never say no; but then she will never say yes, either. He +would better take silence as consent! Well, I never did think I should +live to see Silvery Mary married. I should as soon have expected to find +the Thirty-nine Articles engaged in a flirtation. She's a dear old +thing, though, and as good as gold; and I shall consider your second +cousin a lucky man if he persuades her." + +"I wonder where we shall all be when you come back, Katy," said Esther +Dearborn as they parted at the gate. "A year is a long time; all sorts +of things may happen in a year." + +These words rang in Katy's ears as she fell asleep that night. "All +sorts of things may happen in a year," she thought, "and they may not be +all happy things, either." Almost she wished that the journey to Europe +had never been thought of! + +But when she waked the next morning to the brightest of October suns +shining out of a clear blue sky, her misgivings fled. There could not +have been a more beautiful day for their start. + +She and Rose went early into town, for old Mrs. Bedding had made Katy +promise to come for a few minutes to say good-by. They found her sitting +by the fire as usual, though her windows were open to admit the +sun-warmed air. A little basket of grapes stood on the table beside her, +with a nosegay of tea-roses on top. These were from Rose's mother, for +Katy to take on board the steamer; and there was something else, a small +parcel twisted up in thin white paper. + +"It is my good-by gift," said the dear old lady. "Don't open it now. +Keep it till you are well out at sea, and get some little thing with it +as a keepsake from me." + +Grateful and wondering, Katy put the little parcel in her pocket. With +kisses and good wishes she parted from these new made friends, and she +and Rose drove to the steamer, stopping for Mr. Browne by the way. They +were a little late, so there was not much time for farewells after they +arrived; but Rose snatched a moment for a private interview with the +stewardess, unnoticed by Katy, who was busy with Mrs. Ashe and Amy. + +The bell rang, and the great steam-vessel slowly backed into the stream. +Then her head was turned to sea, and down the bay she went, leaving Rose +and her husband still waving their handkerchiefs on the pier. Katy +watched them to the last, and when she could no longer distinguish them, +felt that her final link with home was broken. + +It was not till she had settled her things in the little cabin which +was to be her home for the next ten days, had put her bonnet and dress +for safe keeping in the upper berth, nailed up her red and yellow bag, +and donned the woollen gown, ulster, and soft felt hat which were to do +service during the voyage, that she found time to examine the +mysterious parcel. + +Behold, it was a large, beautiful gold-piece, twenty dollars! + +"What a darling old lady!" said Katy; and she gave the gold-piece a +kiss. "How did she come to think of such a thing? I wonder if there is +anything in Europe good enough to buy with it?" + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +ON THE "SPARTACUS." + + +The ulster and the felt hat soon came off again, for a head wind lay +waiting in the offing, and the "Spartacus" began to pitch and toss in a +manner which made all her unseasoned passengers glad to betake +themselves to their berths. Mrs. Ashe and Amy were among the earliest +victims of sea-sickness; and Katy, after helping them to settle in their +staterooms, found herself too dizzy and ill to sit up a moment longer, +and thankfully resorted to her own. + +As the night came on, the wind grew stronger and the motion worse. The +"Spartacus" had the reputation of being a dreadful "roller," and seemed +bound to justify it on this particular voyage. Down, down, down the +great hull would slide till Katy would hold her breath with fear lest it +might never right itself again; then slowly, slowly the turn would be +made, and up, up, up it would go, till the cant on the other side was +equally alarming. On the whole, Katy preferred to have her own side of +the ship, the downward one; for it was less difficult to keep herself in +the berth, from which she was in continual danger of being thrown. The +night seemed endless, for she was too frightened to sleep except in +broken snatches; and when day dawned, and she looked through the little +round pane of glass in the port-hole, only gray sky and gray weltering +waves and flying spray and rain met her view. + +"Oh, dear, why do people ever go to sea, unless they must?" she thought +feebly to herself. She wanted to get up and see how Mrs. Ashe had lived +through the night, but the attempt to move made her so miserably ill +that she was glad to sink again on her pillows. + +The stewardess looked in with offers of tea and toast, the very idea +of which was simply dreadful, and pronounced the other lady "'orridly +ill, worse than you are, Miss," and the little girl "takin' on +dreadful in the h'upper berth." Of this fact Katy soon had audible +proof; for as her dizzy senses rallied a little, she could hear Amy in +the opposite stateroom crying and sobbing pitifully. She seemed to be +angry as well as sick, for she was scolding her poor mother in the +most vehement fashion. + +"I hate being at sea," Katy heard her say. "I won't stay in this nasty +old ship. Mamma! Mamma! do you hear me? I won't stay in this ship! It +wasn't a bit kind of you to bring me to such a horrid place. It was very +unkind; it was cru-el. I want to go back, mamma. Tell the captain to +take me back to the land. Mamma, why don't you speak to me? Oh, I am so +sick and so very un-happy. Don't you wish you were dead? I do!" + +And then came another storm of sobs, but never a sound from Mrs. Ashe, +who, Katy suspected, was too ill to speak. She felt very sorry for poor +little Amy, raging there in her high berth like some imprisoned +creature, but she was powerless to help her. She could only resign +herself to her own discomforts, and try to believe that somehow, +sometime, this state of things must mend,--either they should all get to +land or all go to the bottom and be drowned, and at that moment she +didn't care very much which it turned out to be. + +The gale increased as the day wore on, and the vessel pitched +dreadfully. Twice Katy was thrown out of her berth on the floor; then +the stewardess came and fixed a sort of movable side to the berth, which +held her in, but made her feel like a child fastened into a railed crib. +At intervals she could still hear Amy crying and scolding her mother, +and conjectured that they were having a dreadful time of it in the other +stateroom. It was all like a bad dream. "And they call this travelling +for pleasure!" thought poor Katy. + +One droll thing happened in the course of the second night,--at least it +seemed droll afterward; at the time Katy was too uncomfortable to enjoy +it. Amid the rush of the wind, the creaking of the ship's timbers, and +the shrill buzz of the screw, she heard a sound of queer little +footsteps in the entry outside of her open door, hopping and leaping +together in an odd irregular way, like a regiment of mice or toy +soldiers. Nearer and nearer they came; and Katy opening her eyes saw a +procession of boots and shoes of all sizes and shapes, which had +evidently been left on the floors or at the doors of various staterooms, +and which in obedience to the lurchings of the vessel had collected in +the cabin. They now seemed to be acting in concert with one another, and +really looked alive as they bumped and trotted side by side, and two by +two, in at the door and up close to her bedside. There they remained for +several moments executing what looked like a dance; then the leading +shoe turned on its heel as if giving a signal to the others, and they +all hopped slowly again into the passage-way and disappeared. It was +exactly like one of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tales, Katy wrote to +Clover afterward. She heard them going down the cabin; but how it ended, +or whether the owners of the boots and shoes ever got their own +particular pairs again, she never knew. + +Toward morning the gale abated, the sea became smoother, and she dropped +asleep. When she woke the sun was struggling through the clouds, and she +felt better. + +The stewardess opened the port-hole to freshen the air, and helped her +to wash her face and smooth her tangled hair; then she produced a little +basin of gruel and a triangular bit of toast, and Katy found that her +appetite was come again and she could eat. + +"And 'ere's a letter, ma'am, which has come for you by post this +morning," said the nice old stewardess, producing an envelope from her +pocket, and eying her patient with great satisfaction. + +"By post!" cried Katy, in amazement; "why, how can that be?" Then +catching sight of Rose's handwriting on the envelope, she understood, +and smiled at her own simplicity. + +The stewardess beamed at her as she opened it, then saying again, "Yes, +'m, by post, m'm," withdrew, and left Katy to enjoy the little surprise. + +The letter was not long, but it was very like its writer. Rose drew a +picture of what Katy would probably be doing at the time it reached +her,--a picture so near the truth that Katy felt as if Rose must have +the spirit of prophecy, especially as she kindly illustrated the +situation with a series of pen-and-ink drawings, in which Katy was +depicted as prone in her berth, refusing with horror to go to dinner, +looking longingly backward toward the quarter where the United States +was supposed to be, and fishing out of her port-hole with a crooked pin +in hopes of grappling the submarine cable and sending a message to her +family to come out at once and take her home. It ended with this short +"poem," over which Katy laughed till Mrs. Ashe called feebly across the +entry to ask what _was_ the matter? + + "Break, break, break + And mis-behave, O sea, + And I wish that my tongue could utter + The hatred I feel for thee! + + "Oh, well for the fisherman's child + On the sandy beach at his play; + Oh, well for all sensible folk + Who are safe at home to-day! + + "But this horrible ship keeps on, + And is never a moment still, + And I yearn for the touch of the nice dry land, + Where I needn't feel so ill! + + "Break! break! break! + There is no good left in me; + For the dinner I ate on the shore so late + Has vanished into the sea!" + +Laughter is very restorative after the forlornity of sea-sickness; and +Katy was so stimulated by her letter that she managed to struggle into +her dressing-gown and slippers and across the entry to Mrs. Ashe's +stateroom. Amy had fallen asleep at last and must not be waked up, so +their interview was conducted in whispers. Mrs. Ashe had by no means got +to the tea-and-toast stage yet, and was feeling miserable enough. + +"I have had the most dreadful time with Amy," she said. "All day +yesterday, when she wasn't sick she was raging at me from the upper +berth, and I too ill to say a word in reply. I never knew her so +naughty! And it seemed very neglectful not to come to see after you, +poor dear child! but really I couldn't raise my head." + +"Neither could I, and I felt just as guilty not to be taking care of +you," said Katy. "Well, the worst is over with all of us, I hope. The +vessel doesn't pitch half so much now, and the stewardess says we shall +feel a great deal better as soon as we get on deck. She is coming +presently to help me up; and when Amy wakes, won't you let her be +dressed, and I will take care of her while Mrs. Barrett attends to you." + +"I don't think I can be dressed," sighed poor Mrs. Ashe. "I feel as if I +should just lie here till we get to Liverpool." + +"Oh no, h'indeed, mum,--no, you won't," put in Mrs. Barrett, who at that +moment appeared, gruel-cup in hand. "I don't never let my ladies lie in +their berths a moment longer than there is need of. I h'always gets them +on deck as soon as possible to get the h'air. It's the best medicine you +can 'ave, ma'am, the fresh h'air; h'indeed it h'is." + +Stewardesses are all-powerful on board ship, and Mrs. Barrett was so +persuasive as well as positive that it was not possible to resist her. +She got Katy into her dress and wraps, and seated her on deck in a chair +with a great rug wrapped about her feet, with very little effort on +Katy's part. Then she dived down the companion-way again, and in the +course of an hour appeared escorting a big burly steward, who carried +poor little pale Amy in his arms as easily as though she had been a +kitten. Amy gave a scream of joy at the sight of Katy, and cuddled down +in her lap under the warm rug with a sigh of relief and satisfaction. + +"I thought I was never going to see you again," she said, with a little +squeeze. "Oh, Miss Katy, it has been so horrid! I never thought that +going to Europe meant such dreadful things as this!" + +"This is only the beginning; we shall get across the sea in a few days, +and then we shall find out what going to Europe really means. But what +made you behave so, Amy, and cry and scold poor mamma when she was sick? +I could hear you all the way across the entry." + +"Could you? Then why didn't you come to me?" + +"I wanted to; but I was sick too, so sick that I couldn't move. But why +were you so naughty?--you didn't tell me." + +"I didn't mean to be naughty, but I couldn't help crying. You would have +cried too, and so would Johnnie, if you had been cooped up in a dreadful +old berth at the top of the wall that you couldn't get out of, and +hadn't had anything to eat, and nobody to bring you any water when you +wanted some. And mamma wouldn't answer when I called to her." + +"She couldn't answer; she was too ill," explained Katy. "Well, my pet, +it _was_ pretty hard for you. I hope we sha'n't have any more such days. +The sea is a great deal smoother now." + +"Mabel looks quite pale; she was sick, too," said Amy, regarding the +doll in her arms with an anxious air. "I hope the fresh h'air will do +her good." + +"Is she going to have any fresh hair?" asked Katy, wilfully +misunderstanding. + +"That was what that woman called it,--the fat one who made me come up +here. But I'm glad she did, for I feel heaps better already; only I keep +thinking of poor little Maria Matilda shut up in the trunk in that dark +place, and wondering if she's sick. There's nobody to explain to her +down there." + +"They say that you don't feel the motion half so much in the bottom of +the ship," said Katy. "Perhaps she hasn't noticed it at all. Dear me, +how good something smells! I wish they would bring us something to eat." + +A good many passengers had come up by this time; and Robert, the deck +steward, was going about, tray in hand, taking orders for lunch. Amy and +Katy both felt suddenly ravenous; and when Mrs. Ashe awhile later was +helped up the stairs, she was amazed to find them eating cold beef and +roasted potatoes, with the finest appetites in the world. "They had +served out their apprenticeships," the kindly old captain told them, +"and were made free of the nautical guild from that time on." So it +proved; for after these two bad days none of the party were sick again +during the voyage. + +Amy had a clamorous appetite for stories as well as for cold beef; and +to appease this craving, Katy started a sort of ocean serial, called +"The History of Violet and Emma," which she meant to make last till they +got to Liverpool, but which in reality lasted much longer. It might with +equal propriety have been called "The Adventures of two little Girls who +didn't have any Adventures," for nothing in particular happened to +either Violet or Emma during the whole course of their long-drawn-out +history. Amy, however, found them perfectly enchanting, and was never +weary of hearing how they went to school and came home again, how they +got into scrapes and got out of them, how they made good resolutions and +broke them, about their Christmas presents and birthday treats, and what +they said and how they felt. The first instalment of this un-exciting +romance was given that first afternoon on deck; and after that, Amy +claimed a new chapter daily, and it was a chief ingredient of her +pleasure during the voyage. + +On the third morning Katy woke and dressed so early, that she gained the +deck before the sailors had finished their scrubbing and holystoning. +She took refuge within the companion-way, and sat down on the top step +of the ladder, to wait till the deck was dry enough to venture upon it. +There the Captain found her and drew near for a talk. + +Captain Bryce was exactly the kind of sea-captain that is found in +story-books, but not always in real life. He was stout and grizzled and +brown and kind. He had a bluff weather-beaten face, lit up with a pair +of shrewd blue eyes which twinkled when he was pleased; and his manner, +though it was full of the habit of command, was quiet and pleasant. He +was a Martinet on board his ship. Not a sailor under him would have +dared dispute his orders for a moment; but he was very popular with +them, notwithstanding; they liked him as much as they feared him, for +they knew him to be their best friend if it came to sickness or trouble +with any of them. + +Katy and he grew quite intimate during their long morning talk. The +Captain liked girls. He had one of his own, about Katy's age, and was +fond of talking about her. Lucy was his mainstay at home, he told Katy. +Her mother had been "weakly" now this long time back, and Bess and Nanny +were but children yet, so Lucy had to take command and keep things +ship-shape when he was away. + +"She'll be on the lookout when the steamer comes in," said the Captain. +"There's a signal we've arranged which means 'All's well,' and when we +get up the river a little way I always look to see if it's flying. It's +a bit of a towel hung from a particular window; and when I see it I say +to myself, 'Thank God! another voyage safely done and no harm come of +it.' It's a sad kind of work for a man to go off for a twenty-four days' +cruise leaving a sick wife on shore behind him. If it wasn't that I have +Lucy to look after things, I should have thrown up my command long ago." + +"Indeed, I am glad you have Lucy; she must be a great comfort to you," +said Katy, sympathetically; for the Captain's hearty voice trembled a +little as he spoke. She made him tell her the color of Lucy's hair and +eyes, and exactly how tall she was, and what she had studied, and what +sort of books she liked. She seemed such a very nice girl, and Katy +thought she should like to know her. + +The deck had dried fast in the fresh sea-wind, and the Captain had just +arranged Katy in her chair, and was wrapping the rug about her feet in a +fatherly way, when Mrs. Barrett, all smiles, appeared from below. + +"Oh, 'ere you h'are, Miss. I couldn't think what 'ad come to you so +early; and you're looking ever so well again, I'm pleased to see; and +'ere's a bundle just arrived, Miss, by the Parcels Delivery." + +"What!" cried simple Katy. Then she laughed at her own foolishness, and +took the "bundle," which was directed in Rose's unmistakable hand. + +It contained a pretty little green-bound copy of Emerson's Poems, with +Katy's name and "To be read at sea," written on the flyleaf. Somehow the +little gift seemed to bridge the long misty distance which stretched +between the vessel's stern and Boston Bay, and to bring home and friends +a great deal nearer. With a half-happy, half-tearful pleasure Katy +recognized the fact that distance counts for little if people love one +another, and that hearts have a telegraph of their own whose messages +are as sure and swift as any of those sent over the material lines which +link continent to continent and shore with shore. + +Later in the morning, Katy, going down to her stateroom for something, +came across a pallid, exhausted-looking lady, who lay stretched on one +of the long sofas in the cabin, with a baby in her arms and a little +girl sitting at her feet, quite still, with a pair of small hands folded +in her lap. The little girl did not seem to be more than four years old. +She had two pig-tails of thick flaxen hair hanging over her shoulders, +and at Katy's approach raised a pair of solemn blue eyes, which had so +much appeal in them, though she said nothing, that Katy stopped at once. + +"Can I do anything for you?" she asked. "I am afraid you have been +very ill." + +At the sound of her voice the lady on the sofa opened her eyes. She +tried to speak, but to Katy's dismay began to cry instead; and when the +words came they were strangled with sobs. + +"You are so kin-d to ask," she said. "If you would give my little girl +something to eat! She has had nothing since yesterday, and I have been +so ill; and no-nobody has c-ome near us!" + +"Oh!" cried Katy, with horror, "nothing to eat since yesterday! How did +it happen?" + +"Everybody has been sick on our side the ship," explained the poor lady, +"and I suppose the stewardess thought, as I had a maid with me, that I +needed her less than the others. But my maid has been sick, too; and oh, +so selfish! She wouldn't even take the baby into the berth with her; and +I have had all I could do to manage with him, when I couldn't lift up my +head. Little Gretchen has had to go without anything; and she has been +so good and patient!" + +Katy lost no time, but ran for Mrs. Barrett, whose indignation knew no +bounds when she heard how the helpless party had been neglected. + +"It's a new person that stewardess h'is, ma'am," she explained, "and +most h'inefficient! I told the Captain when she come aboard that I +didn't 'ave much opinion of her, and now he'll see how it h'is. I'm +h'ashamed that such a thing should 'appen on the 'Spartacus,' ma'am,--I +h'am, h'indeed. H'it never would 'ave ben so h'under h'Eliza, +ma'am,--she's the one that went h'off and got herself married the trip +before last, when this person came to take her place." + +All the time that she talked Mrs. Barrett was busy in making Mrs. +Ware--for that, it seemed, was the sick lady's name--more comfortable; +and Katy was feeding Gretchen out of a big bowl full of bread and milk +which one of the stewards had brought. The little uncomplaining thing +was evidently half starved, but with the mouthfuls the pink began to +steal back into her cheeks and lips, and the dark circles lessened under +the blue eyes. By the time the bottom of the bowl was reached she could +smile, but still she said not a word except a whispered _Danke schon_. +Her mother explained that she had been born in Germany, and always till +now had been cared for by a German nurse, so that she knew that language +better than English. + +[Illustration: Katy was feeding Gretchen out of a big bowl full of bread +and milk.] + +Gretchen was a great amusement to Katy and Amy during the rest of the +voyage. They kept her on deck with them a great deal, and she was +perfectly content with them and very good, though always solemn and +quiet. Pleasant people turned up among the passengers, as always happens +on an ocean steamship, and others not so pleasant, perhaps, who were +rather curious and interesting to watch. + +Katy grew to feel as if she knew a great deal about her fellow +travellers as time went on. There was the young girl going out to join +her parents under the care of a severe governess, whom everybody on +board rather pitied. There was the other girl on her way to study art, +who was travelling quite alone, and seemed to have nobody to meet her or +to go to except a fellow student of her own age, already in Paris, but +who seemed quite unconscious of her lonely position and competent to +grapple with anything or anybody. There was the queer old gentleman who +had "crossed" eleven times before, and had advice and experience to +spare for any one who would listen to them; and the other gentleman, not +so old but even more queer, who had "frozen his stomach," eight years +before, by indulging, on a hot summer's day, in sixteen successive +ice-creams, alternated with ten glasses of equally cold soda-water, and +who related this exciting experience in turn to everybody on board. +There was the bad little boy, whose parents were powerless to oppose +him, and who carried terror to the hearts of all beholders whenever he +appeared; and the pretty widow who filled the role of reigning belle; +and the other widow, not quite so pretty or so much a belle, who had a +good deal to say, in a voice made discreetly low, about what a pity it +was that dear Mrs. So-and-so should do this or that, and "Doesn't it +strike you as very unfortunate that she should not consider" the other +thing? A great sea-going steamer is a little world in itself, and gives +one a glimpse of all sorts and conditions of people and characters. + +On the whole, there was no one on the "Spartacus" whom Katy liked so +well as sedate little Gretchen except the dear old Captain, with whom +she was a prime favorite. He gave Mrs. Ashe and herself the seats next +to him at table, looked after their comfort in every possible way, and +each night at dinner sent Katy one of the apple-dumplings made specially +for him by the cook, who had gone many voyages with the Captain and knew +his fancies. Katy did not care particularly for the dumpling, but she +valued it as a mark of regard, and always ate it when she could. + +Meanwhile, every morning brought a fresh surprise from that dear, +painstaking Rose, who had evidently worked hard and thought harder in +contriving pleasures for Katy's first voyage at sea. Mrs. Barrett was +enlisted in the plot, there could be no doubt of that, and enjoyed the +joke as much as any one, as she presented herself each day with the +invariable formula, "A letter for you, ma'am," or "A bundle, Miss, come +by the Parcels Delivery." On the fourth morning it was a photograph of +Baby Rose, in a little flat morocco case. The fifth brought a wonderful +epistle, full of startling pieces of news, none of them true. On the +sixth appeared a long narrow box containing a fountain pen. Then came +Mr. Howells's "A Foregone Conclusion," which Katy had never seen; then a +box of quinine pills; then a sachet for her trunk; then another +burlesque poem; last of all, a cake of delicious violet soap, "to wash +the sea-smell from her hands," the label said. It grew to be one of the +little excitements of ship life to watch for the arrival of these daily +gifts; and "What did the mail bring for you this time, Miss Carr?" was a +question frequently asked. Each arrival Katy thought must be the final +one; but Rose's forethought had gone so far even as to provide an extra +parcel in case the voyage was a day longer than usual, and "Miss Carr's +mail" continued to come in till the very last morning. + +Katy never forgot the thrill that went through her when, after so many +days of sea, her eyes first caught sight of the dim line of the Irish +coast. An exciting and interesting day followed as, after stopping at +Queenstown to leave the mails, they sped northeastward between shores +which grew more distinct and beautiful with every hour,--on one side +Ireland, on the other the bold mountain lines of the Welsh coast. It was +late afternoon when they entered the Mersey, and dusk had fallen before +the Captain got out his glass to look for the white fluttering speck in +his own window which meant so much to him. Long he studied before he +made quite sure that it was there. At last he shut the glass with a +satisfied air. + +"It's all right," he said to Katy, who stood near, almost as much +interested as he. "Lucy never forgets, bless her! Well, there's another +voyage over and done with, thank God, and my Mary is where she was. It's +a load taken from my mind." + +The moon had risen and was shining softly on the river as the +crowded tender landed the passengers from the "Spartacus" at the +Liverpool docks. + +"We shall meet again in London or in Paris," said one to another, and +cards and addresses were exchanged. Then after a brief delay at the +Custom House they separated, each to his own particular destination; +and, as a general thing, none of them ever saw any of the others again. +It is often thus with those who have been fellow voyagers at sea; and it +is always a surprise and perplexity to inexperienced travellers that it +can be so, and that those who have been so much to each other for ten +days can melt away into space and disappear as though the brief intimacy +had never existed. + +"Four-wheeler or hansom, ma'am?" said a porter to Mrs. Ashe. + +"Which, Katy?" + +"Oh, let us have a hansom! I never saw one, and they look so nice +in 'Punch.'" + +So a hansom cab was called, the two ladies got in, Amy cuddled down +between them, the folding-doors were shut over their knees like a +lap-robe, and away they drove up the solidly paved streets to the hotel +where they were to pass the night. It was too late to see or do anything +but enjoy the sense of being on firm land once more. + +"How lovely it will be to sleep in a bed that doesn't tip or roll from +side to side!" said Mrs. Ashe. + +"Yes, and that is wide enough and long enough and soft enough to be +comfortable!" replied Katy. "I feel as if I could sleep for a fortnight +to make up for the bad nights at sea." + +Everything seemed delightful to her,--the space for undressing, the +great tub of fresh water which stood beside the English-looking +washstand with its ample basin and ewer, the chintz-curtained bed, the +coolness, the silence,--and she closed her eyes with the pleasant +thought in her mind, "It is really England and we are really here!" + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +STORYBOOK ENGLAND. + + +"Oh, is it raining?" was Katy's first question next morning, when the +maid came to call her. The pretty room, with its gayly flowered chintz, +and china, and its brass bedstead, did not look half so bright as when +lit with gas the night before; and a dim gray light struggled in at the +window, which in America would certainly have meant bad weather coming +or already come. + +"Oh no, h'indeed, ma'am, it's a very fine day,--not bright, ma'am, but +very dry," was the answer. + +Katy couldn't imagine what the maid meant, when she peeped between the +curtains and saw a thick dull mist lying over everything, and the +pavements opposite her window shining with wet. Afterwards, when she +understood better the peculiarities of the English climate, she too +learned to call days not absolutely rainy "fine," and to be grateful for +them; but on that first morning her sensations were of bewildered +surprise, almost vexation. + +Mrs. Ashe and Amy were waiting in the coffee-room when she went in +search of them. + +"What shall we have for breakfast," asked Mrs. Ashe,--"our first meal in +England? Katy, you order it." + +"Let's have all the things we have read about in books and don't have at +home," said Katy, eagerly. But when she came to look over the bill of +fare there didn't seem to be many such things. Soles and muffins she +finally decided upon, and, as an after-thought, gooseberry jam. + +"Muffins sound so very good in Dickens, you know," she explained to Mrs. +Ashe; "and I never saw a sole." + +The soles when they came proved to be nice little pan-fish, not unlike +what in New England are called "scup." All the party took kindly to +them; but the muffins were a great disappointment, tough and tasteless, +with a flavor about them as of scorched flannel. + +"How queer and disagreeable they are!" said Katy. "I feel as if I were +eating rounds cut from an old ironing-blanket and buttered! Dear me! +what did Dickens mean by making such a fuss about them, I wonder? And I +don't care for gooseberry jam, either; it isn't half as good as the jams +we have at home. Books are very deceptive." + +"I am afraid they are. We must make up our minds to find a great many +things not quite so nice as they sound when we read about them," replied +Mrs. Ashe. + +Mabel was breakfasting with them, of course, and was heard to remark at +this juncture that she didn't like muffins, either, and would a great +deal rather have waffles; whereupon Amy reproved her, and explained that +nobody in England knew what waffles were, they were such a stupid +nation, and that Mabel must learn to eat whatever was given her and not +find fault with it! + +After this moral lesson it was found to be dangerously near train-time; +and they all hurried to the railroad station, which, fortunately, was +close by. There was rather a scramble and confusion for a few moments; +for Katy, who had undertaken to buy the tickets, was puzzled by the +unaccustomed coinage; and Mrs. Ashe, whose part was to see after the +luggage, found herself perplexed and worried by the absence of checks, +and by no means disposed to accept the porter's statement, that if she'd +only bear in mind that the trunks were in the second van from the +engine, and get out to see that they were safe once or twice during the +journey, and call for them as soon as they reached London, she'd have no +trouble,--"please remember the porter, ma'am!" However all was happily +settled at last; and without any serious inconveniences they found +themselves established in a first-class carriage, and presently after +running smoothly at full speed across the rich English midlands toward +London and the eastern coast. + +The extreme greenness of the October landscape was what struck them +first, and the wonderfully orderly and trim aspect of the country, with +no ragged, stump-dotted fields or reaches of wild untended woods. Late +in October as it was, the hedgerows and meadows were still almost +summer-like in color, though the trees were leafless. The +delightful-looking old manor-houses and farm-houses, of which they had +glimpses now and again, were a constant pleasure to Katy, with their +mullioned windows, twisted chimney-stacks, porches of quaint build, and +thick-growing ivy. She contrasted them with the uncompromising ugliness +of farm-houses which she remembered at home, and wondered whether it +could be that at the end of another thousand years or so, America would +have picturesque buildings like these to show in addition to her +picturesque scenery. + +Suddenly into the midst of these reflections there glanced a picture so +vivid that it almost took away her breath, as the train steamed past a +pack of hounds in full cry, followed by a galloping throng of +scarlet-coated huntsmen. One horse and rider were in the air, going over +a wall. Another was just rising to the leap. A string of others, headed +by a lady, were tearing across a meadow bounded by a little brook, and +beyond that streamed the hounds following the invisible fox. It was like +one of Muybridge's instantaneous photographs of "The Horse in Motion," +for the moment that it lasted; and Katy put it away in her memory, +distinct and brilliant, as she might a real picture. + +Their destination in London was Batt's Hotel in Dover Street. The old +gentleman on the "Spartacus," who had "crossed" so many times, had +furnished Mrs. Ashe with a number of addresses of hotels and +lodging-houses, from among which Katy had chosen Batt's for the reason +that it was mentioned in Miss Edgeworth's "Patronage." "It was the +place," she explained, "where Godfrey Percy didn't stay when Lord +Oldborough sent him the letter." It seemed an odd enough reason for +going anywhere that a person in a novel didn't stay there. But Mrs. Ashe +knew nothing of London, and had no preference of her own; so she was +perfectly willing to give Katy hers, and Batt's was decided upon. + +"It is just like a dream or a story," said Katy, as they drove away from +the London station in a four-wheeler. "It is really ourselves, and this +is really London! Can you imagine it?" + +She looked out. Nothing met her eyes but dingy weather, muddy streets, +long rows of ordinary brick or stone houses. It might very well have +been New York or Boston on a foggy day, yet to her eyes all things had a +subtle difference which made them unlike similar objects at home. + +"Wimpole Street!" she cried suddenly, as she caught sight of the name on +the corner; "that is the street where Maria Crawford in Mansfield Park, +you know, 'opened one of the best houses' after she married Mr. +Rushworth. Think of seeing Wimpole Street! What fun!" She looked eagerly +out after the "best houses," but the whole street looked uninteresting +and old-fashioned; the best house to be seen was not of a kind, Katy +thought, to reconcile an ambitious young woman to a dull husband. Katy +had to remind herself that Miss Austen wrote her novels nearly a century +ago, that London was a "growing" place, and that things were probably +much changed since that day. + +More "fun" awaited them when they arrived at Batt's, and exactly such a +landlady sailed forth to welcome them as they had often met with in +books,--an old landlady, smiling and rubicund, with a towering lace cap +on her head, a flowered silk gown, a gold chain, and a pair of fat +mittened hands demurely crossed over a black brocade apron. She alone +would have been worth crossing the ocean to see, they all declared. +Their telegram had been received, and rooms were ready, with a bright, +smoky fire of soft coals; the dinner-table was set, and a nice, formal, +white-cravated old waiter, who seemed to have stepped out of the same +book with the landlady, was waiting to serve it. Everything was dingy +and old-fashioned, but very clean and comfortable; and Katy concluded +that on the whole Godfrey Percy would have done wisely to go to Batt's, +and could have fared no better at the other hotel where he did stay. + +The first of Katy's "London sights" came to her next morning before she +was out of her bedroom. She heard a bell ring and a queer squeaking +little voice utter a speech of which she could not make out a single +word. Then came a laugh and a shout, as if several boys were amused at +something or other; and altogether her curiosity was roused, so that she +finished dressing as fast as she could, and ran to the drawing-room +window which commanded a view of the street. Quite a little crowd was +collected under the window, and in their midst was a queer box raised +high on poles, with little red curtains tied back on either side to form +a miniature stage, on which puppets were moving and vociferating. Katy +knew in a moment that she was seeing her first Punch and Judy! + +The box and the crowd began to move away. Katy in despair ran to +Wilkins, the old waiter who was setting the breakfast-table. + +"Oh, please stop that man!" she said. "I want to see him." + +"What man is it, Miss?" said Wilkins. + +When he reached the window and realized what Katy meant, his sense of +propriety seemed to receive a severe shock. He even ventured on +remonstrance. + +"H'I wouldn't, Miss, h'if h'I was you. Them Punches are a low lot, Miss; +they h'ought to be put down, really they h'ought. Gentlefolks, h'as a +general thing, pays no h'attention to them." + +But Katy didn't care what "gentlefolks" did or did not do, and insisted +upon having Punch called back. So Wilkins was forced to swallow his +remonstrances and his dignity, and go in pursuit of the objectionable +object. Amy came rushing out, with her hair flying and Mabel in her +arms; and she and Katy had a real treat of Punch and Judy, with all the +well-known scenes, and perhaps a few new ones thrown in for their +especial behoof; for the showman seemed to be inspired by the rapturous +enjoyment of his little audience of three at the first-floor windows. +Punch beat Judy and stole the baby, and Judy banged Punch in return, and +the constable came in and Punch outwitted him, and the hangman and the +devil made their appearance duly; and it was all perfectly satisfactory, +and "just exactly what she hoped it would be, and it quite made up for +the muffins," Katy declared. + +Then, when Punch had gone away, the question arose as to what they +should choose, out of the many delightful things in London, for their +first morning. + +Like ninety-nine Americans out of a hundred, they decided on Westminster +Abbey; and indeed there is nothing in England better worth seeing, or +more impressive, in its dim, rich antiquity, to eyes fresh from the +world which still calls itself "new." So to the Abbey they went, and +lingered there till Mrs. Ashe declared herself to be absolutely dropping +with fatigue. + +"If you don't take me home and give me something to eat," she said, "I +shall drop down on one of these pedestals and stay there and be +exhibited forever after as an 'h'effigy' of somebody belonging to +ancient English history." + +So Katy tore herself away from Henry the Seventh and the Poets' Corner, +and tore Amy away from a quaint little tomb shaped like a cradle, with +the marble image of a baby in it, which had greatly taken her fancy. She +could only be consoled by the promise that she should soon come again +and stay as long as she liked. She reminded Katy of this promise the +very next morning. + +"Mamma has waked up with rather a bad headache, and she thinks she +will lie still and not come to breakfast," she reported. "And she +sends her love, and says will you please have a cab and go where you +like; and if I won't be a trouble, she would be glad if you would take +me with you. And I won't be a trouble, Miss Katy, and I know where I +wish you would go." + +"Where is that!" + +"To see that cunning little baby again that we saw yesterday. I want to +show her to Mabel,--she didn't go with us, you know, and I don't like to +have her mind not improved; and, darling Miss Katy, mayn't I buy some +flowers and put them on the Baby? She's so dusty and so old that I don't +believe anybody has put any flowers for her for ever so long." + +Katy found this idea rather pretty, and willingly stopped at Covent +Garden, where they bought a bunch of late roses for eighteen pence, +which entirely satisfied Amy. With them in her hand, and Mabel in her +arms, she led the way through the dim aisles of the Abbey, through +grates and doors and up and down steps; the guide following, but not at +all needed, for Amy seemed to have a perfectly clear recollection of +every turn and winding. When the chapel was reached, she laid the roses +on the tomb with gentle fingers, and a pitiful, reverent look in her +gray eyes. Then she lifted Mabel up to kiss the odd little baby effigy +above the marble quilt; whereupon the guide seemed altogether surprised +out of his composure, and remarked to Katy,-- + +"Little Miss is an h'American, as is plain to see; no h'English child +would be likely to think of doing such a thing." + +"Do not English children take any interest in the tombs of the Abbey?" +asked Katy. + +"Oh yes, m'm,--h'interest; but they don't take no special notice of one +tomb above h'another." + +Katy could scarcely keep from laughing, especially as she heard Amy, who +had been listening to the conversation, give an audible sniff, and +inform Mabel that she was glad _she_ was not an English child, who +didn't notice things and liked grown-up graves as much as she did dear +little cunning ones like this! + +Later in the day, when Mrs. Ashe was better, they all drove together to +the quaint old keep which has been the scene of so many tragedies, and +is known as the Tower of London. Here they were shown various rooms and +chapels and prisons; and among the rest the apartments where Queen +Elizabeth, when a friendless young Princess, was shut up for many months +by her sister, Queen Mary. Katy had read somewhere, and now told Amy, +the pretty legend of the four little children who lived with their +parents in the Tower, and used to play with the royal captive; and how +one little boy brought her a key which he had picked up on the ground, +and said, "Now you can go out when you will, lady;" and how the Lords of +the Council, getting wind of it, sent for the children to question them, +and frightened them and their friends almost to death, and forbade them +to go near the Princess again. + +A story about children always brings the past much nearer to a child, +and Amy's imagination was so excited by this tale, that when they got to +the darksome closet which is said to have been the prison of Sir Walter +Raleigh, she marched out of it with a pale and wrathful face. + +"If this is English history, I never mean to learn any more of it, and +neither shall Mabel," she declared. + +But it is not possible for Amy or any one else not to learn a great deal +of history simply by going about London. So many places are associated +with people or events, and seeing the places makes one care so much more +for the people or the events, that one insensibly questions and wonders. +Katy, who had "browsed" all through her childhood in a good +old-fashioned library, had her memory stuffed with all manner of little +scraps of information and literary allusions, which now came into use. +It was like owning the disjointed bits of a puzzle, and suddenly +discovering that properly put together they make a pattern. Mrs. Ashe, +who had never been much of a reader, considered her young friend a +prodigy of intelligence; but Katy herself realized how inadequate and +inexact her knowledge was, and how many bits were missing from the +pattern of her puzzle. She wished with all her heart, as every one +wishes under such circumstances, that she had studied harder and more +wisely while the chance was in her power. On a journey you cannot read +to advantage. Remember that, dear girls, who are looking forward to +travelling some day, and be industrious in time. + +October is not a favorable month in which to see England. Water, water +is everywhere; you breathe it, you absorb it; it wets your clothes and +it dampens your spirits. Mrs. Ashe's friends advised her not to think of +Scotland at that time of the year. One by one their little intended +excursions were given up. A single day and night in Oxford and +Stratford-on-Avon; a short visit to the Isle of Wight, where, in a +country-place which seemed provokingly pretty as far as they could see +it for the rain, lived that friend of Mrs. Ashe who had married an +Englishman and in so doing had, as Katy privately thought, "renounced +the sun;" a peep at Stonehenge from under the shelter of an umbrella, +and an hour or two in Salisbury Cathedral,--was all that they +accomplished, except a brief halt at Winchester, that Katy might have +the privilege of seeing the grave of her beloved Miss Austen. Katy had +come abroad with a terribly long list of graves to visit, Mrs. Ashe +declared. They laid a few rain-washed flowers upon the tomb, and +listened with edification to the verger, who inquired,-- + +"Whatever was it, ma'am, that lady did which brings so many h'Americans +to h'ask about her? Our h'English people don't seem to take the same +h'interest." + +"She wrote such delightful stories," explained Katy; but the old verger +shook his head. + +"I think h'it must be some other party, Miss, you've confused with this +here. It stands to reason, Miss, that we'd have heard of 'em h'over 'ere +in England sooner than you would h'over there in h'America, if the books +'ad been h'anything so h'extraordinary." + +The night after their return to London they were dining for the second +time with the cousins of whom Mrs. Ashe had spoken to Dr. Carr; and as +it happened Katy sat next to a quaint elderly American, who had lived +for twenty years in London and knew it much better than most Londoners +do. This gentleman, Mr. Allen Beach, had a hobby for antiquities, old +books especially, and passed half his time at the British Museum, and +the other half in sales rooms and the old shops in Wardour Street. + +Katy was lamenting over the bad weather which stood in the way of +their plans. + +"It is so vexatious," she said. "Mrs. Ashe meant to go to York and +Lincoln and all the cathedral towns and to Scotland; and we have had to +give it all up because of the rains. We shall go away having seen hardly +anything." + +"You can see London." + +"We have,--that is, we have seen the things that everybody sees." + +"But there are so many things that people in general do not see. How +much longer are you to stay, Miss Carr?" + +"A week, I believe." + +"Why don't you make out a list of old buildings which are connected with +famous people in history, and visit them in turn? I did that the second +year after I came. I gave up three months to it, and it was most +interesting. I unearthed all manner of curious stories and traditions." + +"Or," cried Katy, struck with a sudden bright thought, "why mightn't +I put into the list some of the places I know about in books,--novels +as well as history,--and the places where the people who wrote the +books lived?" + +"You might do that, and it wouldn't be a bad idea, either," said Mr. +Beach, pleased with her enthusiasm. "I will get a pencil after dinner +and help you with your list if you will allow me." + +Mr. Beach was better than his word. He not only suggested places and +traced a plan of sight-seeing, but on two different mornings he went +with them himself; and his intelligent knowledge of London added very +much to the interest of the excursions. Under his guidance the little +party of four--for Mabel was never left out; it was _such_ a chance for +her to improve her mind, Amy declared--visited the Charter-House, where +Thackeray went to school, and the Home of the Poor Brothers connected +with it, in which Colonel Newcome answered "Adsum" to the roll-call of +the angels. They took a look at the small house in Curzon Street, which +is supposed to have been in Thackeray's mind when he described the +residence of Becky Sharpe; and the other house in Russell Square which +is unmistakably that where George Osborne courted Amelia Sedley. They +went to service in the delightful old church of St. Mary in the Temple, +and thought of Ivanhoe and Brian de Bois-Guilbert and Rebecca the +Jewess. From there Mr. Beach took them to Lamb's Court, where Pendennis +and George Warrington dwelt in chambers together; and to Brick Court, +where Oliver Goldsmith passed so much of his life, and the little rooms +in which Charles and Mary Lamb spent so many sadly happy years. On +another day they drove to Whitefriars, for the sake of Lord Glenvarloch +and the old privilege of Sanctuary in the "Fortunes of Nigel;" and took +a peep at Bethnal Green, where the Blind Beggar and his "Pretty Bessee" +lived, and at the old Prison of the Marshalsea, made interesting by its +associations with "Little Dorrit." They also went to see Milton's house +and St. Giles Church, in which he is buried; and stood a long time +before St. James Palace, trying to make out which could have been Miss +Burney's windows when she was dresser to Queen Charlotte of bitter +memory. And they saw Paternoster Row and No. 5 Cheyne Walk, sacred +forevermore to the memory of Thomas Carlyle, and Whitehall, where Queen +Elizabeth lay in state and King Charles was beheaded, and the state +rooms of Holland House; and by great good luck had a glimpse of George +Eliot getting out of a cab. She stood for a moment while she gave her +fare to the cabman, and Katy looked as one who might not look again, and +carried away a distinct picture of the unbeautiful, interesting, +remarkable face. + +With all this to see and to do, the last week sped all too swiftly, and +the last day came before they were at all ready to leave what Katy +called "Story-book England." Mrs. Ashe had decided to cross by Newhaven +and Dieppe, because some one had told her of the beautiful old town of +Rouen, and it seemed easy and convenient to take it on the way to Paris. +Just landed from the long voyage across the Atlantic, the little passage +of the Channel seemed nothing to our travellers, and they made ready for +their night on the Dieppe steamer with the philosophy which is born of +ignorance. They were speedily undeceived! + +The English Channel has a character of its own, which distinguishes it +from other seas and straits. It seems made fractious and difficult by +Nature, and set as on purpose to be barrier between two nations who are +too unlike to easily understand each other, and are the safer neighbors +for this wholesome difficulty of communication between them. The "chop" +was worse than usual on the night when our travellers crossed; the +steamer had to fight her way inch by inch. And oh, such a little +steamer! and oh, such a long night! + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +ACROSS THE CHANNEL. + + +Dawn had given place to day, and day was well advanced toward noon, +before the stout little steamer gained her port. It was hours after +the usual time for arrival; the train for Paris must long since have +started, and Katy felt dejected and forlorn as, making her way out of +the terrible ladies'-cabin, she crept on deck for her first glimpse +of France. + +The sun was struggling through the fog with a watery smile, and his +faint beams shone on a confusion of stone piers, higher than the +vessel's deck, intersected with canal-like waterways, through whose +intricate windings the steamer was slowly threading her course to the +landing-place. Looking up, Katy could see crowds of people assembled to +watch the boat come in,--workmen, peasants, women, children, soldiers, +custom-house officers, moving to and fro,--and all this crowd were +talking all at once and all were talking French! + +I don't know why this should have startled her as it did. She knew, of +course, that people of different countries were liable to be found +speaking their own languages; but somehow the spectacle of the +chattering multitude, all seeming so perfectly at ease with their +preterits and subjunctives and never once having to refer to Ollendorf +or a dictionary, filled her with a sense of dismayed surprise. + +"Good gracious!" she said to herself, "even the babies understand it!" +She racked her brains to recall what she had once known of French, but +very little seemed to have survived the horrors of the night! + +"Oh dear! what is the word for trunk-key?" she asked herself. "They will +all begin to ask questions, and I shall not have a word to say; and Mrs. +Ashe will be even worse off, I know." She saw the red-trousered +custom-house officers pounce upon the passengers as they landed one by +one, and she felt her heart sink within her. + +But after all, when the time came it did not prove so very bad. Katy's +pleasant looks and courteous manner stood her in good stead. She did not +trust herself to say much; but the officials seemed to understand +without saying. They bowed and gestured, whisked the keys in and out, +and in a surprisingly short time all was pronounced right, the baggage +had "passed," and it and its owners were free to proceed to the +railway-station, which fortunately was close at hand. + +Inquiry revealed the fact that no train for Paris left till four in the +afternoon. + +"I am rather glad," declared poor Mrs. Ashe, "for I feel too used up to +move. I will lie here on this sofa; and, Katy dear, please see if there +is an eating-place, and get some breakfast for yourself and Amy, and +send me a cup of tea." + +"I don't like to leave you alone," Katy was beginning; but at that +moment a nice old woman who seemed to be in charge of the waiting-room +appeared, and with a flood of French which none of them could follow, +but which was evidently sympathetic in its nature, flew at Mrs. Ashe and +began to make her comfortable. From a cupboard in the wall she produced +a pillow, from another cupboard a blanket; in a trice she had one under +Mrs. Ashe's head and the other wrapped round her feet. + +"Pauvre madame," she said, "si pale! si souffrante! Il faut avoir +quelque chose a boire et a manger tout de suite." She trotted across the +room and into the restaurant which opened out of it, while Mrs. Ashe +smiled at Katy and said, "You see you can leave me quite safely; I am to +be taken care of." And Katy and Amy passed through the same door into +the _buffet_, and sat down at a little table. + +It was a particularly pleasant-looking place to breakfast in. There were +many windows with bright polished panes and very clean short muslin +curtains, and on the window-sills stood rows of thrifty potted plants in +full bloom,--marigolds, balsams, nasturtiums, and many colored +geraniums. Two birds in cages were singing loudly; the floor was waxed +to a glass-like polish; nothing could have been whiter than the marble +of the tables except the napkins laid over them. And such a good +breakfast as was presently brought to them,--delicious coffee in +bowl-like cups, crisp rolls and rusks, an omelette with a delicate +flavor of fine herbs, stewed chicken, little pats of freshly churned +butter without salt, shaped like shells and tasting like solidified +cream, and a pot of some sort of nice preserve. Amy made great delighted +eyes at Katy, and remarking, "I think France is heaps nicer than that +old England," began to eat with a will; and Katy herself felt that if +this railroad meal was a specimen of what they had to expect in the +future, they had indeed come to a land of plenty. + +Fortified with the satisfactory breakfast, she felt equal to a walk; and +after they had made sure that Mrs. Ashe had all she needed, she and Amy +(and Mabel) set off by themselves to see the sights of Dieppe. I don't +know that travellers generally have considered Dieppe an interesting +place, but Katy found it so. There was a really old church and some +quaint buildings of the style of two centuries back, and even the more +modern streets had a novel look to her unaccustomed eyes. At first they +only ventured a timid turn or two, marking each corner, and going back +now and then to reassure themselves by a look at the station; but after +a while, growing bolder, Katy ventured to ask a question or two in +French, and was surprised and charmed to find herself understood. After +that she grew adventurous, and, no longer fearful of being lost, led Amy +straight down a long street lined with shops, almost all of which were +for the sale of articles in ivory. + +Ivory wares are one of the chief industries of Dieppe. There were cases +full, windows full, counters full, of the most exquisite combs and +brushes, some with elaborate monograms in silver and colors, others +plain; there were boxes and caskets of every size and shape, ornaments, +fans, parasol handles, looking-glasses, frames for pictures large and +small, napkin-rings. + +Katy was particularly smitten with a paper-knife in the form of an angel +with long slender wings raised over its head and meeting to form a +point. Its price was twenty francs, and she was strongly tempted to buy +it for Clover or Rose Red. But she said to herself sensibly, "This is +the first shop I have been into and the first thing I have really wanted +to buy, and very likely as we go on I shall see things I like better and +want more, so it would be foolish to do it. No, I won't." And she +resolutely turned her back on the ivory angel, and walked away. + +The next turn brought them to a gay-looking little market-place, where +old women in white caps were sitting on the ground beside baskets and +panniers full of apples, pears, and various queer and curly vegetables, +none of which Katy recognized as familiar; fish of all shapes and colors +were flapping in shallow tubs of sea-water; there were piles of +stockings, muffetees, and comforters in vivid blue and red worsted, and +coarse pottery glazed in bright patterns. The faces of the women were +brown and wrinkled; there were no pretty ones among them, but their +black eyes were full of life and quickness, and their fingers one and +all clicked with knitting-needles, as their tongues flew equally fast in +the chatter and the chaffer, which went on without stop or stay, though +customers did not seem to be many and sales were few. + +Returning to the station they found that Mrs. Ashe had been asleep +during their absence, and seemed so much better that it was with greatly +amended spirits that they took their places in the late afternoon train +which was to set them down at Rouen. Katy said they were like the Wise +Men of the East, "following a star," in their choice of a hotel; for, +having no better advice, they had decided upon one of those thus +distinguished in Baedeker's Guide-book. + +The star did not betray their confidence; for the Hotel de la Cloche, to +which it led them, proved to be quaint and old, and very pleasant of +aspect. The lofty chambers, with their dimly frescoed ceilings, and beds +curtained with faded patch, might to all appearances have been furnished +about the time when "Columbus crossed the ocean blue;" but everything +was clean, and had an air of old-time respectability. The dining-room, +which was evidently of more modern build, opened into a square courtyard +where oleanders and lemon trees in boxes stood round the basin of a +little fountain, whose tinkle and plash blended agreeably with the +rattle of the knives and forks. In one corner of the room was a raised +and railed platform, where behind a desk sat the mistress of the house, +busy with her account-books, but keeping an eye the while on all that +went forward. + +Mrs. Ashe walked past this personage without taking any notice of her, +as Americans are wont to do under such circumstances; but presently the +observant Katy noticed that every one else, as they went in or out of +the room, addressed a bow or a civil remark to this lady. She quite +blushed at the recollection afterward, as she made ready for bed. + +"How rude we must have seemed!" she thought. "I am afraid the people +here think that Americans have _awful_ manners, everybody is so polite. +They said 'Bon soir' and 'Merci' and 'Voulez-vous avoir la bonte,' to +the waiters even! Well, there is one thing,--I am going to reform. +To-morrow I will be as polite as anybody. They will think that I am +miraculously improved by one night on French soil; but, never mind! I am +going to do it." + +She kept her resolution, and astonished Mrs. Ashe next morning, by +bowing to the dame on the platform in the most winning manner, and +saying, "Bon jour, madame," as they went by. + +"But, Katy, who is that person? Why do you speak to her?" + +"Don't you see that they all do? She is the landlady, I think; at all +events, everybody bows to her. And just notice how prettily these ladies +at the next table speak to the waiter. They do not order him to do +things as we do at home. I noticed it last night, and I liked it so much +that I made a resolution to get up and be as polite as the French +themselves this morning." + +So all the time that they went about the sumptuous old city, rich in +carvings and sculptures and traditions, while they were looking at the +Cathedral and the wonderful church of St. Ouen, and the Palace of +Justice, and the "Place of the Maid," where poor Jeanne d'Arc was burned +and her ashes scattered to the winds, Katy remembered her manners, and +smiled and bowed, and used courteous prefixes in a soft pleasant voice; +and as Mrs. Ashe and Amy fell in with her example more or less, I think +the guides and coachmen and the old women who showed them over the +buildings felt that the air of France was very civilizing indeed, and +that these strangers from savage countries over the sea were in a fair +way to be as well bred as if they had been born in a more favored part +of the world! + +Paris looked very modern after the peculiar quaint richness and air of +the Middle Ages which distinguish Rouen. Rooms had been engaged for +Mrs. Ashe's party in a _pension_ near the Arc d'Etoile, and there they +drove immediately on arriving. The rooms were not in the _pension_ +itself, but in a house close by,--a sitting-room with six mirrors, +three clocks, and a pinched little grate about a foot wide, a +dining-room just large enough for a table and four chairs, and two +bedrooms. A maid called Amandine had been detailed to take charge of +these rooms and serve their meals. + +Dampness, as Katy afterward wrote to Clover, was the first impression +they received of "gay Paris." The tiny fire in the tiny grate had only +just been lighted, and the walls and the sheets and even the blankets +felt chilly and moist to the touch. They spent their first evening in +hanging the bedclothes round the grate and piling on fuel; they even set +the mattresses up on edge to warm and dry! It was not very enlivening, +it must be confessed. Amy had taken a cold, Mrs. Ashe looked worried, +and Katy thought of Burnet and the safety and comfort of home with a +throb of longing. + +The days that ensued were not brilliant enough to remove this +impression. The November fogs seemed to have followed them across the +Channel, and Paris remained enveloped in a wet blanket which dimmed and +hid its usually brilliant features. Going about in cabs with the windows +drawn up, and now and then making a rush through the drip into shops, +was not exactly delightful, but it seemed pretty much all that they +could do. It was worse for Amy, whose cold kept her indoors and denied +her even the relaxation of the cab. Mrs. Ashe had engaged a +well-recommended elderly English maid to come every morning and take +care of Amy while they were out; and with this respectable functionary, +whose ideas were of a rigidly British type and who did not speak a word +of any language but her own, poor Amy was compelled to spend most of her +time. Her only consolation was in persuading this serene attendant to +take a part in the French lessons which she made a daily point of giving +to Mabel out of her own little phrase-book. + +"Wilkins is getting on, I think," she told Katy one night. "She says +'Biscuit glace' quite nicely now. But I never will let her look at the +book, though she always wants to; for if once she saw how the words are +spelled, she would never in the world pronounce them right again. They +look so very different, you know." + +Katy looked at Amy's pale little face and eager eyes with a real +heartache. Her rapture when at the end of the long dull afternoons her +mother returned to her was touching. Paris was very _triste_ to poor +Amy, with all her happy facility for amusing herself; and Katy felt that +the sooner they got away from it the better it would be. So, in spite of +the delight which her brief glimpses at the Louvre gave her, and the fun +it was to go about with Mrs. Ashe and see her buy pretty things, and the +real satisfaction she took in the one perfectly made walking-suit to +which she had treated herself, she was glad when the final day came, +when the belated dressmakers and artistes in jackets and wraps had sent +home their last wares, and the trunks were packed. It had been rather +the fault of circumstances than of Paris; but Katy had not learned to +love the beautiful capital as most Americans do, and did not feel at all +as if she wanted that her "reward of virtue" should be to go there when +she died! There must be more interesting places for live people, and +ghosts too, to be found on the map of Europe, she was sure. + +Next morning as they drove slowly down the Champs Elysees, and +looked back for a last glimpse of the famous Arch, a bright object +met their eyes, moving vaguely against the mist. It was the gay red +wagon of the Bon Marche, carrying bundles home to the dwellers of +some up-town street. + +Katy burst out laughing. "It is an emblem of Paris," she said,--"of our +Paris, I mean. It has been all Bon Marche and fog!" + +"Miss Katy," interrupted Amy, "_do_ you like Europe? For my part, I was +never so disgusted with any place in my life!" + +"Poor little bird, her views of 'Europe' are rather dark just now, and +no wonder," said her mother. "Never mind, darling, you shall have +something pleasanter by and by if I can find it for you." + +"Burnet is a great deal pleasanter than Paris," pronounced Amy, +decidedly. "It doesn't keep always raining there, and I can take walks, +and I understand everything that people say." + +All that day they sped southward, and with every hour came a change in +the aspect of their surroundings. Now they made brief stops in large +busy towns which seemed humming with industry. Now they whirled through +grape countries with miles of vineyards, where the brown leaves still +hung on the vines. Then again came glimpses of old Roman ruins, +amphitheatres, viaducts, fragments of wall or arch; or a sudden chill +betokened their approach to mountains, where snowy peaks could be seen +on the far horizon. And when the long night ended and day roused them +from broken slumbers, behold, the world was made over! Autumn had +vanished, and the summer, which they thought fled for good, had taken +his place. Green woods waved about them, fresh leaves were blowing in +the wind, roses and hollyhocks beckoned from white-walled gardens; and +before they had done with exclaiming and rejoicing, the Mediterranean +shot into view, intensely blue, with white fringes of foam, white sails +blowing across, white gulls flying above it, and over all a sky of the +same exquisite blue, whose clouds were white as the drifting sails on +the water below, and they were at Marseilles. + +It was like a glimpse of Paradise to eyes fresh from autumnal grays and +glooms, as they sped along the lovely coast, every curve and turn +showing new combinations of sea and shore, olive-crowned cliff and +shining mountain-peak. With every mile the blue became bluer, the wind +softer, the feathery verdure more dense and summer-like. Hyeres and +Cannes and Antibes were passed, and then, as they rounded a long point, +came the view of a sunshiny city lying on a sunlit shore; the train +slackened its speed, and they knew that their journey's end was come and +they were in Nice. + +The place seemed to laugh with gayety as they drove down the Promenade +des Anglais and past the English garden, where the band was playing +beneath the acacias and palm-trees. On one side was a line of +bright-windowed hotels and _pensions_, with balconies and striped +awnings; on the other, the long reach of yellow sand-beach, where ladies +were grouped on shawls and rugs, and children ran up and down in the +sun, while beyond stretched the waveless sea. The December sun felt as +warm as on a late June day at home, and had the same soft caressing +touch. The pavements were thronged with groups of leisurely-looking +people, all wearing an unmistakable holiday aspect; pretty girls in +correct Parisian costumes walked demurely beside their mothers, with +cavaliers in attendance; and among these young men appeared now and +again the well-known uniform of the United States Navy. + +"I wonder," said Mrs. Ashe, struck by a sudden thought, "if by any +chance our squadron is here." She asked the question the moment they +entered the hotel; and the porter, who prided himself on understanding +"zose Eenglesh," replied,-- + +"Mais oui, Madame, ze Americaine fleet it is here; zat is, not here, +but at Villefranche, just a leetle four mile away,--it is ze same +zing exactly." + +"Katy, do you hear that?" cried Mrs. Ashe. "The frigates _are_ here, and +the 'Natchitoches' among them of course; and we shall have Ned to go +about with us everywhere. It is a real piece of good luck for us. Ladies +are at such a loss in a place like this with nobody to escort them. I am +perfectly delighted." + +"So am I," said Katy. "I never saw a frigate, and I always wanted to see +one. Do you suppose they will let us go on board of them?" + +"Why, of course they will." Then to the porter, "Give me a sheet +of paper and an envelope, please.--I must let Ned know that I am +here at once." + +Mrs. Ashe wrote her note and despatched it before they went upstairs to +take off their bonnets. She seemed to have a half-hope that some bird of +the air might carry the news of her arrival to her brother, for she kept +running to the window as if in expectation of seeing him. She was too +restless to lie down or sleep, and after she and Katy had lunched, +proposed that they should go out on the beach for a while. + +"Perhaps we may come across Ned," she remarked. + +They did not come across Ned, but there was no lack of other +delightful objects to engage their attention. The sands were smooth +and hard as a floor. Soft pink lights were beginning to tinge the +western sky. To the north shone the peaks of the maritime Alps, and +the same rosy glow caught them here and there, and warmed their grays +and whites into color. + +"I wonder what that can be?" said Katy, indicating the rocky point which +bounded the beach to the east, where stood a picturesque building of +stone, with massive towers and steep pitches of roof. "It looks half +like a house and half like a castle, but it is quite fascinating, I +think. Do you suppose that people live there?" + +"We might ask," suggested Mrs. Ashe. + +Just then they came to a shallow river spanned by a bridge, beside whose +pebbly bed stood a number of women who seemed to be washing clothes by +the simple and primitive process of laying them in the water on top of +the stones, and pounding them with a flat wooden paddle till they were +white. Katy privately thought that the clothes stood a poor chance of +lasting through these cleansing operations; but she did not say so, and +made the inquiry which Mrs. Ashe had suggested, in her best French. + +"Celle-la?" answered the old woman whom she had addressed. "Mais c'est +la Pension Suisse." + +"A _pension_; why, that means a boarding-house," cried Katy. "What fun +it must be to board there!" + +"Well, why shouldn't we board there!" said her friend. "You know we +meant to look for rooms as soon as we were rested and had found out a +little about the place. Let us walk on and see what the Pension Suisse +is like. If the inside is as pleasant as the outside, we could not do +better, I should think." + +"Oh, I do hope all the rooms are not already taken," said Katy, who had +fallen in love at first sight with the Pension Suisse. She felt quite +oppressed with anxiety as they rang the bell. + +The Pension Suisse proved to be quite as charming inside as out. The +thick stone walls made deep sills and embrasures for the casement +windows, which were furnished with red cushions to serve as seats and +lounging-places. Every window seemed to command a view, for those which +did not look toward the sea looked toward the mountains. The house was +by no means full, either. Several sets of rooms were to be had; and Katy +felt as if she had walked straight into the pages of a romance When Mrs. +Ashe engaged for a month a delightful suite of three, a sitting-room and +two sleeping-chambers, in a round tower, with a balcony overhanging the +water, and a side window, from which a flight of steps led down into a +little walled garden, nestled in among the masonry, where tall +laurestinus and lemon trees grew, and orange and brown wallflowers made +the air sweet. Her contentment knew no bounds. + +"I am so glad that I came," she told Mrs. Ashe. "I never confessed it to +you before; but sometimes.--when we were sick at sea, you know, and when +it would rain all the time, and after Amy caught that cold in Paris--I +have almost wished, just for a minute or two at a time, that we hadn't. +But now I wouldn't not have come for the world! This is perfectly +delicious. I am glad, glad, glad we are here, and we are going to have a +lovely time, I know." + +They were passing out of the rooms into the hall as she said these +words, and two ladies who were walking up a cross passage turned their +heads at the sound of her voice. To her great surprise Katy recognized +Mrs. Page and Lilly. + +"Why, Cousin Olivia, is it you?" she cried, springing forward with +the cordiality one naturally feels in seeing a familiar face in a +foreign land. + +Mrs. Page seemed rather puzzled than cordial. She put up her eyeglass +and did not seem to quite make out who Katy was. + +"It is Katy Carr, mamma," explained Lilly. "Well, Katy, this _is_ a +surprise! Who would have thought of meeting you in Nice!" + +There was a decided absence of rapture in Lilly's manner. She was +prettier than ever, as Katy saw in a moment, and beautifully dressed in +soft brown velvet, which exactly suited her complexion and her +pale-colored wavy hair. + +"Katy Carr! why, so it is," admitted Mrs. Page. "It is a surprise +indeed. We had no idea that you were abroad. What has brought you so far +from Tunket,--Burnet, I mean? Who are you with?" + +"With my friend Mrs. Ashe," explained Katy, rather chilled by this cool +reception. + +"Let me introduce you. Mrs. Ashe, these are my cousins Mrs. Page and +Miss Page. Amy,--why where is Amy?" + +Amy had walked back to the door of the garden staircase, and was +standing there looking down upon the flowers. + +Cousin Olivia bowed rather distantly. Her quick eye took in the details +of Mrs. Ashe's travelling-dress and Katy's dark blue ulster. + +"Some countrified friend from that dreadful Western town where they +live," she said to herself. "How foolish of Philip Carr to try to send +his girls to Europe! He can't afford it, I know." Her voice was rather +rigid as she inquired,-- + +"And what brings you here?--to this house, I mean?" + +"Oh, we are coming to-morrow to stay; we have taken rooms for a month," +explained Katy. "What a delicious-looking old place it is." + +"Have you?" said Lilly, in a voice which did not express any particular +pleasure. "Why, we are staying here too." + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE PENSION SUISSE. + + +"What do you suppose can have brought Katy Carr to Europe?" inquired +Lilly, as she stood in the window watching the three figures walk slowly +down the sands. "She is the last person I expected to turn up here. I +supposed she was stuck in that horrid place--what is the name of +it?--where they live, for the rest of her life." + +"I confess I am surprised at meeting her myself," rejoined Mrs. Page. "I +had no idea that her father could afford so expensive a journey." + +"And who is this woman that she has got along with her?" + +"I have no idea, I'm sure. Some Western friend, I suppose." + +"Dear me, I wish they were going to some other house than this," said +Lilly, discontentedly. "If they were at the Rivoir, for instance, or one +of those places at the far end of the beach, we shouldn't need to see +anything of them, or even know that they were in town! It's a real +nuisance to have people spring upon you this way, people you don't want +to meet; and when they happen to be relations it is all the worse. Katy +will be hanging on us all the time, I'm afraid." + +"Oh, my dear, there is no fear of that. A little repression on our part +will prevent her from being any trouble, I'm quite certain. But we +_must_ treat her politely, you know, Lilly; her father is my cousin." + +"That's the saddest part of it! Well, there's one thing, I shall _not_ +take her with me every time we go to the frigates," said Lilly, +decisively. "I am not going to inflict a country cousin on Lieutenant +Worthington, and spoil all my own fun beside. So I give you fair +warning, mamma, and you must manage it somehow." + +"Certainly, dear, I will. It would be a great pity to have your visit to +Nice spoiled in any way, with the squadron here too, and that pleasant +Mr. Worthington so very attentive." + +Unconscious of these plans for her suppression, Katy walked back to the +hotel in a mood of pensive pleasure. Europe at last promised to be as +delightful as it had seemed when she only knew it from maps and books, +and Nice so far appeared to her the most charming place in the world. + +Somebody was waiting for them at the Hotel des Anglais,--a tall, +bronzed, good-looking somebody in uniform, with pleasant brown eyes +beaming from beneath a gold-banded cap; at the sight of whom Amy rushed +forward with her long locks flying, and Mrs. Ashe uttered an exclamation +of pleasure. It was Ned Worthington, Mrs. Ashe's only brother, whom she +had not met for two years and a half; and you can easily imagine how +glad she was to see him. + +"You got my note then?" she said after the first eager greetings were +over and she had introduced him to Katy. + +"Note? No. Did you write me a note?" + +"Yes; to Villefranche." + +"To the ship? I shan't get that till tomorrow. No; finding out that you +were here is just a bit of good fortune. I came over to call on some +friends who are staying down the beach a little way, and dropping in to +look over the list of arrivals, as I generally do, I saw your names; and +the porter not being able to say which way you had gone, I waited for +you to come in." + +"We have been looking at such a delightful old place, the Pension +Suisse, and have taken rooms." + +"The Pension Suisse, eh? Why, that was where I was going to call. I know +some people who are staying there. It seems a pleasant house; I'm glad +you are going there, Polly. It's first-rate luck that the ships happen +to be here just now. I can see you every day." + +"But, Ned, surely you are not leaving me so soon? Surely you will stay +and dine with us?" urged his sister, as he took up his cap. + +"I wish I could, but I can't to-night, Polly. You see I had engaged to +take some ladies out to drive, and they will expect me. I had no idea +that you would be here, or I should have kept myself free," +apologetically. "Tomorrow I will come over early, and be at your service +for whatever you like to do." + +"That's right, dear boy. We shall expect you." Then, the moment he was +gone, "Now, Katy, isn't he nice?" + +"Very nice, I should think," said Katy, who had watched the brief +interview with interest. "I like his face so much, and how fond he +is of you!" + +"Dear fellow! so he is. I am seven years older than he, but we have +always been intimate. Brothers and sisters are not always intimate, you +know,--or perhaps you don't know, for all of yours are." + +"Yes, indeed," said Katy, with a happy smile. "There is nobody like +Clover and Elsie, except perhaps Johnnie and Dorry and Phil," she added +with a laugh. + +The remove to the Pension Suisse was made early the next morning. Mrs. +Page and Lilly did not appear to welcome them. Katy rather rejoiced in +their absence, for she wanted the chance to get into order without +interruptions. + +There was something comfortable in the thought that they were to stay a +whole month in these new quarters; for so long a time, it seemed worth +while to make them pretty and homelike. So, while Mrs. Ashe unpacked her +own belongings and Amy's, Katy, who had a natural turn for arranging +rooms, took possession of the little parlor, pulled the furniture into +new positions, laid out portfolios and work-cases and their few books, +pinned various photographs which they had bought in Oxford and London on +the walls, and tied back the curtains to admit the sunshine. Then she +paid a visit to the little garden, and came back with a long branch of +laurestinus, which she trained across the mantelpiece, and a bunch of +wallflowers for their one little vase. The maid, by her orders, laid a +fire of wood and pine cones ready for lighting; and when all was done +she called Mrs. Ashe to pronounce upon the effect. + +"It is lovely," she said, sinking into a great velvet arm-chair which +Katy had drawn close to the seaward window. "I haven't seen anything so +pleasant since we left home. You are a witch, Katy, and the comfort of +my life. I am so glad I brought you! Now, pray go and unpack your own +things, and make yourself look nice for the second breakfast. We have +been a shabby set enough since we arrived. I saw those cousins of yours +looking askance at our old travelling-dresses yesterday. Let us try to +make a more respectable impression to-day." + +So they went down to breakfast, Mrs. Ashe in one of her new Paris gowns, +Katy in a pretty dress of olive serge, and Amy all smiles and ruffled +pinafore, walking hand in hand with her uncle Ned, who had just arrived +and whose great ally she was; and Mrs. Page and Lilly, who were already +seated at table, had much ado to conceal their somewhat unflattering +surprise at the conjunction. For one moment Lilly's eyes opened into a +wide stare of incredulous astonishment; then she remembered herself, +nodded as pleasantly as she could to Mrs. Ashe and Katy, and favored +Lieutenant Worthington with a pretty blushing smile as he went by, while +she murmured,-- + +"Mamma, do you see that? What does it mean?" + +"Why, Ned, do you know those people?" asked Mrs. Ashe at the same +moment. + +"Do _you_ know them!" + +"Yes; we met yesterday. They are connections of my friend Miss Carr." + +"Really? There is not the least family likeness between them." And Mr. +Worthington's eyes travelled deliberately from Lilly's delicate, golden +prettiness to Katy, who, truth to say, did not shine by the contrast. + +"She has a nice, sensible sort of face," he thought, "and she looks like +a lady, but for beauty there is no comparison between the two." Then he +turned to listen to his sister as she replied,-- + +"No, indeed, not the least; no two girls could be less like." Mrs. Ashe +had made the same comparison, but with quite a different result. Katy's +face was grown dear to her, and she had not taken the smallest fancy to +Lilly Page. + +Her relationship to the young naval officer, however, made a wonderful +difference in the attitude of Mrs. Page and Lilly toward the party. Katy +became a person to be cultivated rather than repressed, and +thenceforward there was no lack of cordiality on their part. + +"I want to come in and have a good talk," said Lilly, slipping her arm +through Katy's as they left the dining-room. "Mayn't I come now while +mamma is calling on Mrs. Ashe?" This arrangement brought her to the side +of Lieutenant Worthington, and she walked between him and Katy down the +hall and into the little drawing-room. + +"Oh, how perfectly charming! You have been fixing up ever since you +came, haven't you? It looks like home. I wish we had a _salon_, but +mamma thought it wasn't worth while, as we were only to be here such a +little time. What a delicious balcony over the water, too! May I go out +on it? Oh, Mr. Worthington, do see this!" + +She pushed open the half-closed window and stepped out as she spoke. Mr. +Worthington, after hesitating a moment, followed. Katy paused uncertain. +There was hardly room for three in the balcony, yet she did not quite +like to leave them. But Lilly had turned her back, and was talking in a +low tone; it was nothing more in reality than the lightest chit-chat, +but it had the air of being something confidential; so Katy, after +waiting a little while, retreated to the sofa, and took up her work, +joining now and then in the conversation which Mrs. Ashe was keeping up +with Cousin Olivia. She did not mind Lilly's ill-breeding, nor was she +surprised at it. Mrs. Ashe was less tolerant. + +"Isn't it rather damp out there, Ned?" she called to her brother; "you +had better throw my shawl round Miss Page's shoulders." + +"Oh, it isn't a bit damp," said Lilly, recalled to herself by this broad +hint. "Thank you so much for thinking of it, Mrs. Ashe, but I am just +coming in." She seated herself beside Katy, and began to question her +rather languidly. + +"When did you leave home, and how were they all when you came away?" + +"All well, thank you. We sailed from Boston on the 14th of October; and +before that I spent two days with Rose Red,--you remember her? She is +married now, and has the dearest little home and such a darling baby." + +"Yes, I heard of her marriage. It didn't seem much of a match for Mr. +Redding's daughter to make, did it? I never supposed she would be +satisfied with anything less than a member of Congress or a Secretary of +Legation." + +"Rose isn't particularly ambitious, I think, and she seems perfectly +happy," replied Katy, flushing. + +"Oh, you needn't fire up in her defence; you and Clover always did adore +Rose Red, I know, but I never could see what there was about her that +was so wonderfully fascinating. She never had the least style, and she +was always just as rude to me as she could be." + +"You were not intimate at school, but I am sure Rose was never rude," +said Katy, with spirit. + +"Well, we won't fight about her at this late day. Tell me where you have +been, and where you are going, and how long you are to stay in Europe." + +Katy, glad to change the subject, complied, and the conversation +diverged into comparison of plans and experiences. Lilly had been in +Europe nearly a year, and had seen "almost everything," as she phrased +it. She and her mother had spent the previous winter in Italy, had taken +a run into Russia, "done" Switzerland and the Tyrol thoroughly, and +France and Germany, and were soon going into Spain, and from there to +Paris, to shop in preparation for their return home in the spring. + +"Of course we shall want quantities of things," she said. "No one will +believe that we have been abroad unless we bring home a lot of clothes. +The _lingerie_ and all that is ordered already; but the dresses must be +made at the last moment, and we shall have a horrid time of it, I +suppose. Worth has promised to make me two walking-suits and two +ball-dresses, but he's very bad about keeping his word. Did you do much +when you were in Paris, Katy?" + +"We went to the Louvre three times, and to Versailles and St. Cloud," +said Katy, wilfully misunderstanding her. + +"Oh, I didn't mean that kind of stupid thing; I meant gowns. What +did you buy?" + +"One tailor-made suit of dark blue cloth." + +"My! what moderation!" + +Shopping played a large part in Lilly's reminiscences. She recollected +places, not from their situation or beauty or historical associations, +or because of the works of art which they contained, but as the places +where she bought this or that. + +"Oh, that dear Piazza di Spagna!" she would say; "that was where I +found my rococo necklace, the loveliest thing you ever saw, Katy." Or, +"Prague--oh yes, mother got the most enchanting old silver chatelaine +there, with all kinds of things hanging to it,--needlecases and watches +and scent-bottles, all solid, and so beautifully chased." Or again, +"Berlin was horrid, we thought; but the amber is better and cheaper +than anywhere else,--great strings of beads, of the largest size and +that beautiful pale yellow, for a hundred francs. You must get yourself +one, Katy." + +Poor Lilly! Europe to her was all "things." She had collected trunks +full of objects to carry home, but of the other collections which do not +go into trunks, she had little or none. Her mind was as empty, her heart +as untouched as ever; the beauty and the glory and the pathos of art and +history and Nature had been poured out in vain before her closed and +indifferent eyes. + +Life soon dropped into a peaceful routine at the Pension Suisse, which +was at the same time restful and stimulating. Katy's first act in the +morning, as soon as she opened her eyes, was to hurry to the window in +hopes of getting a glimpse of Corsica. She had discovered that this +elusive island could almost always be seen from Nice at the dawning, but +that as soon as the sun was fairly up, it vanished to appear no more for +the rest of the day. There was something fascinating to her imagination +in the hovering mountain outline between sea and sky. She felt as if she +were under an engagement to be there to meet it, and she rarely missed +the appointment. Then, after Corsica had pulled the bright mists over +its face and melted from view, she would hurry with her dressing, and as +soon as was practicable set to work to make the _salon_ look bright +before the coffee and rolls should appear, a little after eight o'clock. +Mrs. Ashe always found the fire lit, the little meal cosily set out +beside it, and Katy's happy untroubled face to welcome her when she +emerged from her room; and the cheer of these morning repasts made a +good beginning for the day. + +Then came walking and a French lesson, and a long sitting on the beach, +while Katy worked at her home letters and Amy raced up and down in the +sun; and then toward noon Lieutenant Ned generally appeared, and some +scheme of pleasure was set on foot. Mrs. Ashe ignored his evident +_penchant_ for Lilly Page, and claimed his time and attentions as hers +by right. Young Worthington was a good deal "taken" with the pretty +Lilly; still, he had an old-time devotion for his sister and the habit +of doing what she desired, and he yielded to her behests with no audible +objections. He made a fourth in the carriage while they drove over the +lovely hills which encircle Nice toward the north, to Cimiers and the +Val de St. Andre, or down the coast toward Ventimiglia. He went with +them to Monte-Carlo and Mentone, and was their escort again and again +when they visited the great war-ships as they lay at anchor in a bay +which in its translucent blue was like an enormous sapphire. + +Mrs. Page and her daughter were included in these parties more than +once; but there was something in Mrs. Ashe's cool appropriation of her +brother which was infinitely vexatious to Lilly, who before her +arrival had rather looked upon Lieutenant Worthington as her own +especial property. + +"I wish _that_ Mrs. Ashe had stayed at home," she told her mother. "She +quite spoils everything. Mr. Worthington isn't half so nice as he was +before she came. I do believe she has a plan for making him fall in love +with Katy; but there she makes a miss of it, for he doesn't seem to care +anything about her." + +"Katy is a nice girl enough," pronounced her mother, "but not of the +sort to attract a gay young man, I should fancy. I don't believe _she_ +is thinking of any such thing. You needn't be afraid, Lilly." + +"I'm not afraid," said Lilly, with a pout; "only it's so provoking." + +Mrs. Page was quite right. Katy was not thinking of any such thing. She +liked Ned Worthington's frank manners; she owned, quite honestly, that +she thought him handsome, and she particularly admired the sort of +deferential affection which he showed to Mrs. Ashe, and his nice ways +with Amy. For herself, she was aware that he scarcely noticed her except +as politeness demanded that he should be civil to his sister's friend; +but the knowledge did not trouble her particularly. Her head was full of +interesting things, plans, ideas. She was not accustomed to being made +the object of admiration, and experienced none of the vexations of a +neglected belle. If Lieutenant Worthington happened to talk to her, she +responded frankly and freely; if he did not, she occupied herself with +something else; in either case she was quite unembarrassed both in +feeling and manner, and had none of the awkwardness which comes from +disappointed vanity and baffled expectations, and the need for +concealing them. + +Toward the close of December the officers of the flag-ship gave a ball, +which was the great event of the season to the gay world of Nice. +Americans were naturally in the ascendant on an American frigate; and of +all the American girls present, Lilly Page was unquestionably the +prettiest. Exquisitely dressed in white lace, with bands of turquoises +on her neck and arms and in her hair, she had more partners than she +knew what to do with, more bouquets than she could well carry, and +compliments enough to turn any girl's head. Thrown off her guard by her +triumphs, she indulged a little vindictive feeling which had been +growing in her mind of late on account of what she chose to consider +certain derelictions of duty on the part of Lieutenant Worthington, and +treated him to a taste of neglect. She was engaged three deep when he +asked her to dance; she did not hear when he invited her to walk; she +turned a cold shoulder when he tried to talk, and seemed absorbed by the +other cavaliers, naval and otherwise, who crowded about her. + +Piqued and surprised, Ned Worthington turned to Katy. She did not dance, +saying frankly that she did not know how and was too tall; and she was +rather simply dressed in a pearl-gray silk, which had been her best gown +the winter before in Burnet, with a bunch of red roses in the white lace +of the tucker, and another in her hand, both the gifts of little Amy; +but she looked pleasant and serene, and there was something about her +which somehow soothed his disturbed mind, as he offered her his arm for +a walk on the decks. + +For a while they said little, and Katy was quite content to pace up and +down in silence, enjoying the really beautiful scene,--the moonlight on +the Bay, the deep wavering reflections of the dark hulls and slender +spars, the fairy effect of the colored lamps and lanterns, and the +brilliant moving maze of the dancers. + +"Do you care for this sort of thing?" he suddenly asked. + +"What sort of thing do you mean?" + +"Oh, all this jigging and waltzing and amusement." + +"I don't know how to 'jig,' but it's delightful to look on," she +answered merrily. "I never saw anything so pretty in my life." + +The happy tone of her voice and the unruffled face which she turned upon +him quieted his irritation. + +"I really believe you mean it," he said; "and yet, if you won't think me +rude to say so, most girls would consider the thing dull enough if they +were only getting out of it what you are,--if they were not dancing, I +mean, and nobody in particular was trying to entertain them." + +"But everything _is_ being done to entertain me," cried Katy. "I can't +imagine what makes you think that it could seem dull. I am in it all, +don't you see,--I have my share--. Oh, I am stupid, I can't make you +understand." + +"Yes, you do. I understand perfectly, I think; only it is such a +different point of view from what girls in general would take." (By +girls he meant Lilly!) "Please do not think me uncivil." + +"You are not uncivil at all; but don't let us talk any more about me. +Look at the lights between the shadows of the masts on the water. How +they quiver! I never saw anything so beautiful, I think. And how warm it +is! I can't believe that we are in December and that it is nearly +Christmas." + +"How is Polly going to celebrate her Christmas? Have you decided?" + +"Amy is to have a Christmas-tree for her dolls, and two other dolls are +coming. We went out this morning to buy things for it,--tiny little toys +and candles fit for Lilliput. And that reminds me, do you suppose one +can get any Christmas greens here?" + +"Why not? The place seems full of green." + +"That's just it; the summer look makes it unnatural. But I should like +some to dress the parlor with if they could be had." + +"I'll see what I can find, and send you a load." + +I don't know why this very simple little talk should have made an +impression on Lieutenant Worthington's mind, but somehow he did not +forget it. + +"'Don't let us talk any more about me,'" he said to himself that night +when alone in his cabin. "I wonder how long it would be before the other +one did anything to divert the talk from herself. Some time, I fancy." +He smiled rather grimly as he unbuckled his sword-belt. It is unlucky +for a girl when she starts a train of reflection like this. Lilly's +little attempt to pique her admirer had somehow missed its mark. + +The next afternoon Katy in her favorite place on the beach was at work +on the long weekly letter which she never failed to send home to Burnet. +She held her portfolio in her lap, and her pen ran rapidly over the +paper, as rapidly almost as her tongue would have run could her +correspondents have been brought nearer. + + + "Nice, December 22. + + "Dear Papa and everybody,--Amy and I are sitting on my old purple + cloak, which is spread over the sand just where it was spread the + last time I wrote you. We are playing the following game: I am a + fairy and she is a little girl. Another fairy--not sitting on the + cloak at present--has enchanted the little girl, and I am telling + her various ways by which she can work out her deliverance. At + present the task is to find twenty-four dull red pebbles of the same + color, failing to do which she is to be changed into an owl. When we + began to play, I was the wicked fairy; but Amy objected to that + because I am 'so nice,' so we changed the characters. I wish you + could see the glee in her pretty gray eyes over this infantile game, + into which she has thrown herself so thoroughly that she half + believes in it. 'But I needn't really be changed into an owl! 'she + says, with a good deal of anxiety in her voice. + + "To think that you are shivering in the first snow-storm, or sending + the children out with their sleds and india-rubbers to slide! How I + wish instead that you were sharing the purple cloak with Amy and me, + and could sit all this warm balmy afternoon close to the surf-line + which fringes this bluest of blue seas! There is plenty of room for + you all. Not many people come down to this end of the beach, and if + you were very good we would let you play. + + "Our life here goes on as delightfully as ever. Nice is very full of + people, and there seem to be some pleasant ones among them. Here at + the Pension Suisse we do not see a great many Americans. The + fellow-boarders are principally Germans and Austrians with a + sprinkling of French. (Amy has found her twenty-four red pebbles, so + she is let off from being an owl. She is now engaged in throwing + them one by one into the sea. Each must hit the water under penalty + of her being turned into a Muscovy duck. She doesn't know exactly + what a Muscovy duck is, which makes her all the more particular + about her shots.) But, as I was saying, our little _suite_ in the + round tower is so on one side of the rest of the Pension that it is + as good as having a house of our own. The _salon_ is very bright and + sunny; we have two sofas and a square table and a round table and a + sort of what-not and two easy-chairs and two uneasy chairs and a + lamp of our own and a clock. There is also a sofa-pillow. There's + richness for you! We have pinned up all our photographs on the + walls, including Papa's and Clovy's and that bad one of Phil and + Johnnie making faces at each other, and three lovely red and yellow + Japanese pictures on muslin which Rose Red put in my trunk the last + thing, for a spot of color. There are some autumn leaves too; and we + always have flowers and in the mornings and evenings a fire. + + "Amy is now finding fifty snow-white pebbles, which when found are + to be interred in one common grave among the shingle. If she fails + to do this, she is to be changed to an electrical eel. The chief + difficulty is that she loses her heart to particular pebbles. 'I + can't bury you,' I hear her saying. + + "To return,--we have jolly little breakfasts together in the + _salon_. They consist of coffee and rolls, and are served by a + droll, snappish little _garcon_ with no teeth, and an Italian-French + patois which is very hard to understand when he sputters. He told me + the other day that he had been a _garcon_ for forty-six years, which + seemed rather a long boyhood. + + "The company, as we meet them at table, are rather entertaining. + Cousin Olivia and Lilly are on their best behavior to me because I + am travelling with Mrs. Ashe, and Mrs. Ashe is Lieutenant + Worthington's sister, and Lieutenant Worthington is Lilly's admirer, + and they like him very much. In fact, Lilly has intimated + confidentially that she is all but engaged to him; but I am not sure + about it, or if that was what she meant; and I fear, if it proves + true, that dear Polly will not like it at all. She is quite + unmanageable, and snubs Lilly continually in a polite way, which + makes me fidgety for fear Lilly will be offended, but she never + seems to notice it. Cousin Olivia looks very handsome and gorgeous. + She quite takes the color out of the little Russian Countess who + sits next to her, and who is as dowdy and meek as if she came from + Akron or Binghampton, or any other place where countesses are + unknown. Then there are two charming, well-bred young Austrians. The + one who sits nearest to me is a 'Candidat' for a Doctorate of Laws, + and speaks eight languages well. He has only studied English for the + past six weeks, but has made wonderful progress. I wish my French + were half as good as his English is already. + + "There is a very gossiping young woman on the story beneath ours, + whom I meet sometimes in the garden, and from her I hear all manner + of romantic tales about people in the house. One little French girl + is dying of consumption and a broken heart, because of a quarrel + with her lover, who is a courier; and the _padrona_, who is young + and pretty, and has only been married a few months to our elderly + landlord, has a story also. I forget some of the details; but there + was a stern parent and an admirer, and a cup of cold poison, and now + she says she wishes she were dying of consumption like poor + Alphonsine. For all that, she looks quite fat and rosy, and I often + see her in her best gown with a great deal of Roman scarf and mosaic + jewelry, stationed in the doorway, 'making the Pension look + attractive to the passers-by.' So she has a sense of duty, though + she is unhappy. + + "Amy has buried all her pebbles, and says she is tired of playing + fairy. She is now sitting with her head on my shoulder, and + professedly studying her French verb for to-morrow, but in reality, + I am sorry to say, she is conversing with me about be-headings,--a + subject which, since her visit to the Tower, has exercised a + horrible fascination over her mind. 'Do people die right away?' she + asks. 'Don't they feel one minute, and doesn't it feel awfully?' + There is a good deal of blood, she supposes, because there was so + much straw laid about the block in the picture of Lady Jane Gray's + execution, which enlivened our walls in Paris. On the whole, I am + rather glad that a fat little white dog has come waddling down the + beach and taken off her attention. + + "Speaking of Paris seems to renew the sense of fog which we had + there. Oh, how enchanting sunshine is after weeks of gloom! I shall + never forget how the Mediterranean looked when we saw it first,--all + blue, and such a lovely color. There ought, according to Morse's + Atlas, to have been a big red letter T on the water about where we + were, but I didn't see any. Perhaps they letter it so far out from + shore that only people in boats notice it. + + "Now the dusk is fading, and the odd chill which hides under these + warm afternoons begins to be felt. Amy has received a message + written on a mysterious white pebble to the effect--" + +Katy was interrupted at this point by a crunching step on the gravel +behind her. + +"Good afternoon," said a voice. "Polly has sent me to fetch you and Amy +in. She says it is growing cool." + +"We were just coming," said Katy, beginning to put away her papers. + +Ned Worthington sat down on the cloak beside her. The distance was now +steel gray against the sky; then came a stripe of violet, and then a +broad sheet of the vivid iridescent blue which one sees on the necks of +peacocks, which again melted into the long line of flashing surf. + +"See that gull," he said, "how it drops plumb into the sea, as if bound +to go through to China!" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne calls skylarks 'little raptures,'" replied Katy. +"Sea-gulls seem to me like grown-up raptures." + +"Are you going?" said Lieutenant Worthington in a tone of surprise, +as she rose. + +"Didn't you say that Polly wanted us to come in?" + +"Why, yes; but it seems too good to leave, doesn't it? Oh, by the way, +Miss Carr, I came across a man to-day and ordered your greens. They will +be sent on Christmas Eve. Is that right?" + +"Quite right, and we are ever so much obliged to you." She turned for a +last look at the sea, and, unseen by Ned Worthington, formed her lips +into a "good-night." Katy had made great friends with the Mediterranean. + +The promised "greens" appeared on the afternoon before Christmas Day, in +the shape of an enormous fagot of laurel and laurestinus and holly and +box; orange and lemon boughs with ripe fruit hanging from them, thick +ivy tendrils whole yards long, arbutus, pepper tree, and great branches +of acacia, covered with feathery yellow bloom. The man apologized for +bringing so little. The gentleman had ordered two francs worth, he said, +but this was all he could carry; he would fetch some more if the young +lady wished! But Katy, exclaiming with delight over her wealth, wished +no more; so the man departed, and the three friends proceeded to turn +the little _salon_ into a fairy bower. Every photograph and picture was +wreathed in ivy, long garlands hung on either side the windows, and the +chimney-piece and door-frames became clustering banks of leaf and +blossom. A great box of flowers had come with the greens, and bowls of +fresh roses and heliotrope and carnations were set everywhere; violets +and primroses, gold-hearted brown auriculas, spikes of veronica, all the +zones and all the seasons, combining to make the Christmas-tide sweet, +and to turn winter topsy-turvy in the little parlor. + +Mabel and Mary Matilda, with their two doll visitors, sat gravely round +the table, in the laps of their little mistresses; and Katy, putting on +an apron and an improvised cap, and speaking Irish very fast, served +them with a repast of rolls and cocoa, raspberry jam, and delicious +little almond cakes. The fun waxed fast and furious; and Lieutenant +Worthington, coming in with his hands full of parcels for the +Christmas-tree, was just in time to hear Katy remark in a strong County +Kerry brogue,-- + +"Och, thin indade, Miss Amy, and it's no more cake you'll be getting out +of me the night. That's four pieces you've ate, and it's little slape +your poor mother'll git with you a tossin' and tumblin' forenenst her +all night long because of your big appetite." + +"Oh, Miss Katy, talk Irish some more!" cried the delighted children. + +"Is it Irish you'd be afther having me talk, when it's me own langwidge, +and sorrow a bit of another do I know?" demanded Katy. Then she caught +sight of the new arrival and stopped short with a blush and a laugh. + +"Come in, Mr. Worthington," she said; "we're at supper, as you see, and +I am acting as waitress." + +"Oh, Uncle Ned, please go away," pleaded Amy, "or Katy will be polite, +and not talk Irish any more." + +"Indade, and the less ye say about politeness the betther, when ye're +afther ordering the jantleman out of the room in that fashion!" said the +waitress. Then she pulled off her cap and untied her apron. + +"Now for the Christmas-tree," she said. + +It was a very little tree, but it bore some remarkable fruits; for in +addition to the "tiny toys and candles fit for Lilliput," various +parcels were found to have been hastily added at the last moment for +various people. The "Natchitoches" had lately come from the Levant, and +delightful Oriental confections now appeared for Amy and Mrs. Ashe; +Turkish slippers, all gold embroidery; towels, with richly decorated +ends in silks and tinsel;--all the pretty superfluities which the East +holds out to charm gold from the pockets of her Western visitors. A +pretty little dagger in agate and silver fell to Katy's share out of +what Lieutenant Worthington called his "loot;" and beside, a most +beautiful specimen of the inlaid work for which Nice is famous,--a +looking-glass, with a stand and little doors to close it in,--which was +a present from Mrs. Ashe. It was quite unlike a Christmas Eve at home, +but altogether delightful; and as Katy sat next morning on the sand, +after the service in the English church, to finish her home letter, and +felt the sun warm on her cheek, and the perfumed air blow past as softly +as in June, she had to remind herself that Christmas is not necessarily +synonymous with snow and winter, but means the great central heat and +warmth, the advent of Him who came to lighten the whole earth. + +A few days after this pleasant Christmas they left Nice. All of them +felt a reluctance to move, and Amy loudly bewailed the necessity. + +"If I could stay here till it is time to go home, I shouldn't be +homesick at all," she declared. + +"But what a pity it would be not to see Italy!" said her mother. "Think +of Naples and Rome and Venice." + +"I don't want to think about them. It makes me feel as if I was studying +a great long geography lesson, and it tires me so to learn it." + +"Amy, dear, you're not well." + +"Yes, I am,--quite well; only I don't want to go away from Nice." + +"You only have to learn a little bit at a time of your geography lesson, +you know," suggested Katy; "and it's a great deal nicer way to study it +than out of a book." But though she spoke cheerfully she was conscious +that she shared Amy's reluctance. + +"It's all laziness," she told herself. "Nice has been so pleasant that +it has spoiled me." + +It was a consolation and made going easier that they were to drive over +the famous Cornice Road as far as San Remo, instead of going to Genoa +by rail as most travellers now-a-days do. They departed from the +Pension Suisse early on an exquisite morning, fair and balmy as June, +but with a little zest and sparkle of coolness in the air which made it +additionally delightful. The Mediterranean was of the deepest +violet-blue; a sort of bloom of color seemed to lie upon it. The sky +was like an arch of turquoise; every cape and headland shone jewel-like +in the golden sunshine. The carriage, as it followed the windings of +the road cut shelf-like on the cliffs, seemed poised between earth and +heaven; the sea below, the mountain summits above, with a fairy world +of verdure between. The journey was like a dream of enchantment and +rapidly changing surprises; and when it ended in a quaint hostelry at +San Remo, with palm-trees feathering the Bordighera Point and Corsica, +for once seen by day, lying in bold, clear outlines against the sunset, +Katy had to admit to herself that Nice, much as she loved it, was not +the only, not even the most beautiful place in Europe. Already she felt +her horizon growing, her convictions changing; and who should say what +lay beyond? + +The next day brought them to Genoa, to a hotel once the stately palace +of an archbishop, where they were lodged, all three together, in an +enormous room, so high and broad and long that their three little +curtained beds set behind a screen of carved wood made no impression on +the space. There were not less than four sofas and double that number of +arm-chairs in the room, besides a couple of monumental wardrobes; but, +as Katy remarked, several grand pianos could still have been moved in +without anybody's feeling crowded. On one side of them lay the port of +Genoa, filled with craft from all parts of the world, and flying the +flags of a dozen different nations. From the other they caught glimpses +of the magnificent old city, rising in tier over tier of churches and +palaces and gardens; while nearer still were narrow streets, which +glittered with gold filigree and the shops of jewel-workers. And while +they went in and out and gazed and wondered, Lilly Page, at the Pension +Suisse, was saying,-- + +"I am so glad that Katy and _that_ Mrs. Ashe are gone. Nothing has been +so pleasant since they came. Lieutenant Worthington is dreadfully stiff +and stupid, and seems quite different from what he used to be. But now +that we have got rid of them it will all come right again." + +"I really don't think that Katy was to blame," said Mrs. Page. "She +never seemed to me to be making any effort to attract him." + +"Oh, Katy is sly," responded Lilly, vindictively. "She never _seems_ to +do anything, but somehow she always gets her own way. I suppose she +thought I didn't see her keeping him down there on the beach the other +day when he was coming in to call on us, but I did. It was just out of +spite, and because she wanted to vex me; I know it was." + +"Well, dear, she's gone now, and you won't be worried with her again," +said her mother, soothingly. "Don't pout so, Lilly, and wrinkle up your +forehead. It's very unbecoming." + +"Yes, she's gone," snapped Lilly; "and as she's bound for the East, and +we for the West, we are not likely to meet again, for which I am +devoutly thankful." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. + + +"We are going to follow the track of Ulysses," said Katy, with her eyes +fixed on the little travelling-map in her guide-book. "Do you realize +that, Polly dear? He and his companions sailed these very seas before +us, and we shall see the sights they saw,--Circe's Cape and the Isles of +the Sirens, and Polyphemus himself, perhaps, who knows?" + +The "Marco Polo" had just cast off her moorings, and was slowly steaming +out of the crowded port of Genoa into the heart of a still rosy sunset. +The water was perfectly smooth; no motion could be felt but the engine's +throb. The trembling foam of the long wake showed glancing points of +phosphorescence here and there, while low on the eastern sky a great +silver planet burned like a signal lamp. + +"Polyphemus was a horrible giant. I read about him once, and I don't +want to see him," observed Amy, from her safe protected perch in her +mother's lap. + +"He may not be so bad now as he was in those old times. Some missionary +may have come across him and converted him. If he were good, you +wouldn't mind his being big, would you?" suggested Katy. + +"N-o," replied Amy, doubtfully; "but it would take a great lot of +missionaries to make _him_ good, I should think. One all alone would be +afraid to speak to him. We shan't really see him, shall we?" + +"I don't believe we shall; and if we stuff cotton in our ears and look +the other way, we need not hear the sirens sing," said Katy, who was in +the highest spirits.--"And oh, Polly dear, there is one delightful thing +I forgot to tell you about. The captain says he shall stay in Leghorn +all day to-morrow taking on freight, and we shall have plenty of time to +run up to Pisa and see the Cathedral and the Leaning Tower and +everything else. Now, that is something Ulysses didn't do! I am so glad +I didn't die of measles when I was little, as Rose Red used to say." She +gave her book a toss into the air as she spoke, and caught it again as +it fell, very much as the Katy Carr of twelve years ago might have done. + +"What a child you are!" said Mrs. Ashe, approvingly; "you never seem out +of sorts or tired of things." + +"Out of sorts? I should think not! And pray why should I be, +Polly dear?" + +Katy had taken to calling her friend "Polly dear" of late,--a trick +picked up half unconsciously from Lieutenant Ned. Mrs. Ashe liked it; +it was sisterly and intimate, she said, and made her feel nearer +Katy's age. + +"Does the tower really lean?" questioned Amy,--"far over, I mean, so +that we can see it?" + +"We shall know to-morrow," replied Katy. "If it doesn't, I shall lose +all my confidence in human nature." + +Katy's confidence in human nature was not doomed to be impaired. There +stood the famous tower, when they reached the Place del Duomo in Pisa, +next morning, looking all aslant, exactly as it does in the pictures and +the alabaster models, and seeming as if in another moment it must topple +over, from its own weight, upon their heads. Mrs. Ashe declared that it +was so unnatural that it made her flesh creep; and when she was coaxed +up the winding staircase to the top, she turned so giddy that they were +all thankful to get her safely down to firm ground again. She turned her +back upon the tower, as they crossed the grassy space to the majestic +old Cathedral, saying that if she thought about it any more, she should +become a disbeliever in the attraction of gravitation, which she had +always been told all respectable people _must_ believe in. + +The guide showed them the lamp swinging by a long slender chain, before +which Galileo is said to have sat and pondered while he worked out his +theory of the pendulum. This lamp seemed a sort of own cousin to the +attraction of gravitation, and they gazed upon it with respect. Then +they went to the Baptistery to see Niccolo Pisano's magnificent pulpit +of creamy marble, a mass of sculpture supported on the backs of lions, +and the equally lovely font, and to admire the extraordinary sound +which their guide evoked from a mysterious echo, with which he seemed +to be on intimate terms, for he made it say whatever he would and +almost "answer back." + +It was in coming out of the Baptistery that they met with an adventure +which Amy could never quite forget. Pisa is the mendicant city of Italy, +and her streets are infested with a band of religious beggars who call +themselves the Brethren of the Order of Mercy. They wear loose black +gowns, sandals laced over their bare feet, and black cambric masks with +holes, through which their eyes glare awfully; and they carry tin cups +for the reception of offerings, which they thrust into the faces of all +strangers visiting the city, whom they look upon as their lawful prey. + +As our party emerged from the Baptistery, two of these Brethren espied +them, and like great human bats came swooping down upon them with long +strides, their black garments flying in the wind, their eyes rolling +strangely behind their masks, and brandishing their alms-cups, which had +"Pour les Pauvres" lettered upon them, and gave forth a clapping sound +like a watchman's rattle. There was something terrible in their +appearance and the rushing speed of their movements. Amy screamed and +ran behind her mother, who visibly shrank. Katy stood her ground; but +the bat-winged fiends in Dore's illustrations to Dante occurred to her, +and her fingers trembled as she dropped some money in the cups. + +Even mendicant friars are human. Katy ceased to tremble as she observed +that one of them, as he retreated, walked backward for some distance in +order to gaze longer at Mrs. Ashe, whose cheeks were flushed with bright +pink and who was looking particularly handsome. She began to laugh +instead, and Mrs. Ashe laughed too; but Amy could not get over the +impression of having been attacked by demons, and often afterward +recurred with a shudder to the time when those awful black _things_ flew +at her and she hid behind mamma. The ghastly pictures of the Triumph of +Death, which were presently exhibited to them on the walls of the Campo +Santo, did not tend to reassure her, and it was with quite a pale, +scared little face that she walked toward the hotel where they were to +lunch, and she held fast to Katy's hand. + +Their way led them through a narrow street inhabited by the poorer +classes,--a dusty street with high shabby buildings on either side and +wide doorways giving glimpses of interior courtyards, where empty +hogsheads and barrels and rusty caldrons lay, and great wooden trays of +macaroni were spread out in the sun to dry. Some of the macaroni was +gray, some white, some yellow; none of it looked at all desirable to +eat, as it lay exposed to the dust, with long lines of ill-washed +clothes flapping above on wires stretched from one house to another. As +is usual in poor streets, there were swarms of children; and the +appearance of little Amy with her long bright hair falling over her +shoulders and Mabel clasped in her arms created a great sensation. The +children in the street shouted and exclaimed, and other children within +the houses heard the sounds and came trooping out, while mothers and +older sisters peeped from the doorways. The very air seemed full of +eager faces and little brown and curly heads bobbing up and down with +excitement, and black eyes all fixed upon big beautiful Mabel, who with +her thick wig of flaxen hair, her blue velvet dress and jacket, +feathered hat, and little muff, seemed to them like some strange small +marvel from another world. They could not decide whether she was a +living child or a make-believe one, and they dared not come near enough +to find out; so they clustered at a little distance, pointed with their +fingers, and whispered and giggled, while Amy, much pleased with the +admiration shown for her darling, lifted Mabel up to view. + +At last one droll little girl with a white cap on her round head seemed +to make up _her_ mind, and darting indoors returned with her doll,--a +poor little image of wood, its only garment a coarse shirt of red +cotton. This she held out for Amy to see. Amy smiled for the first time +since her encounter with the bat-like friars; and Katy, taking Mabel +from her, made signs that the two dolls should kiss each other. But +though the little Italian screamed with laughter at the idea of a +_bacio_ between two dolls, she would by no means allow it, and hid her +treasure behind her back, blushing and giggling, and saying something +very fast which none of them understood, while she waved two fingers at +them with a curious gesture. + +"I do believe she is afraid Mabel will cast the evil eye on her doll," +said Katy at last, with a sudden understanding as to what this +pantomime meant. + +"Why, you silly thing!" cried the outraged Amy; "do you suppose for one +moment that my child could hurt your dirty old dolly? You ought to be +glad to have her noticed at all by anybody that's clean." + +The sound of the foreign tongue completed the discomfiture of the +little Italian. With a shriek she fled, and all the other children +after her; pausing at a distance to look back at the alarming creatures +who didn't speak the familiar language. Katy, wishing to leave a +pleasant impression, made Mabel kiss her waxen fingers toward them. +This sent the children off into another fit of laughter and chatter, +and they followed our friends for quite a distance as they proceeded on +their way to the hotel. + +All that night, over a sea as smooth as glass, the "Marco Polo" slipped +along the coasts past which the ships of Ulysses sailed in those old +legendary days which wear so charmed a light to our modern eyes. Katy +roused at three in the morning, and looking from her cabin window had a +glimpse of an island, which her map showed her must be Elba, where that +war-eagle Napoleon was chained for a while. Then she fell asleep again, +and when she roused in full daylight the steamer was off the coast of +Ostia and nearing the mouth of the Tiber. Dreamy mountain-shapes rose +beyond the far-away Campagna, and every curve and indentation of the +coast bore a name which recalled some interesting thing. + +About eleven a dim-drawn bubble appeared on the horizon, which the +captain assured them was the dome of St. Peter's, nearly thirty miles +distant. This was one of the "moments" which Clover had been fond of +speculating about; and Katy, contrasting the real with the imaginary +moment, could not help smiling. Neither she nor Clover had ever supposed +that her first glimpse of the great dome was to be so little impressive. + +On and on they went till the air-hung bubble disappeared; and Amy, grown +very tired of scenery with which she had no associations, and grown-up +raptures which she did not comprehend, squeezed herself into the end of +the long wooden settee on which Katy sat, and began to beg for another +story concerning Violet and Emma. + +"Just a little tiny chapter, you know, Miss Katy, about what they did on +New Year's Day or something. It's so dull to keep sailing and sailing +all day and have nothing to do, and it's ever so long since you told me +anything about them, really and truly it is!" + +Now, Violet and Emma, if the truth is to be told, had grown to be the +bane of Katy's existence. She had rung the changes on their uneventful +adventures, and racked her brains to invent more and more details, till +her imagination felt like a dry sponge from which every possible drop of +moisture had been squeezed. Amy was insatiable. Her interest in the tale +never flagged; and when her exhausted friend explained that she really +could not think of another word to say on the subject, she would turn +the tables by asking, "Then, Miss Katy, mayn't I tell _you_ a chapter?" +whereupon she would proceed somewhat in this fashion:-- + +"It was the day before Christmas--no, we won't have it the day before +Christmas; it shall be three days before Thanksgiving. Violet and Emma +got up in the morning, and--well, they didn't do anything in particular +that day. They just had their breakfasts and dinners, and played and +studied a little, and went to bed early, you know, and the next morning +--well, there didn't much happen that day, either; they just had their +breakfasts and dinners, and played." + +Listening to Amy's stories was so much worse than telling them to her, +that Katy in self-defence was driven to recommence her narrations, but +she had grown to hate Violet and Emma with a deadly hatred. So when Amy +made this appeal on the steamer's deck, a sudden resolution took +possession of her, and she decided to put an end to these dreadful +children once for all. + +"Yes, Amy," she said, "I will tell you one more story about Violet and +Emma; but this is positively the last." + +So Amy cuddled close to her friend, and listened with rapt attention as +Katy told how on a certain day just before the New Year, Violet and Emma +started by themselves in a little sleigh drawn by a pony, to carry to a +poor woman who lived in a lonely house high up on a mountain slope a +basket containing a turkey, a mould of cranberry jelly, a bunch of +celery, and a mince-pie. + +"They were so pleased at having all these nice things to take to poor +widow Simpson and in thinking how glad she would be to see them," +proceeded the naughty Katy, "that they never noticed how black the sky +was getting to be, or how the wind howled through the bare boughs of the +trees. They had to go slowly, for the road was up hill all the way, and +it was hard work for the poor pony. But he was a stout little fellow, +and tugged away up the slippery track, and Violet and Emma talked and +laughed, and never thought what was going to happen. Just half-way up +the mountain there was a rocky cliff which overhung the road, and on +this cliff grew an enormous hemlock tree. The branches were loaded with +snow, which made them much heavier than usual. Just as the sleigh passed +slowly underneath the cliff, a violent blast of wind blew up from the +ravine, struck the hemlock and tore it out of the ground, roots and all. +It fell directly across the sleigh, and Violet and Emma and the pony and +the basket with the turkey and the other things in it were all crushed +as flat as pancakes!" + +"Well," said Amy, as Katy stopped, "go on! what happened then?" + +"Nothing happened then," replied Katy, in a tone of awful solemnity; +"nothing could happen! Violet and Emma were dead, the pony was dead, the +things in the basket were broken all to little bits, and a great +snowstorm began and covered them up, and no one knew where they were or +what had become of them till the snow melted in the spring." + +With a loud shriek Amy jumped up from the bench. + +"No! no! no!" she cried; "they aren't dead! I won't let them be dead!" +Then she burst into tears, ran down the stairs, locked herself into her +mother's stateroom, and did not appear again for several hours. + +Katy laughed heartily at first over this outburst, but presently she +began to repent and to think that she had treated her pet unkindly. She +went down and knocked at the stateroom door; but Amy would not answer. +She called her softly through the key-hole, and coaxed and pleaded, but +it was all in vain. Amy remained invisible till late in the afternoon; +and when she finally crept up again to the deck, her eyes were red with +crying, and her little face as pale and miserable as if she had been +attending the funeral of her dearest friend. + +Katy's heart smote her. + +"Come here, my darling," she said, holding out her hand; "come and sit +in my lap and forgive me. Violet and Emma shall not be dead. They shall +go on living, since you care so much for them, and I will tell stories +about them to the end of the chapter." + +"No," said Amy, shaking her head mournfully; "you can't. They're dead, +and they won't come to life again ever. It's all over, and I'm so +so-o-rry." + +All Katy's apologies and efforts to resuscitate the story were useless. +Violet and Emma were dead to Amy's imagination, and she could not make +herself believe in them any more. + +She was too woe-begone to care for the fables of Circe and her swine +which Katy told as they rounded the magnificent Cape Circello, and the +isles where the sirens used to sing appealed to her in vain. The sun +set, the stars came out; and under the beams of their countless lamps +and the beckonings of a slender new moon, the "Marco Polo" sailed into +the Bay of Naples, past Vesuvius, whose dusky curl of smoke could be +seen outlined against the luminous sky, and brought her passengers to +their landing-place. + +They woke next morning to a summer atmosphere full of yellow sunshine +and true July warmth. Flower-vendors stood on every corner, and pursued +each newcomer with their fragrant wares. Katy could not stop exclaiming +over the cheapness of the flowers, which were thrust in at the carriage +windows as they drove slowly up and down the streets. They were tied +into flat nosegays, whose centre was a white camellia, encircled with +concentric rows of pink tea rosebuds, ring after ring, till the whole +was the size of an ordinary milk-pan; all to be had for the sum of ten +cents! But after they had bought two or three of these enormous +bouquets, and had discovered that not a single rose boasted an inch of +stem, and that all were pierced with long wires through their very +hearts, she ceased to care for them. + +"I would rather have one Souvenir or General Jacqueminot, with a long +stem and plenty of leaves, than a dozen of these stiff platters of +bouquets," Katy told Mrs. Ashe. But when they drove beyond the city +gates, and the coachman came to anchor beneath walls overhung with the +same roses, and she found that she might stand on the seat and pull down +as many branches of the lovely flowers as she desired, and gather +wallflowers for herself out of the clefts in the masonry, she was +entirely satisfied. + +"This is the Italy of my dreams," she said. + +With all its beauty there was an underlying sense of danger about +Naples, which interfered with their enjoyment of it. Evil smells came +in at the windows, or confronted them as they went about the city. +There seemed something deadly in the air. Whispered reports met their +ears of cases of fever, which the landlords of the hotels were doing +their best to hush up. An American gentleman was said to be lying very +ill at one house. A lady had died the week before at another. Mrs. Ashe +grew nervous. + +"We will just take a rapid look at a few of the principal things," she +told Katy, "and then get away as fast as we can. Amy is so on my mind +that I have no peace of my life. I keep feeling her pulse and imagining +that she does not look right; and though I know it is all my fancy, I am +impatient to be off. You won't mind, will you, Katy?" + +After that everything they did was done in a hurry. Katy felt as if she +were being driven about by a cyclone, as they rushed from one sight to +another, filling up all the chinks between with shopping, which was +irresistible where everything was so pretty and so wonderfully cheap. +She herself purchased a tortoise-shell fan and chain for Rose Red, and +had her monogram carved upon it; a coral locket for Elsie; some studs +for Dorry; and for her father a small, beautiful vase of bronze, copied +from one of the Pompeian antiques. + +"How charming it is to have money to spend in such a place as this!" she +said to herself with a sigh of satisfaction as she surveyed these +delightful buyings. "I only wish I could get ten times as many things +and take them to ten times as many people. Papa was so wise about it. I +can't think how it is that he always knows beforehand exactly how people +are going to feel, and what they will want!" + +Mrs. Ashe also bought a great many things for herself and Amy, and to +take home as presents; and it was all very pleasant and satisfactory +except for that subtle sense of danger from which they could not escape +and which made them glad to go. "See Naples and die," says the old +adage; and the saying has proved sadly true in the case of many an +American traveller. + +Beside the talk of fever there was also a good deal of gossip about +brigands going about, as is generally the case in Naples and its +vicinity. Something was said to have happened to a party on one of the +heights above Sorrento; and though nobody knew exactly what the +something was, or was willing to vouch for the story, Mrs. Ashe and +Katy felt a good deal of trepidation as they entered the carriage which +was to take them to the neighborhood where the mysterious "something" +had occurred. + +The drive between Castellamare and Sorrento is in reality as safe as +that between Boston and Brookline; but as our party did not know this +fact till afterward, it did them no good. It is also one of the most +beautiful drives in the world, following the windings of the exquisite +coast mile after mile, in long links of perfectly made road, carved on +the face of sharp cliffs, with groves of oranges and lemons and olive +orchards above, and the Bay of Naples beneath, stretching away like a +solid sheet of lapis-lazuli, and gemmed with islands of the most +picturesque form. + +It is a pity that so much beauty should have been wasted on Mrs. Ashe +and Katy, but they were too frightened to half enjoy it. Their carriage +was driven by a shaggy young savage, who looked quite wild enough to be +a bandit himself. He cracked his whip loudly as they rolled along, and +every now and then gave a long shrill whistle. Mrs. Ashe was sure that +these were signals to his band, who were lurking somewhere on the +olive-hung hillsides. She thought she detected him once or twice making +signs to certain questionable-looking characters as they passed; and she +fancied that the people they met gazed at them with an air of +commiseration, as upon victims who were being carried to execution. Her +fears affected Katy; so, though they talked and laughed, and made jokes +to amuse Amy, who must not be scared or led to suppose that anything was +amiss, and to the outward view seemed a very merry party, they were +privately quaking in their shoes all the way, and enjoying a deal of +highly superfluous misery. And after all they reached Sorrento in +perfect safety; and the driver, who looked so dangerous, turned out to +be a respectable young man enough, with a wife and family to support, +who considered a plateful of macaroni and a glass of sour red wine as +the height of luxury, and was grateful for a small gratuity of thirty +cents or so, which would enable him to purchase these dainties. Mrs. +Ashe had a very bad headache next day, to pay for her fright; but she +and Katy agreed that they had been very foolish, and resolved to pay no +more attention to unaccredited rumors or allow them to spoil their +enjoyment, which was a sensible resolution to make. + +Their hotel was perched directly over the sea. From the balcony of their +sitting-room they looked down a sheer cliff some sixty feet high, into +the water; their bedrooms opened on a garden of roses, with an orange +grove beyond. Not far from them was the great gorge which cuts the +little town of Sorrento almost in two, and whose seaward end makes the +harbor of the place. Katy was never tired of peering down into this +strange and beautiful cleft, whose sides, two hundred feet in depth, are +hung with vines and trailing growths of all sorts, and seem all +a-tremble with the fairy fronds of maiden-hair ferns growing out of +every chink and crevice. She and Amy took walks along the coast toward +Massa, to look off at the lovely island shapes in the bay, and admire +the great clumps of cactus and Spanish bayonet which grew by the +roadside; and they always came back loaded with orange-flowers, which +could be picked as freely as apple-blossoms from New England orchards in +the spring. The oranges themselves at that time of the year were very +sour, but they answered as well for a romantic date, "From an orange +grove," as if they had been the sweetest in the world. + +They made two different excursions to Pompeii, which is within easy +distance of Sorrento. They scrambled on donkeys over the hills, and had +glimpses of the far-away Calabrian shore, of the natural arch, and the +temples of Paestum shining in the sun many miles distant. On Katy's +birthday, which fell toward the end of January, Mrs. Ashe let her have +her choice of a treat; and she elected to go to the Island of Capri, +which none of them had seen. It turned out a perfect day, with sea and +wind exactly right for the sail, and to allow of getting into the famous +"Blue Grotto," which can only be entered under particular conditions of +tide and weather. And they climbed the great cliff-rise at the island's +end, and saw the ruins of the villa built by the wicked emperor +Tiberius, and the awful place known as his "Leap," down which, it is +said, he made his victims throw themselves; and they lunched at a hotel +which bore his name, and just at sunset pushed off again for the row +home over the charmed sea. This return voyage was almost the pleasantest +thing of all the day. The water was smooth, the moon at its full. It was +larger and more brilliant than American moons are, and seemed to possess +an actual warmth and color. The boatmen timed their oar-strokes to the +cadence of Neapolitan _barcaroles_ and folk-songs, full of rhythmic +movement, which seemed caught from the pulsing tides. And when at last +the bow grated on the sands of the Sorrento landing-place, Katy drew a +long, regretful breath, and declared that this was her best +birthday-gift of all, better than Amy's flowers, or the pretty +tortoise-shell locket that Mrs. Ashe had given her, better even than the +letter from home, which, timed by happy accident, had arrived by the +morning's post to make a bright opening for the day. + +All pleasant things must come to an ending. + +"Katy," said Mrs. Ashe, one afternoon in early February, "I heard some +ladies talking just now in the _salon_, and they said that Rome is +filling up very fast. The Carnival begins in less than two weeks, and +everybody wants to be there then. If we don't make haste, we shall not +be able to get any rooms." + +"Oh dear!" said Katy, "it is very trying not to be able to be in two +places at once. I want to see Rome dreadfully, and yet I cannot bear to +leave Sorrento. We have been very happy here, haven't we?" + +So they took up their wandering staves again, and departed for Rome, +like the Apostle, "not knowing what should befall them there." + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +A ROMAN HOLIDAY. + + +"Oh dear!" said Mrs. Ashe, as she folded her letters and laid them +aside, "I wish those Pages would go away from Nice, or else that the +frigates were not there." + +"Why! what's the matter?" asked Katy, looking up from the many-leaved +journal from Clover over which she was poring. + +"Nothing is the matter except that those everlasting people haven't gone +to Spain yet, as they said they would, and Ned seems to keep on seeing +them," replied Mrs. Ashe, petulantly. + +"But, dear Polly, what difference does it make? And they never did +promise you to go on any particular time, did they?" + +"N-o, they didn't; but I wish they would, all the same. Not that Ned is +such a goose as really to care anything for that foolish Lilly!" Then +she gave a little laugh at her own inconsistency, and added, "But I +oughtn't to abuse her when she is your cousin." + +"Don't mention it," said Katy, cheerfully. "But, really, I don't see why +poor Lilly need worry you so, Polly dear." + +The room in which this conversation took place was on the very topmost +floor of the Hotel del Hondo in Rome. It was large and many-windowed; +and though there was a little bed in one corner half hidden behind a +calico screen, with a bureau and washing-stand, and a sort of stout +mahogany hat-tree on which Katy's dresses and jackets were hanging, the +remaining space, with a sofa and easy-chairs grouped round a fire, and a +round table furnished with books and a lamp, was ample enough to make a +good substitute for the private sitting-room which Mrs. Ashe had not +been able to procure on account of the near approach of the Carnival and +the consequent crowding of strangers to Rome. In fact, she was assured +that under the circumstances she was lucky in finding rooms as good as +these; and she made the most of the assurance as a consolation for the +somewhat unsatisfactory food and service of the hotel, and the four long +flights of stairs which must be passed every time they needed to reach +the dining-room or the street door. + +The party had been in Rome only four days, but already they had seen a +host of interesting things. They had stood in the strange sunken space +with its marble floor and broken columns, which is all that is left of +the great Roman Forum. They had visited the Coliseum, at that period +still overhung with ivy garlands and trailing greeneries, and not, as +now, scraped clean and bare and "tidied" out of much of its +picturesqueness. They had seen the Baths of Caracalla and the Temple of +Janus and St. Peter's and the Vatican marbles, and had driven out on the +Campagna and to the Pamphili-Doria Villa to gather purple and red +anemones, and to the English cemetery to see the grave of Keats. They +had also peeped into certain shops, and attended a reception at the +American Minister's,--in short, like most unwarned travellers, they had +done about twice as much as prudence and experience would have +permitted, had those worthies been consulted. + +All the romance of Katy's nature responded to the fascination of the +ancient city,--the capital of the world, as it may truly be called. The +shortest drive or walk brought them face to face with innumerable and +unexpected delights. Now it was a wonderful fountain, with plunging +horses and colossal nymphs and Tritons, holding cups and horns from +which showers of white foam rose high in air to fall like rushing rain +into an immense marble basin. Now it was an arched doorway with +traceries as fine as lace,--sole-remaining fragment of a heathen temple, +flung and stranded as it were by the waves of time on the squalid shore +of the present. Now it was a shrine at the meeting of three streets, +where a dim lamp burned beneath the effigy of the Madonna, with always a +fresh rose beside it in a vase, and at its foot a peasant woman kneeling +in red bodice and blue petticoat, with a lace-trimmed towel folded over +her hair. Or again it would be a sunlit terrace lifted high on a +hillside, and crowded with carriages full of beautifully dressed people, +while below all Rome seemed spread out like a panorama, dim, mighty, +majestic, and bounded by the blue wavy line of the Campagna and the +Alban hills. Or perhaps it might be a wonderful double flight of steps +with massive balustrades and pillars with urns, on which sat a crowd of +figures in strange costumes and attitudes, who all looked as though they +had stepped out of pictures, but who were in reality models waiting for +artists to come by and engage them. No matter what it was,--a bit of +oddly tinted masonry with a tuft of brown and orange wallflowers hanging +upon it, or a vegetable stall where endive and chiccory and curly +lettuces were arranged in wreaths with tiny orange gourds and scarlet +peppers for points of color,--it was all Rome, and, by virtue of that +word, different from any other place,--more suggestive, more +interesting, ten times more mysterious than any other could possibly be, +so Katy thought. + +This fact consoled her for everything and anything,--for the fleas, the +dirt, for the queer things they had to eat and the still queerer odors +they were forced to smell! Nothing seemed of any particular consequence +except the deep sense of enjoyment, and the newly discovered world of +thought and sensation of which she had become suddenly conscious. + +The only drawback to her happiness, as the days went on, was that +little Amy did not seem quite well or like herself. She had taken a +cold on the journey from Naples, and though it did not seem serious, +that, or something, made her look pale and thin. Her mother said she +was growing fast, but the explanation did not quite account for the +wistful look in the child's eyes and the tired feeling of which she +continually complained. Mrs. Ashe, with vague uneasiness, began to talk +of cutting short their Roman stay and getting Amy off to the more +bracing air of Florence. But meanwhile there was the Carnival close at +hand, which they must by no means lose; and the feeling that their +opportunity might be a brief one made her and Katy all the more anxious +to make the very most of their time. So they filled the days full with +sights to see and things to do, and came and went; sometimes taking Amy +with them, but more often leaving her at the hotel under the care of a +kind German chambermaid, who spoke pretty good English and to whom Amy +had taken a fancy. + +"The marble things are so cold, and the old broken things make me so +sorry," she explained; "and I hate beggars because they are dirty, and +the stairs make my back ache; and I'd a great deal rather stay with +Maria and go up on the roof, if you don't mind, mamma." + +This roof, which Amy had chosen as a playplace, covered the whole of the +great hotel, and had been turned into a sort of upper-air garden by the +simple process of gravelling it all over, placing trellises of ivy here +and there, and setting tubs of oranges and oleanders and boxes of gay +geraniums and stock-gillyflowers on the balustrades. A tame fawn was +tethered there. Amy adopted him as a playmate; and what with his company +and that of the flowers, the times when her mother and Katy were absent +from her passed not unhappily. + +Katy always repaired to the roof as soon as they came in from their long +mornings and afternoons of sight-seeing. Years afterward, she would +remember with contrition how pathetically glad Amy always was to see +her. She would put her little head on Katy's breast and hold her tight +for many minutes without saying a word. When she did speak it was always +about the house and the garden that she talked. She never asked any +questions as to where Katy had been, or what she had done; it seemed to +tire her to think about it. + +"I should be very lonely sometimes if it were not for my dear little +fawn," she told Katy once. "He is so sweet that I don't miss you and +mamma very much while I have him to play with. I call him Florio,--don't +you think that is a pretty name? I like to stay with him a great deal +better than to go about with you to those nasty-smelling old churches, +with fleas hopping all over them!" + +So Amy was left in peace with her fawn, and the others made haste to see +all they could before the time came to go to Florence. + +[Illustration: Amy was left in peace with her fawn.] + +Katy realized one of the "moments" for which she had come to Europe when +she stood for the first time on the balcony overhanging the Corso, which +Mrs. Ashe had hired in company with some acquaintances made at the +hotel, and looked down at the ebb and surge of the just-begun Carnival. +The narrow street seemed humming with people of all sorts and +conditions. Some were masked; some were not. There were ladies and +gentlemen in fashionable clothes, peasants in the gayest costumes, +surprised-looking tourists in tall hats and linen dusters, harlequins, +clowns, devils, nuns, dominoes of every color,--red, white, blue, black; +while above, the balconies bloomed like a rose-garden with pretty faces +framed in lace veils or picturesque hats. Flowers were everywhere, +wreathed along the house-fronts, tied to the horses' ears, in ladies' +hands and gentlemen's button-holes, while venders went up and down the +street bearing great trays of violets and carnations and camellias for +sale. The air was full of cries and laughter, and the shrill calls of +merchants advertising their wares,--candy, fruit, birds, lanterns, and +_confetti_, the latter being merely lumps of lime, large or small, with +a pea or a bean embedded in each lump to give it weight. Boxes full of +this unpleasant confection were suspended in front of each balcony, with +tin scoops to use in ladling it out and flinging it about. Everybody +wore or carried a wire mask as protection against this white, incessant +shower; and before long the air became full of a fine dust which hung +above the Corso like a mist, and filled the eyes and noses and clothes +of all present with irritating particles. + +Pasquino's Car was passing underneath just as Katy and Mrs. Ashe +arrived,--a gorgeous affair, hung with silken draperies, and bearing as +symbol an enormous egg, in which the Carnival was supposed to be in act +of incubation. A huge wagon followed in its wake, on which was a house +some sixteen feet square, whose sole occupant was a gentleman attended +by five servants, who kept him supplied with _confetti_, which he +showered liberally on the heads of the crowd. Then came a car in the +shape of a steamboat, with a smoke-pipe and sails, over which flew the +Union Jack, and which was manned with a party wearing the dress of +British tars. The next wagon bore a company of jolly maskers equipped +with many-colored bladders, which they banged and rattled as they went +along. Following this was a troupe of beautiful circus horses, +cream-colored with scarlet trappings, or sorrel with blue, ridden by +ladies in pale green velvet laced with silver, or blue velvet and gold. +Another car bore a bird-cage which was an exact imitation of St. +Peter's, within which perched a lonely old parrot. This device evidently +had a political signification, for it was alternately hissed and +applauded as it went along. The whole scene was like a brilliant, +rapidly shifting dream; and Katy, as she stood with lips apart and eyes +wide open with wonderment and pleasure, forgot whether she was in the +body or not,--forgot everything except what was passing before her gaze. + +She was roused by a stinging shower of lime-dust. An Englishman in the +next balcony had take courteous advantage of her preoccupation, and had +flung a scoopful of _confetti_ in her undefended face! It is generally +Anglo-Saxons of the less refined class, English or Americans, who do +these things at Carnival times. The national love of a rough joke comes +to the surface, encouraged by the license of the moment, and all the +grace and prettiness of the festival vanish. Katy laughed, and dusted +herself as well as she could, and took refuge behind her mask; while a +nimble American boy of the party changed places with her, and +thenceforward made that particular Englishman his special target, plying +such a lively and adroit shovel as to make Katy's assailant rue the hour +when he evoked this national reprisal. His powdered head and rather +clumsy efforts to retaliate excited shouts of laughter from the +adjoining balconies. The young American, fresh from tennis and college +athletics, darted about and dodged with an agility impossible to his +heavily built foe; and each effective shot and parry on his side was +greeted with little cries of applause and the clapping of hands on the +part of those who were watching the contest. + +Exactly opposite them was a balcony hung with white silk, in which sat a +lady who seemed to be of some distinction; for every now and then an +officer in brilliant uniform, or some official covered with orders and +stars, would be shown in by her servants, bow before her with the utmost +deference, and after a little conversation retire, kissing her gloved +hand as he went. The lady was a beautiful person, with lustrous black +eyes and dark hair, over which a lace mantilla was fastened with diamond +stars. She wore pale blue with white flowers, and altogether, as Katy +afterward wrote to Clover, reminded her exactly of one of those +beautiful princesses whom they used to play about in their childhood and +quarrel over, because every one of them wanted to be the Princess and +nobody else. + +"I wonder who she is," said Mrs. Ashe in a low tone. "She might be +almost anybody from her looks. She keeps glancing across to us, Katy. Do +you know, I think she has taken a fancy to you." + +Perhaps the lady had; for just then she turned her head and said a word +to one of her footmen, who immediately placed something in her hand. It +was a little shining bonbonniere, and rising she threw it straight at +Katy. Alas! it struck the edge of the balcony and fell into the street +below, where it was picked up by a ragged little peasant girl in a red +jacket, who raised a pair of astonished eyes to the heavens, as if sure +that the gift must have fallen straight from thence. Katy bent forward +to watch its fate, and went through a little pantomime of regret and +despair for the benefit of the opposite lady, who only laughed, and +taking another from her servant flung with better aim, so that it fell +exactly at Katy's feet. This was a gilded box in the shape of a +mandolin, with sugar-plums tucked cunningly away inside. Katy kissed +both her hands in acknowledgment for the pretty toy, and tossed back a +bunch of roses which she happened to be wearing in her dress. After that +it seemed the chief amusement of the fair unknown to throw bonbons at +Katy. Some went straight and some did not; but before the afternoon +ended, Katy had quite a lapful of confections and trifles,--roses, +sugared almonds, a satin casket, a silvered box in the shape of a +horseshoe, a tiny cage with orange blossoms for birds on the perches, a +minute gondola with a _marron glacee_ by way of passenger, and, +prettiest of all, a little ivory harp strung with enamelled violets +instead of wires. For all these favors she had nothing better to offer, +in return, than a few long-tailed bonbons with gay streamers of ribbon. +These the lady opposite caught very cleverly, rarely missing one, and +kissing her hand in thanks each time. + +"Isn't she exquisite?" demanded Katy, her eyes shining with +excitement. "Did you ever see any one so lovely in your life, Polly +dear? I never did. There, now! she is buying those birds to set them +free, I do believe." + +It was indeed so. A vender of larks had, by the aid of a long staff, +thrust a cage full of wretched little prisoners up into the balcony; and +"Katy's lady," as Mrs. Ashe called her, was paying for the whole. As +they watched she opened the cage door, and with the sweetest look on her +face encouraged the birds to fly away. The poor little creatures cowered +and hesitated, not knowing at first what use to make of their new +liberty; but at last one, the boldest of the company, hopped to the door +and with a glad, exultant chirp flew straight upward. Then the others, +taking courage from his example, followed, and all were lost to view in +the twinkling of an eye. + +"Oh, you angel!" cried Katy, leaning over the edge of the balcony and +kissing both hands impulsively, "I never saw any one so sweet as you are +in my life. Polly dear, I think carnivals are the most perfectly +bewitching things in the world. How glad I am that this lasts a week, +and that we can come every day. Won't Amy be delighted with these +bonbons! I do hope my lady will be here tomorrow." + +How little she dreamed that she was never to enter that balcony again! +How little can any of us see what lies before us till it comes so near +that we cannot help seeing it, or shut our eyes, or turn away! + +The next morning, almost as soon as it was light, Mrs. Ashe tapped at +Katy's door. She was in her dressing-gown, and her eyes looked large and +frightened. + +"Amy is ill," she cried. "She has been hot and feverish all night, and +she says that her head aches dreadfully. What shall I do, Katy? We +ought to have a doctor at once, and I don't know the name even of any +doctor here." + +Katy sat up in bed, and for one bewildered moment did not speak. Her +brain felt in a whirl of confusion; but presently it cleared, and she +saw what to do. + +"I will write a note to Mrs. Sands," she said. Mrs. Sands was the wife +of the American Minister, and one of the few acquaintances they had +made since they came to Rome. "You remember how nice she was the other +day, and how we liked her; and she has lived here so long that of +course she must know all about the doctors. Don't you think that is the +best thing to do!" + +"The very best," said Mrs. Ashe, looking relieved. "I wonder I did not +think of it myself, but I am so confused that I can't think. Write the +note at once, please, dear Katy. I will ring your bell for you, and then +I must hurry back to Amy." + +Katy made haste with the note. The answer came promptly in half an hour, +and by ten o'clock the physician recommended appeared. Dr. Hilary was a +dark little Italian to all appearance; but his mother had been a +Scotch-woman, and he spoke English very well,--a great comfort to poor +Mrs. Ashe, who knew not a word of Italian and not a great deal of +French. He felt Amy's pulse for a long time, and tested her temperature; +but he gave no positive opinion, only left a prescription, and said that +he would call later in the day and should then be able to judge more +clearly what the attack was likely to prove. + +Katy augured ill from this reserve. There was no talk of going to the +Carnival that afternoon; no one had any heart for it. Instead, Katy +spent the time in trying to recollect all she had ever heard about the +care of sick people,--what was to be done first and what next,--and in +searching the shops for a feather pillow, which luxury Amy was +imperiously demanding. The pillows of Roman hotels are, as a general +thing, stuffed with wool, and very hard. + +"I won't have this horrid pillow any longer," poor Amy was screaming. +"It's got bricks in it. It hurts the back of my neck. Take it away, +mamma, and give me a nice soft American pillow. I won't have this a +minute longer. Don't you hear me, mamma! Take it away!" + +So, while Mrs. Ashe pacified Amy to the best of her ability, Katy +hurried out in quest of the desired pillow. It proved almost an +unattainable luxury; but at last, after a long search, she secured an +air-cushion, a down cushion about twelve inches square, and one old +feather pillow which had come from some auction, and had apparently lain +for years in the corner of the shop. When this was encased in a fresh +cover of Canton flannel, it did very well, and stilled Amy's complaints +a little; but all night she grew worse, and when Dr. Hilary came next +day, he was forced to utter plainly the dreaded words "Roman fever." Amy +was in for an attack,--a light one he hoped it might be,--but they had +better know the truth and make ready for it. + +Mrs. Ashe was utterly overwhelmed by this verdict, and for the first +bewildered moments did not know which way to turn. Katy, happily, kept +a steadier head. She had the advantage of a little preparation of +thought, and had decided beforehand what it would be necessary to do +"in case." Oh, that fateful "in case"! The doctor and she consulted +together, and the result was that Katy sought out the padrona of the +establishment, and without hinting at the nature of Amy's attack, +secured some rooms just vacated, which were at the end of a corridor, +and a little removed from the rooms of other people. There was a large +room with corner windows, a smaller one opening from it, and another, +still smaller, close by, which would serve as a storeroom or might do +for the use of a nurse. + +These rooms, without much consultation with Mrs. Ashe,--who seemed +stunned and sat with her eyes fixed on Amy, just answering, "Certainly, +dear, anything you say," when applied to,--Katy had arranged according +to her own ideas of comfort and hygienic necessity, as learned from Miss +Nightingale's excellent little book on nursing. From the larger room she +had the carpet, curtains, and nearly all the furniture taken away, the +floor scrubbed with hot soapsuds, and the bed pulled out from the wall +to allow of a free circulation of air all round it. The smaller one she +made as comfortable as possible for the use of Mrs. Ashe, choosing for +it the softest sofa and the best mattresses that were obtainable; for +she knew that her friend's strength was likely to be severely tried if +Amy's illness proved serious. When all was ready, Amy, well wrapped in +her coverings, was carried down the entry and laid in the fresh bed with +the soft pillows about her; and Katy, as she went to and fro, conveying +clothes and books and filling drawers, felt that they were perhaps +making arrangements for a long, hard trial of faith and spirits. + +By the next day the necessity of a nurse became apparent, and in the +afternoon Katy started out in a little hired carriage in search of one. +She had a list of names, and went first to the English nurses; but +finding them all engaged, she ordered the coachman to drive to a convent +where there was hope that a nursing sister might be procured. + +Their route lay across the Corso. So utterly had the Carnival with all +its gay follies vanished from her mind, that she was for a moment +astonished at finding herself entangled in a motley crowd, so dense +that the coachman was obliged to rein in his horses and stand still for +some time. + +There were the same masks and dominos, the same picturesque peasant +costumes which had struck her as so gay and pretty only three days +before. The same jests and merry laughter filled the air, but somehow +it all seemed out of tune. The sense of cold, lonely fear that had +taken possession of her killed all capacity for merriment; the +apprehension and solicitude of which her heart was full made the gay +chattering and squeaking of the crowd sound harsh and unfeeling. The +bright colors affronted her dejection; she did not want to see them. +She lay back in the carriage, trying to be patient under the detention, +and half shut her eyes. + +A shower of lime dust aroused her. It came from a party of burly figures +in white cotton dominos, whose carriage had been stayed by the crowd +close to her own. She signified by gestures that she had no _confetti_ +and no protection, that she "was not playing," in fact; but her appeal +made no difference. The maskers kept on shovelling lime all over her +hair and person and the carriage, and never tired of the sport till an +opportune break in the procession enabled their vehicle to move on. + +Katy was shaking their largesse from her dress and parasol as well as +she could, when an odd gibbering sound close to her ear, and the +laughter of the crowd attracted her attention to the back of the +carriage. A masker attired as a scarlet devil had climbed into the hood, +and was now perched close behind her. She shook her head at him; but he +only shook his in return, and chattered and grimaced, and bent over till +his fiery mask almost grazed her shoulder. There was no hope but in good +humor, as she speedily realized; and recollecting that in her +shopping-bag one or two of the Carnival bonbons still remained, she took +these out and offered them in the hope of propitiating him. The fiend +bit one to insure that it was made of sugar and not lime, while the +crowd laughed more than ever; then, seeming satisfied, he made Katy a +little speech in rapid Italian, of which she did not comprehend a word, +kissed her hand, jumped down from the carriage and disappeared in the +crowd to her great relief. + +Presently after that the driver spied an opening, of which he took +advantage. They were across the Corso now, the roar and rush of the +Carnival dying into silence as they drove rapidly on; and Katy, as she +finished wiping away the last of the lime dust, wiped some tears from +her cheeks as well. + +"How hateful it all was!" she said to herself. Then she remembered a +sentence read somewhere, "How heavily roll the wheels of other people's +joys when your heart is sorrowful!" and she realized that it is true. + +The convent was propitious, and promised to send a sister next morning, +with the proviso that every second day she was to come back to sleep and +rest. Katy was too thankful for any aid to make objections, and drove +home with visions of saintly nuns with pure pale faces full of peace and +resignation, such as she had read of in books, floating before her eyes. + +Sister Ambrogia, when she appeared next day, did not exactly realize +these imaginations. She was a plump little person, with rosy cheeks, a +pair of demure black eyes, and a very obstinate mouth and chin. It soon +appeared that natural inclination combined with the rules of her convent +made her theory of a nurse's duties a very limited one. + +If Mrs. Ashe wished her to go down to the office with an order, she was +told: "We sisters care for the sick; we are not allowed to converse with +porters and hotel people." + +If Katy suggested that on the way home she should leave a prescription +at the chemist's, it was: "We sisters are for nursing only; we do not +visit shops." And when she was asked if she could make beef tea, she +replied calmly but decisively, "We sisters are not cooks." + +In fact, all that Sister Ambrogia seemed able or willing to do, beyond +the bathing of Amy's face and brushing her hair, which she accomplished +handily, was to sit by the bedside telling her rosary, or plying a +little ebony shuttle in the manufacture of a long strip of tatting. Even +this amount of usefulness was interfered with by the fact that Amy, who +by this time was in a semi-delirious condition, had taken an aversion to +her at the first glance, and was not willing to be left with her for a +single moment. + +"I won't stay here alone with Sister Embroidery," she would cry, if her +mother and Katy went into the next room for a moment's rest or a private +consultation; "I hate Sister Embroidery! Come back, mamma, come back +this moment! She's making faces at me, and chattering just like an old +parrot, and I don't understand a word she says. Take Sister Embroidery +away, mamma, I tell you! Don't you hear me? Come back, I say!" + +The little voice would be raised to a shrill scream; and Mrs. Ashe and +Katy, hurrying back, would find Amy sitting up on her pillow with wet, +scarlet-flushed cheeks and eyes bright with fever, ready to throw +herself out of bed; while, calm as Mabel, whose curly head lay on the +pillow beside her little mistress, Sister Ambrogia, unaware of the +intricacies of the English language, was placidly telling her beads and +muttering prayers to herself. Some of these prayers, I do not doubt, +related to Amy's recovery if not to her conversion, and were well meant; +but they were rather irritating under the circumstances! + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN. + + +When the first shock is over and the inevitable realized and accepted, +those who tend a long illness are apt to fall into a routine of life +which helps to make the days seem short. The apparatus of nursing is got +together. Every day the same things need to be done at the same hours +and in the same way. Each little appliance is kept at hand; and sad and +tired as the watchers may be, the very monotony and regularity of their +proceedings give a certain stay for their thoughts to rest upon. + +But there was little of this monotony to help Mrs. Ashe and Katy through +with Amy's illness. Small chance was there for regularity or exact +system; for something unexpected was always turning up, and needful +things were often lacking. The most ordinary comforts of the sick-room, +or what are considered so in America, were hard to come by, and much of +Katy's time was spent in devising substitutes to take their places. + +Was ice needed? A pailful of dirty snow would be brought in, full of +straws, sticks, and other refuse, which had apparently been scraped from +the surface of the street after a frosty night. Not a particle of it +could be put into milk or water; all that could be done was to make the +pail serve the purpose of a refrigerator, and set bowls and tumblers in +it to chill. + +Was a feeding-cup wanted? It came of a cumbrous and antiquated pattern, +which the infant Hercules may have enjoyed, but which the modern Amy +abominated and rejected. Such a thing as a glass tube could not be found +in all Rome. Bed-rests were unknown. Katy searched in vain for an +India-rubber hot-water bag. + +But the greatest trial of all was the beef tea. It was Amy's sole food, +and almost her only medicine; for Dr. Hilary believed in leaving Nature +pretty much to herself in cases of fever. The kitchen of the hotel sent +up, under that name, a mixture of grease and hot water, which could not +be given to Amy at all. In vain Katy remonstrated and explained the +process. In vain did she go to the kitchen herself to translate a +carefully written recipe to the cook, and to slip a shining five-franc +piece in his hand, which it was hoped would quicken his energies and +soften his heart. In vain did she order private supplies of the best of +beef from a separate market. The cooks stole the beef and ignored the +recipe; and day after day the same bottle-full of greasy liquid came +upstairs, which Amy would not touch, and which would have done her no +good had she swallowed it all. At last, driven to desperation, Katy +procured a couple of stout bottles, and every morning slowly and +carefully cut up two pounds of meat into small pieces, sealed the bottle +with her own seal ring, and sent it down to be boiled for a specified +time. This answered better, for the thieving cook dared not tamper with +her seal; but it was a long and toilsome process, and consumed more time +than she well knew how to spare,--for there were continual errands to be +done which no one could attend to but herself, and the interminable +flights of stairs taxed her strength painfully, and seemed to grow +longer and harder every day. + +At last a good Samaritan turned up in the shape of an American lady with +a house of her own, who, hearing of their plight from Mrs. Sands, +undertook to send each day a supply of strong, perfectly made beef tea, +from her own kitchen, for Amy's use. It was an inexpressible relief, and +the lightening of this one particular care made all the rest seem easier +of endurance. + +Another great relief came, when, after some delay, Dr. Hilary succeeded +in getting an English nurse to take the places of the unsatisfactory +Sister Ambrogia and her substitute, Sister Agatha, whom Amy in her +half-comprehending condition persisted in calling "Sister Nutmeg +Grater." Mrs. Swift was a tall, wiry, angular person, who seemed made of +equal parts of iron and whalebone. She was never tired; she could lift +anybody, do anything; and for sleep she seemed to have a sort of +antipathy, preferring to sit in an easy-chair and drop off into little +dozes, whenever it was convenient, to going regularly to bed for a +night's rest. + +Amy took to her from the first, and the new nurse managed her +beautifully. No one else could soothe her half so well during the +delirious period, when the little shrill voice seemed never to be still, +and went on all day and all night in alternate raving or screaming or, +what was saddest of all to hear, low pitiful moans. There was no +shutting in these sounds. People moved out of the rooms below and on +either side, because they could get no sleep; and till the arrival of +Nurse Swift, there was no rest for poor Mrs. Ashe, who could not keep +away from her darling for a moment while that mournful wailing sounded +in her ears. + +Somehow the long, dry Englishwoman seemed to have a mesmeric effect on +Amy, who was never quite so violent after she arrived. Katy was more +thankful for this than can well be told; for her great underlying +dread--a dread she dared not whisper plainly even to herself--was that +"Polly dear" might break down before Amy was better, and then what +_should_ they do? + +She took every care that was possible of her friend. She made her eat; +she made her lie down. She forced daily doses of quinine and port-wine +down her throat, and saved her every possible step. But no one, however +affectionate and willing, could do much to lift the crushing burden of +care, which was changing Mrs. Ashe's rosy fairness to wan pallor and +laying such dark shadows under the pretty gray eyes. She had taken small +thought of looks since Amy's illness. All the little touches which had +made her toilette becoming, all the crimps and fluffs, had disappeared; +yet somehow never had she seemed to Katy half so lovely as now in the +plain black gown which she wore all day long, with her hair tucked into +a knot behind her ears. Her real beauty of feature and outline seemed +only enhanced by the rigid plainness of her attire, and the charm of +true expression grew in her face. Never had Katy admired and loved her +friend so well as during those days of fatigue and wearing suspense, or +realized so strongly the worth of her sweetness of temper, her +unselfishness and power of devoting herself to other people. + +"Polly bears it wonderfully," she wrote her father; "she was all broken +down for the first day or two, but now her courage and patience are +surprising. When I think how precious Amy is to her and how lonely her +life would be if she were to die, I can hardly keep the tears out of my +eyes. But Polly does not cry. She is quiet and brave and almost cheerful +all the time, keeping herself busy with what needs to be done; she never +complains, and she looks--oh, so pretty! I think I never knew how much +she had in her before." + +All this time no word had come from Lieutenant Worthington. His sister +had written him as soon as Amy was taken ill, and had twice telegraphed +since, but no answer had been received, and this strange silence added +to the sense of lonely isolation and distance from home and help which +those who encounter illness in a foreign land have to bear. + +So first one week and then another wore themselves away somehow. The +fever did not break on the fourteenth day, as had been hoped, and must +run for another period, the doctor said; but its force was lessened, and +he considered that a favorable sign. Amy was quieter now and did not +rave so constantly, but she was very weak. All her pretty hair had been +shorn away, which made her little face look tiny and sharp. Mabel's +golden wig was sacrificed at the same time. Amy had insisted upon it, +and they dared not cross her. + +"She has got a fever, too, and it's a great deal badder than mine is," +she protested. "Her cheeks are as hot as fire. She ought to have ice on +her head, and how can she when her bang is so thick? Cut it all off, +every bit, and then I will let you cut mine." + +"You had better give ze child her way," said Dr. Hilary. "She's in no +state to be fretted with triffles [trifles, the doctor meant], and in ze +end it will be well; for ze fever infection might harbor in zat doll's +head as well as elsewhere, and I should have to disinfect it, which +would be bad for ze skin of her." + +"She isn't a doll," cried Amy, overhearing him; "she's my child, and you +sha'n't call her names." She hugged Mabel tight in her arms, and glared +at Dr. Hilary defiantly. + +So Katy with pitiful fingers slashed away at Mabel's blond wig till her +head was as bare as a billiard-ball; and Amy, quite content, patted her +child while her own locks were being cut, and murmured, "Perhaps your +hair will all come out in little round curls, darling, as Johnnie Carr's +did;" then she fell into one of the quietest sleeps she had yet had. + +It was the day after this that Katy, coming in from a round of errands, +found Mrs. Ashe standing erect and pale, with a frightened look in her +eyes, and her back against Amy's door, as if defending it from somebody. +Confronting her was Madame Frulini, the _padrona_ of the hotel. Madame's +cheeks were red, and her eyes bright and fierce; she was evidently in a +rage about something, and was pouring out a torrent of excited Italian, +with now and then a French or English word slipped in by way of +punctuation, and all so rapidly that only a trained ear could have +followed or grasped her meaning. + +"What is the matter?" asked Katy, in amazement. + +"Oh, Katy, I am so glad you have come," cried poor Mrs. Ashe. "I can +hardly understand a word that this horrible woman says, but I think she +wants to turn us out of the hotel, and that we shall take Amy to some +other place. It would be the death of her,--I know it would. I never, +never will go, unless the doctor says it is safe. I oughtn't to,--I +couldn't; she can't make me, can she, Katy?" + +"Madame," said Katy,--and there was a flash in her eyes before which the +landlady rather shrank,--"what is all this? Why do you come to trouble +madame while her child is so ill?" + +Then came another torrent of explanation which didn't explain; but Katy +gathered enough of the meaning to make out that Mrs. Ashe was quite +correct in her guess, and that Madame Frulini was requesting, nay, +insisting, that they should remove Amy from the hotel at once. There +were plenty of apartments to be had now that the Carnival was over, she +said,--her own cousin had rooms close by,--it could easily be arranged, +and people were going away from the Del Mondo every day because there +was fever in the house. Such a thing could not be, it should not +be,--the landlady's voice rose to a shriek, "the child must go!" + +"You are a cruel woman," said Katy, indignantly, when she had grasped +the meaning of the outburst. "It is wicked, it is cowardly, to come thus +and attack a poor lady under your roof who has so much already to bear. +It is her only child who is lying in there,--her only one, do you +understand, madame?--and she is a widow. What you ask might kill the +child. I shall not permit you or any of your people to enter that door +till the doctor comes, and then I shall tell him how you have behaved, +and we shall see what he will say." As she spoke she turned the key of +Amy's door, took it out and put it in her pocket, then faced the +_padrona_ steadily, looking her straight in the eyes. + +"Mademoiselle," stormed the landlady, "I give you my word, four people +have left this house already because of the noises made by little miss. +More will go. I shall lose my winter's profit,--all of it,--all; it will +be said there is fever at the Del Mondo,--no one will hereafter come to +me. There are lodgings plenty, comfortable,--oh, so comfortable! I will +not have my season ruined by a sickness; no, I will not!" + +Madame Frulini's voice was again rising to a scream. + +"Be silent!" said Katy, sternly; "you will frighten the child. I am +sorry that you should lose any customers, madame, but the fever is here +and we are here, and here we must stay till it is safe to go. The child +shall not be moved till the doctor gives permission. Money is not the +only thing in the world! Mrs. Ashe will pay anything that is fair to +make up your losses to you, but you must leave this room now, and not +return till Dr. Hilary is here." + +Where Katy found French for all these long coherent speeches, she could +never afterward imagine. She tried to explain it by saying that +excitement inspired her for the moment, but that as soon as the moment +was over the inspiration died away and left her as speechless and +confused as ever. Clover said it made her think of the miracle of +Balaam; and Katy merrily rejoined that it might be so, and that no +donkey in any age of the world could possibly have been more grateful +than was she for the sudden gift of speech. + +"But it is not the money,--it is my prestige," declared the landlady. + +"Thank Heaven! here is the doctor now," cried Mrs. Ashe. + +The doctor had in fact been standing in the doorway for several moments +before they noticed him, and had overheard part of the colloquy with +Madame Frulini. With him was some one else, at the sight of whom Mrs. +Ashe gave a great sob of relief. It was her brother, at last. + +When Italian meets Italian, then comes the tug of expletive. It did not +seem to take one second for Dr. Hilary to whirl the _padrona_ out into +the entry, where they could be heard going at each other like two +furious cats. Hiss, roll, sputter, recrimination, objurgation! In five +minutes Madame Frulini was, metaphorically speaking, on her knees, and +the doctor standing over her with drawn sword, making her take back +every word she had said and every threat she had uttered. + +"Prestige of thy miserable hotel!" he thundered; "where will that be +when I go and tell the English and Americans--all of whom I know, every +one!--how thou hast served a countrywoman of theirs in thy house? Dost +thou think thy prestige will help thee much when Dr. Hilary has fixed a +black mark on thy door! I tell thee no; not a stranger shalt thou have +next year to eat so much as a plate of macaroni under thy base roof! I +will advertise thy behavior in all the foreign papers,--in Figaro, in +Galignani, in the Swiss Times, and the English one which is read by all +the nobility, and the Heraldo of New York, which all Americans peruse--" + +"Oh, doctor--pardon me--I regret what I said--I am afflicted--" + +"I will post thee in the railroad stations," continued the doctor, +implacably; "I will bid my patients to write letters to all their +friends, warning them against thy flea-ridden Del Mondo; I will apprise +the steamboat companies at Genoa and Naples. Thou shalt see what comes +of it,--truly, thou shalt see." + +Having thus reduced Madame Frulini to powder, the doctor now +condescended to take breath and listen to her appeals for mercy; and +presently he brought her in with her mouth full of protestations and +apologies, and assurances that the ladies had mistaken her meaning, she +had only spoken for the good of all; nothing was further from her +intention than that they should be disturbed or offended in any way, and +she and all her household were at the service of "the little sick angel +of God." After which the doctor dismissed her with an air of +contemptuous tolerance, and laid his hand on the door of Amy's room. +Behold, it was locked! + +"Oh, I forgot," cried Katy, laughing; and she pulled the key out of +her pocket. + +"You are a hee-roine, mademoiselle," said Dr. Hilary. "I watched you as +you faced that tigress, and your eyes were like a swordsman's as he +regards his enemy's rapier." + +"Oh, she was so brave, and such a help!" said Mrs. Ashe, kissing her +impulsively. "You can't think how she has stood by me all through, Ned, +or what a comfort she has been." + +"Yes, I can," said Ned Worthington, with a warm, grateful look at Katy. +"I can believe anything good of Miss Carr." + +"But where have _you_ been all this time?" said Katy, who felt this +flood of compliment to be embarrassing; "we have so wondered at not +hearing from you." + +"I have been off on a ten-days' leave to Corsica for moufflon-shooting," +replied Mr. Worthington. "I only got Polly's telegrams and letters day +before yesterday, and I came away as soon as I could get my leave +extended. It was a most unlucky absence. I shall always regret it." + +"Oh, it is all right now that you have come," his sister said, leaning +her head on his arm with a look of relief and rest which was good to +see. "Everything will go better now, I am sure." + +"Katy Carr has behaved like a perfect angel," she told her brother when +they were alone. + +"She is a trump of a girl. I came in time for part of that scene with +the landlady, and upon my word she was glorious! I didn't suppose she +could look so handsome." + +"Have the Pages left Nice yet?" asked his sister, rather irrelevantly. + +"No,--at least they were there on Thursday, but I think that they were +to start to-day." + +Mr. Worthington answered carelessly, but his face darkened as he spoke. +There had been a little scene in Nice which he could not forget. He was +sitting in the English garden with Lilly and her mother when his +sister's telegrams were brought to him; and he had read them aloud, +partly as an explanation for the immediate departure which they made +necessary and which broke up an excursion just arranged with the ladies +for the afternoon. It is not pleasant to have plans interfered with; and +as neither Mrs. Page nor her daughter cared personally for little Amy, +it is not strange that disappointment at the interruption of their +pleasure should have been the first impulse with them. Still, this did +not excuse Lilly's unstudied exclamation of "Oh, bother!" and though she +speedily repented it as an indiscretion, and was properly sympathetic, +and "hoped the poor little thing would soon be better," Amy's uncle +could not forget the jarring impression. It completed a process of +disenchantment which had long been going on; and as hearts are sometimes +caught at the rebound, Mrs. Ashe was not so far astray when she built +certain little dim sisterly hopes on his evident admiration for Katy's +courage and this sudden awakening to a sense of her good looks. + +But no space was left for sentiment or match-making while still Amy's +fate hung in the balance, and all three of them found plenty to do +during the next fortnight. The fever did not turn on the twenty-first +day, and another weary week of suspense set in, each day bringing a +decrease of the dangerous symptoms, but each day as well marking a +lessening in the childish strength which had been so long and severely +tested. Amy was quite conscious now, and lay quietly, sleeping a great +deal and speaking seldom. There was not much to do but to wait and hope; +but the flame of hope burned low at times, as the little life flickered +in its socket, and seemed likely to go out like a wind-blown torch. + +Now and then Lieutenant Worthington would persuade his sister to go +with him for a few minutes' drive or walk in the fresh air, from which +she had so long been debarred, and once or twice he prevailed on Katy +to do the same; but neither of them could bear to be away long from +Amy's bedside. + +Intimacy grows fast when people are thus united by a common anxiety, +sharing the same hopes and fears day after day, speaking and thinking of +the same thing. The gay young officer at Nice, who had counted so little +in Katy's world, seemed to have disappeared, and the gentle, +considerate, tender-hearted fellow who now filled his place was quite a +different person in her eyes. Katy began to count on Ned Worthington as +a friend who could be trusted for help and sympathy and comprehension, +and appealed to and relied upon in all emergencies. She was quite at +ease with him now, and asked him to do this and that, to come and help +her, or to absent himself, as freely as if he had been Dorry or Phil. + +He, on his part, found this easy intimacy charming. In the reaction of +his temporary glamour for the pretty Lilly, Katy's very difference from +her was an added attraction. This difference consisted, as much as +anything else, in the fact that she was so truly in earnest in what she +said and did. Had Lilly been in Katy's place, she would probably have +been helpful to Mrs. Ashe and kind to Amy so far as in her lay; but the +thought of self would have tinctured all that she did and said, and the +need of keeping to what was tasteful and becoming would have influenced +her in every emergency, and never have been absent from her mind. + +Katy, on the contrary, absorbed in the needs of the moment, gave little +heed to how she looked or what any one was thinking about her. Her habit +of neatness made her take time for the one thorough daily dressing,--the +brushing of hair and freshening of clothes, which were customary with +her; but, this tax paid to personal comfort, she gave little further +heed to appearances. She wore an old gray gown, day in and day out, +which Lilly would not have put on for half an hour without a large +bribe, so unbecoming was it; but somehow Lieutenant Worthington grew to +like the gray gown as a part of Katy herself. And if by chance he +brought a rose in to cheer the dim stillness of the sick-room, and she +tucked it into her buttonhole, immediately it was as though she were +decked for conquest. Pretty dresses are very pretty on pretty +people,--they certainly play an important part in this queer little +world of ours; but depend upon it, dear girls, no woman ever has +established so distinct and clear a claim on the regard of her lover as +when he has ceased to notice or analyze what she wears, and just accepts +it unquestioningly, whatever it is, as a bit of the dear human life +which has grown or is growing to be the best and most delightful thing +in the world to him. + +The gray gown played its part during the long anxious night when they +all sat watching breathlessly to see which way the tide would turn with +dear little Amy. The doctor came at midnight, and went away to come +again at dawn. Mrs. Swift sat grim and watchful beside the pillow of her +charge, rising now and then to feel pulse and skin, or to put a spoonful +of something between Amy's lips. The doors and windows stood open to +admit the air. In the outer room all was hushed. A dim Roman lamp, fed +with olive oil, burned in one corner behind a screen. Mrs. Ashe lay on +the sofa with her eyes closed, bearing the strain of suspense in +absolute silence. Her brother sat beside her, holding in his one of the +hot hands whose nervous twitches alone told of the surgings of hope and +fear within. Katy was resting in a big chair near by, her wistful eyes +fixed on Amy's little figure seen in the dim distance, her ears alert +for every sound from the sick-room. + +So they watched and waited. Now and then Ned Worthington or Katy would +rise softly, steal on tiptoe to the bedside, and come back to whisper to +Mrs. Ashe that Amy had stirred or that she seemed to be asleep. It was +one of the nights which do not come often in a lifetime, and which +people never forget. The darkness seems full of meaning; the hush, of +sound. God is beyond, holding the sunrise in his right hand, holding the +sun of our earthly hopes as well,--will it dawn in sorrow or in joy? We +dare not ask, we can only wait. + +A faint stir of wind and a little broadening of the light roused Katy +from a trance of half-understood thoughts. She crept once more into +Amy's room. Mrs. Swift laid a warning finger on her lips; Amy was +sleeping, she said with a gesture. Katy whispered the news to the still +figure on the sofa, then she went noiselessly out of the room. The great +hotel was fast asleep; not a sound stirred the profound silence of the +dark halls. A longing for fresh air led her to the roof. + +There was the dawn just tingeing the east. The sky, even thus early, +wore the deep mysterious blue of Italy. A fresh _tramontana_ was +blowing, and made Katy glad to draw her shawl about her. + +Far away in the distance rose the Alban Hills above the dim Campagna, +with the more lofty Sabines beyond, and Soracte, clear cut against the +sky like a wave frozen in the moment of breaking. Below lay the ancient +city, with its strange mingling of the old and the new, of past things +embedded in the present; or is it the present thinly veiling the rich +and mighty past,--who shall say? + +Faint rumblings of wheels and here and there a curl of smoke showed that +Rome was waking up. The light insensibly grew upon the darkness. A pink +flush lit up the horizon. Florio stirred in his lair, stretched his +dappled limbs, and as the first sun-ray glinted on the roof, raised +himself, crossed the gravelled tiles with soundless feet, and ran his +soft nose into Katy's hand. She fondled him for Amy's sake as she stood +bent over the flower-boxes, inhaling the scent of the mignonette and +gilly-flowers, with her eyes fixed on the distance; but her heart was at +home with the sleepers there, and a rush of strong desire stirred her. +Would this dreary time come to an end presently, and should they be set +at liberty to go their ways with no heavy sorrow to press them down, to +be care-free and happy again in their own land? + +A footstep startled her. Ned Worthington was coming over the roof on +tiptoe as if fearful of disturbing somebody. His face looked resolute +and excited. + +"I wanted to tell you," he said in a hushed voice, "that the doctor is +here, and he says Amy has no fever, and with care may be considered out +of danger." + +"Thank God!" cried Katy, bursting into tears. The long fatigue, the +fears kept in check so resolutely, the sleepless night just passed, had +their revenge now, and she cried and cried as if she could never stop, +but with all the time such joy and gratitude in her heart! She was +conscious that Ned had his arm round her and was holding both her hands +tight; but they were so one in the emotion of the moment that it did not +seem strange. + +"How sweet the sun looks!" she said presently, releasing herself, with a +happy smile flashing through her tears; "it hasn't seemed really bright +for ever so long. How silly I was to cry! Where is dear Polly? I must go +down to her at once. Oh, what does she say?" + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +NEXT. + + +Lieut. Worthington's leave had nearly expired. He must rejoin his +ship; but he waited till the last possible moment in order to help his +sister through the move to Albano, where it had been decided that Amy +should go for a few days of hill air before undertaking the longer +journey to Florence. + +It was a perfect morning in late March when the pale little invalid was +carried in her uncle's strong arms, and placed in the carriage which was +to take them to the old town on the mountain slopes which they had seen +shining from far away for so many weeks past. Spring had come in her +fairest shape to Italy. The Campagna had lost its brown and tawny hues +and taken on a tinge of fresher color. The olive orchards were budding +thickly. Almond boughs extended their dazzling shapes across the blue +sky. Arums and acanthus and ivy filled every hollow, roses nodded from +over every gate, while a carpet of violets and cyclamen and primroses +stretched over the fields and freighted every wandering wind with +fragrance. + +When once the Campagna with its long line of aqueducts, arches, and +hoary tombs was left behind, and the carriage slowly began to mount the +gradual rises of the hill, Amy revived. With every breath of the fresher +air her eyes seemed to brighten and her voice to grow stronger. She held +Mabel up to look at the view; and the sound of her laugh, faint and +feeble as it was, was like music to her mother's ears. + +Amy wore a droll little silk-lined cap on her head, over which a downy +growth of pale-brown fuzz was gradually thickening. Already it showed a +tendency to form into tiny rings, which to Amy, who had always hankered +for curls, was an extreme satisfaction. Strange to say, the same thing +exactly had happened to Mabel; her hair had grown out into soft little +round curls also! Uncle Ned and Katy had ransacked Rome for this +baby-wig, which filled and realized all Amy's hopes for her child. On +the same excursion they had bought the materials for the pretty spring +suit which Mabel wore, for it had been deemed necessary to sacrifice +most of her wardrobe as a concession to possible fever-germs. Amy +admired the pearl-colored dress and hat, the fringed jacket and little +lace-trimmed parasol so much, that she was quite consoled for the loss +of the blue velvet costume and ermine muff which had been the pride of +her heart ever since they left Paris, and whose destruction they had +scarcely dared to confess to her. + +So up, up, up, they climbed till the gateway of the old town was passed, +and the carriage stopped before a quaint building once the residence of +the Bishop of Albano, but now known as the Hotel de la Poste. Here they +alighted, and were shown up a wide and lofty staircase to their rooms, +which were on the sunny side of the house, and looked across a walled +garden, where roses and lemon trees grew beside old fountains guarded by +sculptured lions and heathen divinities with broken noses and a scant +supply of fingers and toes, to the Campagna, purple with distance and +stretching miles and miles away to where Rome sat on her seven hills, +lifting high the Dome of St. Peter's into the illumined air. + +Nurse Swift said that Amy must go to bed at once, and have a long rest. +But Amy nearly wept at the proposal, and declared that she was not a bit +tired and couldn't sleep if she went to bed ever so much. The change of +air had done her good already, and she looked more like herself than for +many weeks past. They compromised their dispute on a sofa, where Amy, +well wrapped up, was laid, and where, in spite of her protestations, she +presently fell asleep, leaving the others free to examine and arrange +their new quarters. + +Such enormous rooms as they were! It was quite a journey to go from one +side of them to another. The floors were of stone, with squares of +carpet laid down over them, which looked absurdly small for the great +spaces they were supposed to cover. The beds and tables were of the +usual size, but they seemed almost like doll furniture because the +chambers were so big. A quaint old paper, with an enormous pattern of +banyan trees and pagodas, covered the walls, and every now and then +betrayed by an oblong of regular cracks the existence of a hidden door, +papered to look exactly like the rest of the wall. + +These mysterious doors made Katy nervous, and she never rested till she +had opened every one of them and explored the places they led to. One +gave access to a queer little bathroom. Another led, through a narrow +dark passage, to a sort of balcony or loggia overhanging the garden. A +third ended in a dusty closet with an artful chink in it from which you +could peep into what had been the Bishop's drawing-room but which was +now turned into the dining-room of the hotel. It seemed made for +purposes of espial; and Katy had visions of a long line of reverend +prelates with their ears glued to the chink, overhearing what was being +said about them in the apartment beyond. + +The most surprising of all she did not discover till she was going to +bed on the second night after their arrival, when she thought she knew +all about the mysterious doors and what they led to. A little +unexplained draught of wind made her candle flicker, and betrayed the +existence of still another door so cunningly hid in the wall pattern +that she had failed to notice it. She had quite a creepy feeling as she +drew her dressing-gown about her, took a light, and entered the narrow +passage into which it opened. It was not a long passage, and ended +presently in a tiny oratory. There was a little marble altar, with a +kneeling-step and candlesticks and a great crucifix above. Ends of wax +candles still remained in the candlesticks, and bunches of dusty paper +flowers filled the vases which stood on either side of them. A faded +silk cushion lay on the step. Doubtless the Bishop had often knelt +there. Katy felt as if she were the first person to enter the place +since he went away. Her common-sense told her that in a hotel bedroom +constantly occupied by strangers for years past, some one _must_ have +discovered the door and found the little oratory before her; but +common-sense is sometimes less satisfactory than romance. Katy liked to +think that she was the first, and to "make believe" that no one else +knew about it; so she did so, and invented legends about the place which +Amy considered better than any fairy story. + +Before he left them Lieutenant Worthington had a talk with his sister +in the garden. She rather forced this talk upon him, for various +things were lying at her heart about which she longed for explanation; +but he yielded so easily to her wiles that it was evident he was not +averse to the idea. + +"Come, Polly, don't beat about the bush any longer," he said at last, +amused and a little irritated at her half-hints and little feminine +_finesses_. "I know what you want to ask; and as there's no use +making a secret of it, I will take my turn in asking. Have I any chance, +do you think?" + +"Any chance?--about Katy, do you mean? Oh, Ned, you make me so happy." + +"Yes; about her, of course." + +"I don't see why you should say 'of course,'" remarked his sister, with +the perversity of her sex, "when it's only five or six weeks ago that I +was lying awake at night for fear you were being gobbled up by that +Lilly Page." + +"There was a little risk of it," replied her brother, seriously. "She's +awfully pretty and she dances beautifully, and the other fellows were +all wild about her, and--well, you know yourself how such things go. I +can't see now what it was that I fancied so much about her, I don't +suppose I could have told exactly at the time; but I can tell without +the smallest trouble what it is in--the other." + +"In Katy? I should think so," cried Mrs. Ashe, emphatically; "the two +are no more to be compared than--than--well, bread and syllabub! You can +live on one, and you can't live on the other." + +"Come, now, Miss Page isn't so bad as that. She is a nice girl enough, +and a pretty girl too,--prettier than Katy; I'm not so far gone that I +can't see that. But we won't talk about her, she's not in the present +question at all; very likely she'd have had nothing to say to me in any +case. I was only one out of a dozen, and she never gave me reason to +suppose that she cared more for me than the rest. Let us talk about this +friend of yours; have I any chance at all, do you think, Polly?" + +"Ned, you are the dearest boy! I would rather have Katy for a sister +than any one else I know. She's so nice all through,--so true and sweet +and satisfactory." + +"She is all that and more; she's a woman to tie to for life, to be +perfectly sure of always. She would make a splendid wife for any man. +I'm not half good enough for her; but the question is,--and you haven't +answered it yet, Polly,--what's my chance?" + +"I don't know," said his sister, slowly. + +"Then I must ask herself, and I shall do so to-day." + +"I don't know," repeated Mrs. Ashe. "'She is a woman, therefore to be +won:' and I don't think there is any one ahead of you; that is the best +hope I have to offer, Ned. Katy never talks of such things; and though +she's so frank, I can't guess whether or not she ever thinks about them. +She likes you, however, I am sure of that. But, Ned, it will not be wise +to say anything to her yet." + +"Not say anything? Why not?" + +"No. Recollect that it is only a little while since she looked upon you +as the admirer of another girl, and a girl she doesn't like very much, +though they are cousins. You must give her time to get over that +impression. Wait awhile; that's my advice, Ned." + +"I'll wait any time if only she will say yes in the end. But it's hard +to go away without a word of hope, and it's more like a man to speak +out, it seems to me." + +"It's too soon," persisted his sister. "You don't want her to think +you a fickle fellow, falling in love with a fresh girl every time you +go into port, and falling out again when the ship sails. Sailors have +a bad reputation for that sort of thing. No woman cares to win a man +like that." + +"Great Scott! I should think not! Do you mean to say that is the way my +conduct appears to her, Polly?" + +"No, I don't mean just that; but wait, dear Ned, I am sure it is +better." + +Fortified by this sage counsel, Lieutenant Worthington went away next +morning, without saying anything to Katy in words, though perhaps eyes +and tones may have been less discreet. He made them promise that some +one should send a letter every day about Amy; and as Mrs. Ashe +frequently devolved the writing of these bulletins upon Katy, and the +replies came in the shape of long letters, she found herself conducting +a pretty regular correspondence without quite intending it. Ned +Worthington wrote particularly nice letters. He had the knack, more +often found in women than men, of giving a picture with a few graphic +touches, and indicating what was droll or what was characteristic with +a single happy phrase. His letters grew to be one of Katy's pleasures; +and sometimes, as Mrs. Ashe watched the color deepen in her cheeks +while she read, her heart would bound hopefully within her. But she was +a wise woman in her way, and she wanted Katy for a sister very much; so +she never said a word or looked a look to startle or surprise her, but +left the thing to work itself out, which is the best course always in +love affairs. + +Little Amy's improvement at Albano was something remarkable. Mrs. Swift +watched over her like a lynx. Her vigilance never relaxed. Amy was made +to eat and sleep and walk and rest with the regularity of a machine; and +this exact system, combined with the good air, worked like a charm. The +little one gained hour by hour. They could absolutely see her growing +fat, her mother declared. Fevers, when they do not kill, operate +sometimes as spring bonfires do in gardens, burning up all the refuse +and leaving the soil free for the growth of fairer things; and Amy +promised in time to be only the better and stronger for her hard +experience. + +She had gained so much before the time came to start for Florence, that +they scarcely dreaded the journey; but it proved worse than their +expectations. They had not been able to secure a carriage to themselves, +and were obliged to share their compartment with two English ladies, and +three Roman Catholic priests, one old, the others young. The older +priest seemed to be a person of some consequence; for quite a number of +people came to see him off, and knelt for his blessing devoutly as the +train moved away. The younger ones Katy guessed to be seminary students +under his charge. Her chief amusement through the long dusty journey was +in watching the terrible time that one of these young men was having +with his own hat. It was a large three-cornered black affair, with sharp +angles and excessively stiff; and a perpetual struggle seemed to be +going on between it and its owner, who was evidently unhappy when it was +on his head and still more unhappy when it was anywhere else. If he +perched it on his knees it was sure to slide away from him and fall with +a thump on the floor, whereupon he would pick it up, blushing furiously +as he did so. Then he would lay it on the seat when the train stopped at +a station, and jump out with an air of relief; but he invariably forgot, +and sat down upon it when he returned, and sprang up with a look of +horror at the loud crackle it made; after which he would tuck it into +the baggage-rack overhead, from which it would presently descend, +generally into the lap of one of the staid English ladies, who would +hand it back to him with an air of deep offence, remarking to her +companion,-- + +"I never knew anything like it. Fancy! that makes four times that hat +has fallen on me. The young man is a feedgit! He's the most feegitty +creature I ever saw in my life." + +The young _seminariat_ did not understand a word she said; but the +tone needed no interpreter, and set him to blushing more painfully than +ever. Altogether, the hat was never off his mind for a moment. Katy +could see that he was thinking about it, even when he was thumbing his +Breviary and making believe to read. + +At last the train, steaming down the valley of the Arno, revealed fair +Florence sitting among olive-clad hills, with Giotto's beautiful +Bell-tower, and the great, many-colored, soft-hued Cathedral, and the +square tower of the old Palace, and the quaint bridges over the river, +looking exactly as they do in the photographs; and Katy would have felt +delighted, in spite of dust and fatigue, had not Amy looked so worn out +and exhausted. They were seriously troubled about her, and for the +moment could think of nothing else. Happily the fatigue did no permanent +harm, and a day or two of rest made her all right again. By good +fortune, a nice little apartment in the modern quarter of the city had +been vacated by its winter occupants the very day of their arrival, and +Mrs. Ashe secured it for a month, with all its conveniences and +advantages, including a maid named Maria, who had been servant to the +just departed tenants. + +Maria was a very tall woman, at least six feet two, and had a splendid +contralto voice, which she occasionally exercised while busy over her +pots and pans. It was so remarkable to hear these grand arias and +recitatives proceeding from a kitchen some eight feet square, that Katy +was at great pains to satisfy her curiosity about it. By aid of the +dictionary and much persistent questioning, she made out that Maria in +her youth had received a partial training for the opera; but in the end +it was decided that she was too big and heavy for the stage, and the +poor "giantess," as Amy named her, had been forced to abandon her +career, and gradually had sunk to the position of a maid-of-all-work. +Katy suspected that heaviness of mind as well as of body must have stood +in her way; for Maria, though a good-natured giantess, was by no means +quick of intelligence. + +"I do think that the manner in which people over here can make homes for +themselves at five minutes' notice is perfectly delightful," cried Katy, +at the end of their first day's housekeeping. "I wish we could do the +same in America. How cosy it looks here already!" + +It was indeed cosy. Their new domain consisted of a parlor in a corner, +furnished in bright yellow brocade, with windows to south and west; a +nice little dining-room; three bedrooms, with dimity-curtained beds; a +square entrance hall, lighted at night by a tall slender brass lamp +whose double wicks were fed with olive oil; and the aforesaid tiny +kitchen, behind which was a sleeping cubby, quite too small to be a good +fit for the giantess. The rooms were full of conveniences,--easy-chairs, +sofas, plenty of bureaus and dressing-tables, and corner fireplaces like +Franklin stoves, in which odd little fires burned on cool days, made of +pine cones, cakes of pressed sawdust exactly like Boston brown bread cut +into slices, and a few sticks of wood thriftily adjusted, for fuel is +worth its weight in gold in Florence. Katy's was the smallest of the +bedrooms, but she liked it best of all for the reason that its one big +window opened on an iron balcony over which grew a Banksia rose-vine +with a stem as thick as her wrist. It was covered just now with masses +of tiny white blossoms, whose fragrance was inexpressibly delicious and +made every breath drawn in their neighborhood a delight. The sun +streamed in on all sides of the little apartment, which filled a +narrowing angle at the union of three streets; and from one window and +another, glimpses could be caught of the distant heights about the +city,--San Miniato in one direction, Bellosguardo in another, and for +the third the long olive-hung ascent of Fiesole, crowned by its gray +cathedral towers. + +It was astonishing how easily everything fell into train about the +little establishment. Every morning at six the English baker left two +small sweet brown loaves and a dozen rolls at the door. Then followed +the dairyman with a supply of tiny leaf-shaped pats of freshly churned +butter, a big flask of milk, and two small bottles of thick cream, with +a twist of vine leaf in each by way of a cork. Next came a _contadino_ +with a flask of red Chianti wine, a film of oil floating on top to keep +it sweet. People in Florence must drink wine, whether they like it or +not, because the lime-impregnated water is unsafe for use without some +admixture. + +Dinner came from a _trattoria_, in a tin box, with a pan of coals inside +to keep it warm, which box was carried on a man's head. It was furnished +at a fixed price per day,--a soup, two dishes of meat, two vegetables, +and a sweet dish; and the supply was so generous as always to leave +something toward next day's luncheon. Salad, fruit, and fresh eggs Maria +bought for them in the old market. From the confectioners came loaves of +_pane santo_, a sort of light cake made with arrowroot instead of flour; +and sometimes, by way of treat, a square of _pan forte da Siena_, +compounded of honey, almonds, and chocolate,--a mixture as pernicious +as it is delicious, and which might take a medal anywhere for the sure +production of nightmares. + +Amy soon learned to know the shops from which these delicacies came. +She had her favorites, too, among the strolling merchants who sold +oranges and those little sweet native figs, dried in the sun without +sugar, which are among the specialties of Florence. They, in their +turn, learned to know her and to watch for the appearance of her little +capped head and Mabel's blond wig at the window, lingering about till +she came, and advertising their wares with musical modulations, so +appealing that Amy was always running to Katy, who acted as +housekeeper, to beg her to please buy this or that, "because it is my +old man, and he wants me to so much." + +"But, chicken, we have plenty of figs for to-day." + +"No matter; get some more, please do. I'll eat them all; really, I +will." + +And Amy was as good as her word. Her convalescent appetite was something +prodigious. + +There was another branch of shopping in which they all took equal +delight. The beauty and the cheapness of the Florence flowers are a +continual surprise to a stranger. Every morning after breakfast an old +man came creaking up the two long flights of stairs which led to Mrs. +Ashe's apartment, tapped at the door, and as soon as it opened, inserted +a shabby elbow and a large flat basket full of flowers. Such flowers! +Great masses of scarlet and cream-colored tulips, and white and gold +narcissus, knots of roses of all shades, carnations, heavy-headed trails +of wistaria, wild hyacinths, violets, deep crimson and orange +ranunculus, _giglios_, or wild irises,--the Florence emblem, so deeply +purple as to be almost black,--anemones, spring-beauties, faintly tinted +wood-blooms tied in large loose nosegays, ivy, fruit +blossoms,--everything that can be thought of that is fair and sweet. +These enticing wares the old man would tip out on the table. Mrs. Ashe +and Katy would select what they wanted, and then the process of +bargaining would begin, without which no sale is complete in Italy. The +old man would name an enormous price, five times as much as he hoped to +get. Katy would offer a very small one, considerably less than she +expected to give. The old man would dance with dismay, wring his hands, +assure them that he should die of hunger and all his family with him if +he took less than the price named; he would then come down half a franc +in his demand. So it would go on for five minutes, ten, sometimes for a +quarter of an hour, the old man's price gradually descending, and Katy's +terms very slowly going up, a cent or two at a time. Next the giantess +would mingle with the fray. She would bounce out of her kitchen, berate +the flower-vender, snatch up his flowers, declare that they smelt badly, +fling them down again, pouring out all the while a voluble tirade of +reproaches and revilings, and looking so enormous in her excitement that +Katy wondered that the old man dared to answer her at all. Finally, +there would be a sudden lull. The old man would shrug his shoulders, and +remarking that he and his wife and his aged grandmother must go without +bread that day since it was the Signora's will, take the money offered +and depart, leaving such a mass of flowers behind him that Katy would +begin to think that they had paid an unfair price for them and to feel a +little rueful, till she observed that the old man was absolutely dancing +downstairs with rapture over the good bargain he had made, and that +Maria was black with indignation over the extravagance of her ladies! + +"The Americani are a nation of spend-thrifts," she would mutter to +herself, as she quickened the charcoal in her droll little range by +fanning it with a palm-leaf fan; "they squander money like water. Well, +all the better for us Italians!" with a shrug of her shoulders. + +"But, Maria, it was only sixteen cents that we paid, and look at those +flowers! There are at least half a bushel of them." + +"Sixteen cents for garbage like that! The Signorina would better let me +make her bargains for her. _Gia! Gia!_ No Italian lady would have paid +more than eleven sous for such useless _roba_. It is evident that the +Signorina's countrymen eat gold when at home, they think so little of +casting it away!" + +Altogether, what with the comfort and quiet of this little home, the +numberless delightful things that there were to do and to see, and +Viessieux's great library, from which they could draw books at will +to make the doing and seeing more intelligible, the month at +Florence passed only too quickly, and was one of the times to which +they afterward looked back with most pleasure. Amy grew steadily +stronger, and the freedom from anxiety about her after their long +strain of apprehension was restful and healing beyond expression to +both mind and body. + +Their very last excursion of all, and one of the pleasantest, was to the +old amphitheatre at Fiesole; and it was while they sat there in the soft +glow of the late afternoon, tying into bunches the violets which they +had gathered from under walls whose foundations antedate Rome itself, +that a cheery call sounded from above, and an unexpected surprise +descended upon them in the shape of Lieutenant Worthington, who having +secured another fifteen days' furlough, had come to take his sister on +to Venice. + +"I didn't write you that I had applied for leave," he explained, +"because there seemed so little chance of my getting off again so soon; +but as luck had it, Carruthers, whose turn it was, sprained his ankle +and was laid up, and the Commodore let us exchange. I made all the +capital I could out of Amy's fever; but upon my word, I felt like a +humbug when I came upon her and Mrs. Swift in the Cascine just now, as I +was hunting for you. How she has picked up! I should never have known +her for the same child." + +"Yes, she seems perfectly well again, and as strong as before she had +the fever, though that dear old Goody Swift is just as careful of her as +ever. She would not let us bring her here this afternoon, for fear we +should stay out till the dew fell. Ned, it is perfectly delightful that +you were able to come. It makes going to Venice seem quite a different +thing, doesn't it, Katy?" + +"I don't want it to seem quite different, because going to Venice was +always one of my dreams," replied Katy, with a little laugh. + +"I hope at least it doesn't make it seem less pleasant," said Mr. +Worthington, as his sister stopped to pick a violet. + +"No, indeed, I am glad," said Katy; "we shall all be seeing it for +the first time, too, shall we not? I think you said you had never +been there." She spoke simply and frankly, but she was conscious of +an odd shyness. + +"I simply couldn't stand it any longer," Ned Worthington confided to his +sister when they were alone. "My head is so full of her that I can't +attend to my work, and it came to me all of a sudden that this might be +my last chance. You'll be getting north before long, you know, to +Switzerland and so on, where I cannot follow you. So I made a clean +breast of it to the Commodore; and the good old fellow, who has a soft +spot in his heart for a love-story, behaved like a brick, and made it +all straight for me to come away." + +Mrs. Ashe did not join in these commendations of the Commodore; her +attention was fixed on another part of her brother's discourse. + +"Then you won't be able to come to me again? I sha'n't see you again +after this!" she exclaimed. "Dear me! I never realized that before. What +shall I do without you?" + +"You will have Miss Carr. She is a host in herself," suggested Ned +Worthington. His sister shook her head. + +"Katy is a jewel," she remarked presently; "but somehow one wants a man +to call upon. I shall feel lost without you, Ned." + +The month's housekeeping wound up that night with a "thick tea" in honor +of Lieutenant Worthington's arrival, which taxed all the resources of +the little establishment. Maria was sent out hastily to buy _pan forte +da Siena_ and _vino d'Asti_, and fresh eggs for an omelette, and +chickens' breasts smothered in cream from the restaurant, and artichokes +for a salad, and flowers to garnish all; and the guest ate and praised +and admired; and Amy and Mabel sat on his knee and explained everything +to him, and they were all very happy together. Their merriment was so +infectious that it extended to the poor giantess, who had been very +pensive all day at the prospect of losing her good place, and who now +raised her voice in the grand aria from "Orfeo," and made the kitchen +ring with the passionate demand "Che faro senza Eurydice?" The splendid +notes, full of fire and lamentation, rang out across the saucepans as +effectively as if they had been footlights; and Katy, rising softly, +opened the kitchen door a little way that they might not lose a sound. + +The next day brought them to Venice. It was a "moment," indeed, as Katy +seated herself for the first time in a gondola, and looked from beneath +its black hood at the palace walls on the Grand Canal, past which they +were gliding. Some were creamy white and black, some orange-tawny, +others of a dull delicious ruddy color, half pink, half red; but all, in +build and ornament, were unlike palaces elsewhere. High on the prow +before her stood the gondolier, his form defined in dark outline against +the sky, as he swayed and bent to his long oar, raising his head now and +again to give a wild musical cry, as warning to other approaching +gondolas. It was all like a dream. Ned Worthington sat beside her, +looking more at the changes in her expressive face than at the palaces. +Venice was as new to him as to Katy; but she was a new feature in his +life also, and even more interesting than Venice. They seemed to float +on pleasures for the next ten days. Their arrival had been happily timed +to coincide with a great popular festival which for nearly a week kept +Venice in a state of continual brilliant gala. All the days were spent +on the water, only landing now and then to look at some famous building +or picture, or to eat ices in the Piazza with the lovely facade of St. +Mark's before them. Dining or sleeping seemed a sheer waste of time! The +evenings were spent on the water too; for every night, immediately after +sunset, a beautiful drifting pageant started from the front of the +Doge's Palace to make the tour of the Grand Canal, and our friends +always took a part in it. In its centre went a barge hung with +embroideries and filled with orange trees and musicians. This was +surrounded by a great convoy of skiffs and gondolas bearing colored +lanterns and pennons and gay awnings, and managed by gondoliers in +picturesque uniforms. All these floated and shifted and swept on +together with a sort of rhythmic undulation as if keeping time to the +music, while across their path dazzling showers and arches of colored +fire poured from the palace fronts and the hotels. Every movement of the +fairy flotilla was repeated in the illuminated water, every torch-tip +and scarlet lantern and flake of green or rosy fire; above all the +bright full moon looked down as if surprised. It was magically beautiful +in effect. Katy felt as if her previous sober ideas about life and +things had melted away. For the moment the world was turned topsy-turvy. +There was nothing hard or real or sordid left in it; it was just a fairy +tale, and she was in the middle of it as she had longed to be in her +childhood. She was the Princess, encircled by delights, as when she and +Clover and Elsie played in "Paradise,"--only, this was better; and, dear +me! who was this Prince who seemed to belong to the story and to grow +more important to it every day? + +Fairy tales must come to ending. Katy's last chapter closed with a +sudden turn-over of the leaf when, toward the end of this happy +fortnight, Mrs. Ashe came into her room with the face of one who has +unpleasant news to communicate. + +"Katy," she began, "should you be _awfully_ disappointed, should +you consider me a perfect wretch, if I went home now instead of in +the autumn?" + +Katy was too much astonished to reply. + +"I am grown such a coward, I am so knocked up and weakened by what I +suffered in Rome, that I find I cannot face the idea of going on to +Germany and Switzerland alone, without Ned to take care of me. You are a +perfect angel, dear, and I know that you would do all you could to make +it easy for me, but I am such a fool that I do not dare. I think my +nerves must have given way," she continued half tearfully; "but the very +idea of shifting for myself for five months longer makes me so miserably +homesick that I cannot endure it. I dare say I shall repent afterward, +and I tell myself now how silly it is; but it's no use,--I shall never +know another easy moment till I have Amy safe again in America and under +your father's care." + +"I find," she continued after another little pause, "that we can go down +with Ned to Genoa and take a steamer there which will carry us straight +to New York without any stops. I hate to disappoint you dreadfully, +Katy, but I have almost decided to do it. Shall you mind very much? Can +you ever forgive me?" She was fairly crying now. + +Katy had to swallow hard before she could answer, the sense of +disappointment was so sharp; and with all her efforts there was almost a +sob in her voice as she said,-- + +"Why yes, indeed, dear Polly, there is nothing to forgive. You are +perfectly right to go home if you feel so." Then with another swallow +she added: "You have given me the loveliest six months' treat that ever +was, and I should be a greedy girl indeed if I found fault because it is +cut off a little sooner than we expected." + +"You are so dear and good not to be vexed," said her friend, embracing +her. "It makes me feel doubly sorry about disappointing you. Indeed I +wouldn't if I could help it, but I simply can't. I _must_ go home. +Perhaps we'll come back some day when Amy is grown up, or safely married +to somebody who will take good care of her!" + +This distant prospect was but a poor consolation for the immediate +disappointment. The more Katy thought about it the sorrier did she feel. +It was not only losing the chance--very likely the only one she would +ever have--of seeing Switzerland and Germany; it was all sorts of other +little things besides. They must go home in a strange ship with a +captain they did not know, instead of in the "Spartacus," as they had +planned; and they should land in New York, where no one would be waiting +for them, and not have the fun of sailing into Boston Bay and seeing +Rose on the wharf, where she had promised to be. Furthermore, they must +pass the hot summer in Burnet instead of in the cool Alpine valleys; and +Polly's house was let till October. She and Amy would have to shift for +themselves elsewhere. Perhaps they would not be in Burnet at all. Oh +dear, what a pity it was! what a dreadful pity! + +Then, the first shock of surprise and discomfiture over, other ideas +asserted themselves; and as she realized that in three weeks more, or +four at the longest, she was to see papa and Clover and all her dear +people at home, she began to feel so very glad that she could hardly +wait for the time to come. After all, there was nothing in Europe quite +so good as that. + +"No, I'm not sorry," she told herself; "I am glad. Poor Polly! it's no +wonder she feels nervous after all she has gone through. I hope I wasn't +cross to her! And it will be _very_ nice to have Lieutenant Worthington +to take care of us as far as Genoa." + +The next three days were full of work. There was no more floating in +gondolas, except in the way of business. All the shopping which they had +put off must be done, and the trunks packed for the voyage. Every one +recollected last errands and commissions; there was continual coming and +going and confusion, and Amy, wild with excitement, popping up every +other moment in the midst of it all, to demand of everybody if they were +not glad that they were going back to America. + +Katy had never yet bought her gift from old Mrs. Redding. She had +waited, thinking continually that she should see something more tempting +still in the next place they went to; but now, with the sense that there +were to be no more "next places," she resolved to wait no longer, and +with a hundred francs in her pocket, set forth to choose something from +among the many tempting things for sale in the Piazza. A bracelet of old +Roman coins had caught her fancy one day in a bric-a-brac shop, and she +walked straight toward it, only pausing by the way to buy a pale blue +iridescent pitcher at Salviate's for Cecy Slack, and see it carefully +rolled in seaweed and soft paper. + +The price of the bracelet was a little more than she expected, and quite +a long process of bargaining was necessary to reduce it to the sum she +had to spend. She had just succeeded and was counting out the money when +Mrs. Ashe and her brother appeared, having spied her from the opposite +side of the Piazza, where they were choosing last photographs at Naga's. +Katy showed her purchase and explained that it was a present; "for of +course I should never walk out in cold blood and buy a bracelet for +myself," she said with a laugh. + +"This is a fascinating little shop," said Mrs. Ashe. "I wonder +what is the price of that queer old chatelaine with the bottles +hanging from it." + +The price was high; but Mrs. Ashe was now tolerably conversant with +shopping Italian, which consists chiefly of a few words repeated many +times over, and it lowered rapidly under the influence of her _troppo's_ +and _e molto caro's_, accompanied with telling little shrugs and looks +of surprise. In the end she bought it for less than two thirds of what +had been originally asked for it. As she put the parcel in her pocket, +her brother said,-- + +"If you have done your shopping now, Polly, can't you come out for a +last row?" + +"Katy may, but I can't," replied Mrs. Ashe. "The man promised to bring +me gloves at six o'clock, and I must be there to pay for them. Take +her down to the Lido, Ned. It's an exquisite evening for the water, +and the sunset promises to be delicious. You can take the time, can't +you, Katy?" + +Katy could. + +Mrs. Ashe turned to leave them, but suddenly stopped short. + +"Katy, look! Isn't that a picture!" + +The "picture" was Amy, who had come to the Piazza with Mrs. Swift, to +feed the doves of St. Mark's, which was one of her favorite amusements. +These pretty birds are the pets of all Venice, and so accustomed to +being fondled and made much of by strangers, that they are perfectly +tame. Amy, when her mother caught sight of her, was sitting on the +marble pavement, with one on her shoulder, two perched on the edge of +her lap, which was full of crumbs, and a flight of others circling round +her head. She was looking up and calling them in soft tones. The +sunlight caught the little downy curls on her head and made them +glitter. The flying doves lit on the pavement, and crowded round her, +their pearl and gray and rose-tinted and white feathers, their scarlet +feet and gold-ringed eyes, making a shifting confusion of colors, as +they hopped and fluttered and cooed about the little maid, unstartled +even by her clear laughter. Close by stood Nurse Swift, observant and +grimly pleased. + +The mother looked on with happy tears in her eyes. "Oh, Katy, think +what she was a few weeks ago and look at her now! Can I ever be +thankful enough?" + +She squeezed Katy's hand convulsively and walked away, turning her head +now and then for another glance at Amy and the doves; while Ned and Katy +silently crossed to the landing and got into a gondola. It was the +perfection of a Venice evening, with silver waves lapsing and lulling +under a rose and opal sky; and the sense that it was their last row on +those enchanted waters made every moment seem doubly precious. + +I cannot tell you exactly what it was that Ned Worthington said to Katy +during that row, or why it took so long to say it that they did not get +in till after the sun was set, and the stars had come out to peep at +their bright, glinting faces, reflected in the Grand Canal. In fact, no +one can tell; for no one overheard, except Giacomo, the brown +yellow-jacketed gondolier, and as he did not understand a word of +English he could not repeat the conversation. Venetian boatmen, however, +know pretty well what it means when a gentleman and lady, both young, +find so much to say in low tones to each other under the gondola hood, +and are so long about giving the order to return; and Giacomo, deeply +sympathetic, rowed as softly and made himself as imperceptible as he +could,--a display of tact which merited the big silver piece with which +Lieutenant Worthington "crossed his palm" on landing. + +Mrs. Ashe had begun to look for them long before they appeared, but I +think she was neither surprised nor sorry that they were so late. Katy +kissed her hastily and went away at once,--"to pack," she said,--and +Ned was equally undemonstrative; but they looked so happy, both of them, +that "Polly dear" was quite satisfied and asked no questions. + +Five days later the parting came, when the "Florio" steamer put into the +port of Genoa for passengers. It was not an easy good-by to say. Mrs. +Ashe and Amy both cried, and Mabel was said to be in deep affliction +also. But there were alleviations. The squadron was coming home in the +autumn, and the officers would have leave to see their friends, and of +course Lieutenant Worthington must come to Burnet--to visit his sister. +Five months would soon go, he declared; but for all the cheerful +assurance, his face was rueful enough as he held Katy's hand in a long +tight clasp while the little boat waited to take him ashore. + +After that it was just a waiting to be got through with till they +sighted Sandy Hook and the Neversinks,--a waiting varied with peeps at +Marseilles and Gibraltar and the sight of a whale or two and one distant +iceberg. The weather was fair all the way, and the ocean smooth. Amy was +never weary of lamenting her own stupidity in not having taken Maria +Matilda out of confinement before they left Venice. + +"That child has hardly been out of the trunk since we started," she +said. "She hasn't seen anything except a little bit of Nice. I shall +really be ashamed when the other children ask her about it. I think I +shall play that she was left at boarding-school and didn't come to +Europe at all! Don't you think that would be the best way, mamma?" + +"You might play that she was left in the States-prison for having done +something naughty," suggested Katy; but Amy scouted this idea. + +"She never does naughty things," she said, "because she never does +anything at all. She's just stupid, poor child! It's not her fault." + +The thirty-six hours between New York and Burnet seemed longer than all +the rest of the journey put together, Katy thought. But they ended at +last, as the "Lake Queen" swung to her moorings at the familiar wharf, +where Dr. Carr stood surrounded with all his boys and girls just as they +had stood the previous October, only that now there were no clouds on +anybody's face, and Johnnie was skipping up and down for joy instead of +grief. It was a long moment while the plank was being lowered from the +gangway; but the moment it was in place, Katy darted across, first +ashore of all the passengers, and was in her father's arms. + +Mrs. Ashe and Amy spent two or three days with them, while looking up +temporary quarters elsewhere; and so long as they stayed all seemed a +happy confusion of talking and embracing and exclaiming, and +distributing of gifts. After they went away things fell into their +customary train, and a certain flatness became apparent. Everything had +happened that could happen. The long-talked-of European journey was +over. Here was Katy at home again, months sooner than they expected; yet +she looked remarkably cheerful and content! Clover could not understand +it; she was likewise puzzled to account for one or two private +conversations between Katy and papa in which she had not been invited to +take part, and the occasional arrival of a letter from "foreign parts" +about whose contents nothing was said. + +"It seems a dreadful pity that you had to come so soon," she said one +day when they were alone in their bedroom. "It's delightful to have you, +of course; but we had braced ourselves to do without you till October, +and there are such lots of delightful things that you could have been +doing and seeing at this moment." + +"Oh, yes, indeed," replied Katy, but not at all as if she were +particularly disappointed. + +"Katy Carr, I don't understand you," persisted Clover. "Why don't you +feel worse about it? Here you have lost five months of the most +splendid time you ever had, and you don't seem to mind it a bit! Why, +if I were in your place my heart would be perfectly broken. And you +needn't have come, either; that's the worst of it. It was just a whim +of Polly's. Papa says Amy might have stayed as well as not. Why aren't +you sorrier, Katy?" + +"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because I had so much as it was,--enough to +last all my life, I think, though I _should_ like to go again. You can't +imagine what beautiful pictures are put away in my memory." + +"I don't see that you had so awfully much," said the aggravated Clover; +"you were there only a little more than six months,--for I don't count +the sea,--and ever so much of that time was taken up with nursing Amy. +You can't have any pleasant pictures of _that_ part of it." + +"Yes, I have, some." + +"Well, I should really like to know what. There you were in a dark room, +frightened to death and tired to death, with only Mrs. Ashe and the old +nurse to keep you company--Oh, yes, that brother was there part of the +time; I forgot him--" + +Clover stopped short in sudden amazement. Katy was standing with her +back toward her, smoothing her hair, but her face was reflected in the +glass. At Clover's words a sudden deep flush had mounted in Katy's +cheeks. Deeper and deeper it burned as she became conscious of Clover's +astonished gaze, till even the back of her neck was pink. Then, as if +she could not bear it any longer, she put the brush down, turned, and +fled out of the room; while Clover, looking after her, exclaimed in a +tone of sudden comical dismay,-- + +"What does it mean? Oh, dear me! is that what Katy is going to do next?" + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What Katy Did Next, by Susan Coolidge + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT KATY DID NEXT *** + +***** This file should be named 8995.txt or 8995.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/8/9/9/8995/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Suzanne L. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: What Katy Did Next + +Author: Susan Coolidge + +Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8995] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on August 31, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT KATY DID NEXT *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + +[Illustration: She paid a visit to the little garden. +FRONTISPIECE.] + + +WHAT KATY DID NEXT + +BY + +SUSAN COOLIDGE + + + +This Story is Dedicated + +TO + +THE MANY LITTLE GIRLS + +(SOME OF THEM GROWN TO BE GREAT GIRLS NOW), + +_Who, during the last twelve years, have begged that something +more might be told them about KATY CARR, and what she did after +leaving school._ + + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + +I. AN UNEXPECTED GUEST + +II. AN INVITATION + +III. ROSE AND ROSEBUD + +IV. ON THE "SPARTACUS" + +V. STORY-BOOK ENGLAND + +VI. ACROSS THE CHANNEL + +VII. THE PENSION SUISSE + +VIII. ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES + +IX. A ROMAN HOLIDAY + +X. CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN + +XI. NEXT + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +SHE PAID A VISIT TO THE LITTLE GARDEN + +"SHE WAS HAVING THE MEASLES ON THE +BACK SHELF OF THE CLOSET, YOU KNOW" + +KATY WAS FEEDING GRETCHEN OUT OF A BIG +BOWL FULL OF BREAD AND MILK + +AMY WAS LEFT IN PEACE WITH HER FAWN + + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +AN UNEXPECTED GUEST. + + +The September sun was glinting cheerfully into a pretty bedroom +furnished with blue. It danced on the glossy hair and bright eyes of two +girls, who sat together hemming ruffles for a white muslin dress. The +half-finished skirt of the dress lay on the bed; and as each crisp +ruffle was completed, the girls added it to the snowy heap, which looked +like a drift of transparent clouds or a pile of foamy white-of-egg +beaten stiff enough to stand alone. + +These girls were Clover and Elsie Carr, and it was Clover's first +evening dress for which they were hemming ruffles. It was nearly two +years since a certain visit made by Johnnie to Inches Mills, of which +some of you have read in "Nine Little Goslings;" and more than three +since Clover and Katy had returned home from the boarding-school at +Hillsover. + +Clover was now eighteen. She was a very small Clover still, but it would +have been hard to find anywhere a prettier little maiden than she had +grown to be. Her skin was so exquisitely fair that her arms and wrists +and shoulders, which were round and dimpled like a baby's, seemed cut +out of daisies or white rose leaves. Her thick, brown hair waved and +coiled gracefully about her head. Her smile was peculiarly sweet; and +the eyes, always Clover's chief beauty, had still that pathetic look +which made them irresistible to tender-hearted people. + +Elsie, who adored Clover, considered her as beautiful as girls in +books, and was proud to be permitted to hem ruffles for the dress in +which she was to burst upon the world. Though, as for that, not much +"bursting" was possible in Burnet, where tea-parties of a middle-aged +description, and now and then a mild little dance, represented "gayety" +and "society." Girls "came out" very much, as the sun comes out in the +morning,--by slow degrees and gradual approaches, with no particular +one moment which could be fixed upon as having been the crisis of the +joyful event. + +"There," said Elsie, adding another ruffle to the pile on the +bed,--"there's the fifth done. It's going to be ever so pretty, I think. +I'm glad you had it all white; it's a great deal nicer." + +"Cecy wanted me to have a blue bodice and sash," said Clover, "but I +wouldn't. Then she tried to persuade me to get a long spray of pink +roses for the skirt." + +"I'm so glad you didn't! Cecy was always crazy about pink roses. I only +wonder she didn't wear them when she was married!" + +Yes; the excellent Cecy, who at thirteen had announced her intention to +devote her whole life to teaching Sunday School, visiting the poor, and +setting a good example to her more worldly contemporaries, had actually +forgotten these fine resolutions, and before she was twenty had become +the wife of Sylvester Slack, a young lawyer in a neighboring town! +Cecy's wedding and wedding-clothes, and Cecy's house-furnishing had been +the great excitement of the preceding year in Burnet; and a fresh +excitement had come since in the shape of Cecy's baby, now about two +months old, and named "Katherine Clover," after her two friends. This +made it natural that Cecy and her affairs should still be of interest in +the Carr household; and Johnnie, at the time we write of, was making her +a week's visit. + +"She _was_ rather wedded to them," went on Clover, pursuing the subject +of the pink roses. "She was almost vexed when I wouldn't buy the spray. +But it cost lots, and I didn't want it in the least, so I stood firm. +Besides, I always said that my first party dress should be plain white. +Girls in novels always wear white to their first balls; and fresh +flowers are a great deal prettier, any way, than artificial. Katy says +she'll give me some violets to wear." + +"Oh, will she? That will be lovely!" cried the adoring Elsie. "Violets +look just like you, somehow. Oh, Clover, what sort of a dress do you +think I shall have when I grow up and go to parties and things? Won't it +be awfully interesting when you and I go out to choose it?" + +Just then the noise of some one running upstairs quickly made the +sisters look up from their work. Footsteps are very significant at +times, and these footsteps suggested haste and excitement. + +Another moment, the door opened, and Katy dashed in, calling out, +"Papa!--Elsie, Clover, where's papa?" + +"He went over the river to see that son of Mr. White's who broke his +leg. Why, what's the matter?" asked Clover. + +"Is somebody hurt?" inquired Elsie, startled at Katy's agitated looks. + +"No, not hurt, but poor Mrs. Ashe is in such trouble." + +Mrs. Ashe, it should be explained, was a widow who had come to Burnet +some months previously, and had taken a pleasant house not far from the +Carrs'. She was a pretty, lady-like woman, with a particularly graceful, +appealing manner, and very fond of her one child, a little girl. Katy +and papa both took a fancy to her at once; and the families had grown +neighborly and intimate in a short time, as people occasionally do when +circumstances are favorable. + +"I'll tell you all about it in a minute," went on Katy. "But first I +must find Alexander, and send him off to meet papa and beg him to hurry +home." She went to the head of the stairs as she spoke, and called +"Debby! Debby!" Debby answered. Katy gave her direction, and then came +back again to the room where the other two were sitting. + +"Now," she said, speaking more collectedly, "I must explain as fast as I +can, for I have got to go back. You know that Mrs. Ashe's little nephew +is here for a visit, don't you?" + +"Yes, he came on Saturday." + +"Well, he was ailing all day yesterday, and to-day he is worse, and she +is afraid it is scarlet-fever. Luckily, Amy was spending the day with +the Uphams yesterday, so she scarcely saw the boy at all; and as soon +as her mother became alarmed, she sent her out into the garden to play, +and hasn't let her come indoors since, so she can't have been exposed +to any particular danger yet. I went by the house on my way down +street, and there sat the poor little thing all alone in the arbor, +with her dolly in her lap, looking so disconsolate. I spoke to her over +the fence, and Mrs. Ashe heard my voice, and opened the upstairs window +and called to me. She said Amy had never had the fever, and that the +very idea of her having it frightened her to death. She is such a +delicate child, you know." + +"Oh, poor Mrs. Ashe!" cried Clover; "I am so sorry for her! Well, Katy, +what did you do?" + +"I hope I didn't do wrong, but I offered to bring Amy here. Papa won't +object, I am almost sure." + +"Why, of course he won't. Well?" + +"I am going back now to fetch Amy. Mrs. Ashe is to let Ellen, who hasn't +been in the room with the little boy, pack a bagful of clothes and put +it out on the steps, and I shall send Alexander for it by and by. You +can't think how troubled poor Mrs. Ashe was. She couldn't help crying +when she said that Amy was all she had left in the world. And I nearly +cried too, I was so sorry for her. She was so relieved when I said that +we would take Amy. You know she has a great deal of confidence in papa." + +"Yes, and in you too. Where will you put Amy to sleep, Katy?" + +"What do you think would be best? In Dorry's room?" + +"I think she'd better come in here with you, and I'll go into Dorry's +room. She is used to sleeping with her mother, you know, and she would +be lonely if she were left to herself." + +"Perhaps that will be better, only it is a great bother for you, +Clovy dear." + +"I don't mind," responded Clover, cheerfully. "I rather like to change +about and try a new room once in a while. It's as good as going on a +journey--almost." + +She pushed aside the half-finished dress as she spoke, opened a drawer, +took out its contents, and began to carry them across the entry to +Dorry's room, doing everything with the orderly deliberation that was +characteristic of whatever Clover did. Her preparations were almost +complete before Katy returned, bringing with her little Amy Ashe. + +Amy was a tall child of eight, with a frank, happy face, and long light +hair hanging down her back. She looked like the pictures of "Alice in +Wonderland;" but just at that moment it was a very woful little Alice +indeed that she resembled, for her cheeks were stained with tears and +her eyes swollen with recent crying. + +"Why, what is the matter?" cried kind little Clover, taking Amy in her +arms, and giving her a great hug. "Aren't you glad that you are coming +to make us a visit? We are." + +"Mamma didn't kiss me for good-by," sobbed the little girl. "She didn't +come downstairs at all. She just put her head out of the window and +said, 'Good-by; Amy, be very good, and don't make Miss Carr any +trouble,' and then she went away. I never went anywhere before without +kissing mamma for good-by." + +"Mamma was afraid to kiss you for fear she might give you the fever," +explained Katy, taking her turn as a comforter. "It wasn't because she +forgot. She felt worse about it than you did, I imagine. You know the +thing she cares most for is that you shall not be ill as your cousin +Walter is. She would rather do anything than have that happen. As soon +as he gets well she will kiss you dozens of times, see if she doesn't. +Meanwhile, she says in this note that you must write her a little letter +every day, and she will hang a basket by a string out of the window, and +you and I will go and drop the letters into the basket, and stand by the +gate and see her pull it up. That will be funny, won't it? We will play +that you are my little girl, and that you have a real mamma and a +make-believe mamma." + +"Shall I sleep with you?" demanded Amy, + +"Yes, in that bed over there." + +"It's a pretty bed," pronounced Amy after examining it gravely for a +moment. "Will you tell me a story every morning?" + +[Illustration: "She was having the measles on the back shelf of the +closet, you know."] + +"If you don't wake me up too early. My stories are always sleepy +till seven o'clock. Let us see what Ellen has packed in that bag, +and then I'll give you some drawers of your own, and we will put the +things away." + +The bag was full of neat little frocks and underclothes stuffed hastily +in all together. Katy took them out, smoothing the folds, and crimping +the tumbled ruffles with her fingers. As she lifted the last skirt, Amy, +with a cry of joy, pounced on something that lay beneath it. + +"It is Maria Matilda," she said, "I'm glad of that. I thought Ellen +would forget her, and the poor child wouldn't know what to do with me +and her little sister not coming to see her for so long. She was having +the measles on the back shelf of the closet, you know, and nobody would +have heard her if she had cried ever so loud." + +"What a pretty face she has!" said Katy, taking the doll out of +Amy's hands. + +"Yes, but not so pretty as Mabel. Miss Upham says that Mabel is the +prettiest child she ever saw. Look, Miss Clover," lifting the other doll +from the table where she had laid it; "hasn't she got _sweet_ eyes? +She's older than Maria Matilda, and she knows a great deal more. She's +begun on French verbs!" + +"Not really! Which ones?" + +"Oh, only 'J'aime, tu aimes, il aime,' you know,--the same that our +class is learning at school. She hasn't tried any but that. Sometimes +she says it quite nicely, but sometimes she's very stupid, and I have to +scold her." Amy had quite recovered her spirits by this time. + +"Are these the only dolls you have?" + +"Oh, please don't call them _that!_" urged Amy. "It hurts their feelings +dreadfully. I never let them know that they are dolls. They think that +they are real children, only sometimes when they are very bad I use the +word for a punishment. I've got several other children. There's old +Ragazza. My uncle named her, and she's made of rag, but she has such bad +rheumatism that I don't play with her any longer; I just give her +medicine. Then there's Effie Deans, she's only got one leg; and Mopsa +the Fairy, she's a tiny one made out of china; and Peg of +Linkinvaddy,--but she don't count, for she's all come to pieces." + +"What very queer names your children have!" said Elsie, who had come in +during the enumeration. + +"Yes; Uncle Ned named them. He's a very funny uncle, but he's nice. He's +always so much interested in my children." + +"There's papa now!" cried Katy; and she ran downstairs to meet him. + +"Did I do right?" she asked anxiously after she had told her story. + +"Yes, my dear, perfectly right," replied Dr. Carr. "I only hope Amy was +taken away in time. I will go round at once to see Mrs. Ashe and the +boy; and, Katy, keep away from me when I come back, and keep the others +away, till I have changed my coat." + +It is odd how soon and how easily human beings accustom themselves to a +new condition of things. When sudden illness comes, or sudden sorrow, or +a house is burned up, or blown down by a tornado, there are a few hours +or days of confusion and bewilderment, and then people gather up their +wits and their courage and set to work to repair damages. They clear +away ruins, plant, rebuild, very much as ants whose hill has been +trodden upon, after running wildly about for a little while, begin all +together to reconstruct the tiny cone of sand which is so important in +their eyes. In a very short time the changes which at first seem so sad +and strange become accustomed and matter-of-course things which no +longer surprise us. + +It seemed to the Carrs after a few days as if they had always had Amy in +the house with them. Papa's daily visit to the sick-room, their +avoidance of him till after he had "changed his coat," Amy's lessons and +games of play, her dressing and undressing, the walks with the +make-believe mamma, the dropping of notes into the little basket, seemed +part of a system of things which had been going on for a long, long +time, and which everybody would miss should they suddenly stop. + +But they by no means suddenly stopped. Little Walter Ashe's case proved +to be rather a severe one; and after he had begun to mend, he caught +cold somehow and was taken worse again. There were some serious +symptoms, and for a few days Dr. Carr did not feel sure how things would +turn. He did not speak of his anxiety at home, but kept silence and a +cheerful face, as doctors know how to do. Only Katy, who was more +intimate with her father than the rest, guessed that things were going +gravely at the other house, and she was too well trained to ask +questions. The threatening symptoms passed off, however, and little +Walter slowly got better; but it was a long convalescence, and Mrs. Ashe +grew thin and pale before he began to look rosy. There was no one on +whom she could devolve the charge of the child. His mother was dead; his +father, an overworked business man, had barely time to run up once a +week to see about him; there was no one at his home but a housekeeper, +in whom Mrs. Ashe had not full confidence. So the good aunt denied +herself the sight of her own child, and devoted her strength and time to +Walter; and nearly two months passed, and still little Amy remained at +Dr. Carr's. + +She was entirely happy there. She had grown very fond of Katy, and was +perfectly at home with the others. Phil and Johnnie, who had returned +from her visit to Cecy, were by no means too old or too proud to be +play-fellows to a child of eight; and with all the older members of the +family Amy was a chosen pet. Debby baked turnovers, and twisted cinnamon +cakes into all sorts of fantastic shapes to please her; Alexander would +let her drive if she happened to sit on the front seat of the carryall; +Dr. Carr was seldom so tired that he could not tell her a story,--and +nobody told such nice stories as Dr. Carr, Amy thought; Elsie invented +all manner of charming games for the hour before bedtime; Clover made +wonderful capes and bonnets for Mabel and Maria Matilda; and Katy--Katy +did all sorts of things. + +Katy had a peculiar gift with children which is not easy to define. Some +people possess it, and some do not; it cannot be learned, it comes by +nature. She was bright and firm and equable all at once. She both amused +and influenced them. There was something about her which excited the +childish imagination, and always they felt her sympathy. Amy was a +tractable child, and intelligent beyond her age, but she was never quite +so good with any one as with Katy. She followed her about like a little +lover; she lavished upon her certain special words and caresses which +she gave to no one else; and would kneel on her lap, patting Katy's +shoulders with her soft hand, and cooing up into her face like a happy +dove, for a half-hour together. Katy laughed at these demonstrations, +but they pleased her very much. She loved to be loved, as all +affectionate people do, but most of all to be loved by a child. + +At last, the long convalescence ended, Walter was carried away to his +father, with every possible precaution against fatigue and exposure, and +an army of workpeople was turned into Mrs. Ashe's house. Plaster was +scraped and painted, wall-papers torn down, mattresses made over, and +clothing burned. At last Dr. Carr pronounced the premises in a sanitary +condition, and Mrs. Ashe sent for her little girl to come home again. + +Amy was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing her mother; but at the last +moment she clung to Katy and cried as if her heart would break. + +"I want you too," she said. "Oh, if Dr. Carr would only let you come and +live with me and mamma, I should be so happy! I shall be so lone-ly!" + +"Nonsense!" cried Clover. "Lonely with mamma, and those poor children of +yours who have been wondering all these weeks what has become of you! +They'll want a great deal of attention at first, I am sure; medicine and +new clothes and whippings,--all manner of things. You remember I +promised to make a dress for Effie Deans out of that blue and brown +plaid like Johnnie's balmoral. I mean to begin it to-morrow." + +"Oh, will you?"--forgetting her grief--"that will be lovely. The skirt +needn't be _very_ full, you know. Effie doesn't walk much, because of +only having one leg. She will be _so_ pleased, for she hasn't had a new +dress I don't know when." + +Consoled by the prospect of Effie's satisfaction, Amy departed quite +cheerfully, and Mrs. Ashe was spared the pain of seeing her only child +in tears on the first evening of their reunion. But Amy talked so +constantly of Katy, and seemed to love her so much, that it put a plan +into her mother's head which led to important results, as the next +chapter will show. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +AN INVITATION. + + +It is a curious fact, and makes life very interesting, that, generally +speaking, none of us have any expectation that things are going to +happen till the very moment when they do happen. We wake up some morning +with no idea that a great happiness is at hand, and before night it has +come, and all the world is changed for us; or we wake bright and +cheerful, with never a guess that clouds of sorrow are lowering in our +sky, to put all the sunshine out for a while, and before noon all is +dark. Nothing whispers of either the joy or the grief. No instinct bids +us to delay or to hasten the opening of the letter or telegram, or the +lifting of the latch of the door at which stands the messenger of good +or ill. And because it may be, and often is, happy tidings that come, +and joyful things which happen, each fresh day as it dawns upon us is +like an unread story, full of possible interest and adventure, to be +made ours as soon as we have cut the pages and begun to read. + +Nothing whispered to Katy Carr, as she sat at the window mending a long +rent in Johnnie's school coat, and saw Mrs. Ashe come in at the side +gate and ring the office bell, that the visit had any special +significance for her. Mrs. Ashe often did come to the office to consult +Dr. Carr. Amy might not be quite well, Katy thought, or there might be a +letter with something about Walter in it, or perhaps matters had gone +wrong at the house, where paperers and painters were still at work. So +she went calmly on with her darning, drawing the "ravelling," with which +her needle was threaded, carefully in and out, and taking nice even +stitches without one prophetic thrill or tremor; while, if only she +could have looked through the two walls and two doors which separated +the room in which she sat from the office, and have heard what Mrs. Ashe +was saying, the school coat would have been thrown to the winds, and for +all her tall stature and propriety, she would have been skipping with +delight and astonishment. For Mrs. Ashe was asking papa to let her do +the very thing of all others that she most longed to do; she was asking +him to let Katy go with her to Europe! + +"I am not very well," she told the Doctor. "I got tired and run down +while Walter was ill, and I don't seem to throw it off as I hoped I +should. I feel as if a change would do me good. Don't you think so +yourself?" + +"Yes, I do," Dr. Carr admitted. + +"This idea of Europe is not altogether a new one," continued Mrs. Ashe. +"I have always meant to go some time, and have put it off, partly +because I dreaded going alone, and didn't know anybody whom I exactly +wanted to take with me. But if you will let me have Katy, Dr. Carr, it +will settle all my difficulties. Amy loves her dearly, and so do I; she +is just the companion I need; if I have her with me, I sha'n't be afraid +of anything. I do hope you will consent." + +"How long do you mean to be away?" asked Dr. Carr, divided between +pleasure at these compliments to Katy and dismay at the idea of +losing her. + +"About a year, I think. My plans are rather vague as yet; but my idea +was to spend a few weeks in Scotland and England first,--I have some +cousins in London who will be good to us; and an old friend of mine +married a gentleman who lives on the Isle of Wight; perhaps we might go +there. Then we could cross over to France and visit Paris and a few +other places; and before it gets cold go down to Nice, and from there to +Italy. Katy would like to see Italy. Don't you think so?" + +"I dare say she would," said Dr. Carr, with a smile. "She would be a +queer girl if she didn't." + +"There is one reason why I thought Italy would be particularly pleasant +this winter for me and for her too," went on Mrs. Ashe; "and that is, +because my brother will be there. He is a lieutenant in the navy, you +know, and his ship, the 'Natchitoches,' is one of the Mediterranean +squadron. They will be in Naples by and by, and if we were there at the +same time we should have Ned to go about with; and he would take us to +the receptions on the frigate, and all that, which would be a nice +chance for Katy. Then toward spring I should like to go to Florence and +Venice, and visit the Italian lakes and Switzerland in the early summer. +But all this depends on your letting Katy go. If you decide against it, +I shall give the whole thing up. But you won't decide against +it,"--coaxingly,--"you will be kinder than that. I will take the best +possible care of her, and do all I can to make her happy, if only you +will consent to lend her to me; and I shall consider it _such_ a favor. +And it is to cost you nothing. You understand, Doctor, she is to be my +guest all through. That is a point I want to make clear in the outset; +for she goes for my sake, and I cannot take her on any other conditions. +Now, Dr. Carr, please, please! I am sure you won't deny me, when I have +so set my heart upon having her." + +Mrs. Ashe was very pretty and persuasive, but still Dr. Carr hesitated. +To send Katy for a year's pleasuring in Europe was a thing that had +never occurred to his mind as possible. The cost alone would have +prevented; for country doctors with six children are not apt to be rich +men, even in the limited and old-fashioned construction of the word +"wealth." It seemed equally impossible to let her go at Mrs. Ashe's +expense; at the same time, the chance was such a good one, and Mrs. Ashe +so much in earnest and so urgent, that it was difficult to refuse point +blank. He finally consented to take time for consideration before making +his decision. + +"I will talk it over with Katy," he said. "The child ought to have a say +in the matter; and whatever we decide, you must let me thank you in her +name as well as my own for your great kindness in proposing it." + +"Doctor, I'm not kind at all, and I don't want to be thanked. My desire +to take Katy with me to Europe is purely selfish. I am a lonely person," +she went on; "I have no mother or sister, and no cousins of my own age. +My brother's profession keeps him at sea; I scarcely ever see him. I +have no one but a couple of old aunts, too feeble in health to travel +with me or to be counted on in case of any emergency. You see, I am a +real case for pity." + +Mrs. Ashe spoke gayly, but her brown eyes were dim with tears as she +ended her little appeal. Dr. Carr, who was soft-hearted where women were +concerned, was touched. Perhaps his face showed it, for Mrs. Ashe added +in a more hopeful tone,-- + +"But I won't tease any more. I know you will not refuse me unless you +think it right and necessary; and," she continued mischievously, "I have +great faith in Katy as an ally. I am pretty sure that she will say that +she wants to go." + +And indeed Katy's cry of delight when the plan was proposed to her said +that sufficiently, without need of further explanation. To go to Europe +for a year with Mrs. Ashe and Amy seemed simply too delightful to be +true. All the things she had heard about and read about--cathedrals, +pictures, Alpine peaks, famous places, famous people--came rushing into +her mind in a sort of bewildering tide as dazzling as it was +overwhelming. Dr. Carr's objections, his reluctance to part with her, +melted before the radiance of her satisfaction. He had no idea that +Katy would care so much about it. After all, it was a great +chance,--perhaps the only one of the sort that she would ever have. +Mrs. Ashe could well afford to give Katy this treat, he knew; and it +was quite true what she said, that it was a favor to her as well as to +Katy. This train of reasoning led to its natural results. Dr. Carr +began to waver in his mind. + +But, the first excitement over, Katy's second thoughts were more sober +ones. How could papa manage without her for a whole year, she asked +herself. He would miss her, she well knew, and might not the charge of +the house be too much for Clover? The preserves were almost all made, +that was one comfort; but there were the winter clothes to be seen to; +Dorry needed new flannels, Elsie's dresses must be altered over for +Johnnie,--there were cucumbers to pickle, the coal to order! A host of +housewifely cares began to troop through Katy's mind, and a little +pucker came into her forehead, and a worried look across the face which +had been so bright a few minutes before. Strange to say, it was that +little pucker and the look of worry which decided Dr. Carr. + +"She is only twenty-one," he reflected; "hardly out of childhood. I +don't want her to settle into an anxious, drudging state and lose her +youth with caring for us all. She shall go; though how we are to manage +without her I don't see. Little Clover will have to come to the fore, +and show what sort of stuff there is in her." + +"Little Clover" came gallantly "to the fore" when the first shock of +surprise was over, and she had relieved her mind with one long private +cry over having to do without Katy for a year. Then she wiped her eyes, +and began to revel unselfishly in the idea of her sister's having so +great a treat. Anything and everything seemed possible to secure it for +her; and she made light of all Katy's many anxieties and apprehensions. + +"My dear child, I know a flannel undershirt when I see one, just as well +as you do," she declared. "Tucks in Johnnie's dress, forsooth! why, of +course. Ripping out a tuck doesn't require any superhuman ingenuity! +Give me your scissors, and I'll show you at once. Quince marmalade? +Debby can make that. Hers is about as good as yours; and if it wasn't, +what should we care, as long as you are ascending Mont Blanc, and +hob-nobbing with Michael Angelo and the crowned heads of Europe? I'll +make the spiced peaches! I'll order the kindling! And if there ever +comes a time when I feel lost and can't manage without advice, I'll go +across to Mrs. Hall. Don't worry about us. We shall get on happily and +easily; in fact, I shouldn't be surprised if I developed such a turn for +housekeeping, that when you come back the family refused to change, and +you had just to sit for the rest of your life and twirl your thumbs and +watch me do it! Wouldn't that be fine?" and Clover laughed merrily. "So, +Katy darling, cast that shadow from your brow, and look as a girl ought +to look who's going to Europe. Why, if it were I who were going, I +should simply stand on my head every moment of the time!" + +"Not a very convenient position for packing," said Katy, smiling. + +"Yes, it is, if you just turn your trunk upside down! When I think of +all the delightful things you are going to do, I can hardly sit still. I +_love_ Mrs. Ashe for inviting you." + +"So do I," said Katy, soberly. "It was the kindest thing! I can't think +why she did it." + +"Well, I can," replied Clover, always ready to defend Katy even against +herself. "She did it because she wanted you, and she wanted you because +you are the dearest old thing in the world, and the nicest to have +about. You needn't say you're not, for you are! Now, Katy, don't waste +another thought on such miserable things as pickles and undershirts. We +shall get along perfectly well, I do assure you. Just fix your mind +instead on the dome of St. Peter's, or try to fancy how you'll feel the +first time you step into a gondola or see the Mediterranean. There will +be a moment! I feel a forty-horse power of housekeeping developing +within me; and what fun it will be to get your letters! We shall fetch +out the Encyclopaedia and the big Atlas and the 'History of Modern +Europe,' and read all about everything you see and all the places you +go to; and it will be as good as a lesson in geography and history and +political economy all combined, only a great deal more interesting! We +shall stick out all over with knowledge before you come back; and this +makes it a plain duty to go, if it were only for our sakes." With these +zealous promises, Katy was forced to be content. Indeed, contentment +was not difficult with such a prospect of delight before her. When once +her little anxieties had been laid aside, the idea of the coming +journey grew in pleasantness every moment. Night after night she and +papa and the children pored over maps and made out schemes for travel +and sight-seeing, every one of which was likely to be discarded as soon +as the real journey began. But they didn't know that, and it made no +real difference. Such schemes are the preliminary joys of travel, and +it doesn't signify that they come to nothing after they have served +their purpose. + +Katy learned a great deal while thus talking over what she was to see +and do. She read every scrap she could lay her hand on which related to +Rome or Florence or Venice or London. The driest details had a charm for +her now that she was likely to see the real places. She went about with +scraps of paper in her pocket, on which were written such things as +these: "Forum. When built? By whom built? More than one?" "What does +_Cenacola_ mean?" "Cecilia Metella. Who was she?" "Find out about Saint +Catherine of Siena." "Who was Beatrice Cenci?" How she wished that she +had studied harder and more carefully before this wonderful chance came +to her. People always wish this when they are starting for Europe; and +they wish it more and more after they get there, and realize of what +value exact ideas and information and a fuller knowledge of the foreign +languages are to all travellers; how they add to the charm of everything +seen, and enhance the ease of everything done. + +All Burnet took an interest in Katy's plans, and almost everybody had +some sort of advice or help, or some little gift to offer. Old Mrs. +Worrett, who, though fatter than ever, still retained the power of +locomotion, drove in from Conic Section in her roomy carryall with the +present of a rather obsolete copy of "Murray's Guide," in faded red +covers, which her father had used in his youth, and which she was sure +Katy would find convenient; also a bottle of Brown's Jamaica Ginger, in +case of sea-sickness. Debby's sister-in-law brought a bundle of dried +chamomile for the same purpose. Some one had told her it was the +"handiest thing in the world to take along with you on them steamboats." +Cecy sent a wonderful old-gold and scarlet contrivance to hang on the +wall of the stateroom. There were pockets for watches, and pockets for +medicines, and pockets for handkerchief and hairpins,--in short, there +were pockets for everything; besides a pincushion with "Bon Voyage" in +rows of shining pins, a bottle of eau-de-cologne, a cake of soap, and a +hammer and tacks to nail the whole up with. Mrs. Hall's gift was a warm +and very pretty woollen wrapper of dark blue flannel, with a pair of +soft knitted slippers to match. Old Mr. Worrett sent a note of advice, +recommending Katy to take a quinine pill every day that she was away, +never to stay out late, because the dews "over there" were said to be +unwholesome, and on no account to drink a drop of water which had not +been boiled. + +From Cousin Helen came a delightful travelling-bag, light and strong at +once, and fitted up with all manner of nice little conveniences. Miss +Inches sent a "History of Europe" in five fat volumes, which was so +heavy that it had to be left at home. In fact, a good many of Katy's +presents had to be left at home, including a bronze paper-weight in the +shape of a griffin, a large pair of brass screw candlesticks, and an +ormolu inkstand with a pen-rest attached, which weighed at least a pound +and a half. These Katy laid aside to enjoy after her return. Mrs. Ashe +and Cousin Helen had both warned her of the inconvenient consequences of +weight in baggage; and by their advice she had limited herself to a +single trunk of moderate size, besides a little flat valise for use in +her stateroom. + +Clover's gift was a set of blank books for notes, journals, etc. In one +of these, Katy made out a list of "Things I must see," "Things I must +do," "Things I would like to see," "Things I would like to do." Another +she devoted to various good shopping addresses which had been given her; +for though she did not expect to do any shopping herself, she thought +Mrs. Ashe might find them useful. Katy's ideas were still so simple and +unworldly, and her experience of life so small, that it had not occurred +to her how very tantalizing it might be to stand in front of shop +windows full of delightful things and not be able to buy any of them. +She was accordingly overpowered with surprise, gratitude, and the sense +of sudden wealth, when about a week before the start her father gave her +three little thin strips of paper, which he told her were circular +notes, and worth a hundred dollars apiece. He also gave her five English +sovereigns. + +"Those are for immediate use," he said. "Put the notes away carefully, +and don't lose them. You had better have them cashed one at a time as +you require them. Mrs. Ashe will explain how. You will need a gown or so +before you come back, and you'll want to buy some photographs and so on, +and there will be fees--" + +"But, papa," protested Katy, opening wide her candid eyes, "I didn't +expect you to give me any money, and I'm afraid you are giving me too +much. Do you think you can afford it? Really and truly, I don't want to +buy things. I shall see everything, you know, and that's enough." + +Her father only laughed. + +"You'll be wiser and greedier before the year is out, my dear," he +replied. "Three hundred dollars won't go far, as you'll find. But it's +all I can spare, and I trust you to keep within it, and not come home +with any long bills for me to pay." + +"Papa! I should think not!" cried Katy, with unsophisticated horror. + +One very interesting thing was to happen before they sailed, the thought +of which helped both Katy and Clover through the last hard days, when +the preparations were nearly complete, and the family had leisure to +feel dull and out of spirits. Katy was to make Rose Red a visit. + +Rose had by no means been idle during the three years and a half which +had elapsed since they all parted at Hillsover, and during which the +girls had not seen her. In fact, she had made more out of the time than +any of the rest of them, for she had been engaged for eighteen months, +had been married, and was now keeping house near Boston with a little +Rose of her own, who, she wrote to Clover, was a perfect angel, and more +delicious than words could say! Mrs. Ashe had taken passage in the +"Spartacus," sailing from Boston; and it was arranged that Katy should +spend the last two days before sailing, with Rose, while Mrs. Ashe and +Amy visited an old aunt in Hingham. To see Rose in her own home, and +Rose's husband, and Rose's baby, was only next in interest to seeing +Europe. None of the changes in her lot seemed to have changed her +particularly, to judge by the letter she sent in reply to Katy's +announcing her plans, which letter ran as follows:-- + +"LONGWOOD, September 20. + +"My dearest child,--Your note made me dance with delight. I stood on my +head waving my heels wildly to the breeze till Deniston thought I must +be taken suddenly mad; but when I explained he did the same. It is too +enchanting, the whole of it. I put it at the head of all the nice things +that ever happened, except my baby. Write the moment you get this by +what train you expect to reach Boston, and when you roll into the +station you will behold two forms, one tall and stalwart, the other +short and fatsome, waiting for you. They will be those of Deniston and +myself. Deniston is not beautiful, but he is good, and he is prepared to +_adore_ you. The baby is both good and beautiful, and you will adore +her. I am neither; but you know all about me, and I always did adore you +and always shall. I am going out this moment to the butcher's to order a +calf fatted for your special behoof; and he shall be slain and made into +cutlets the moment I hear from you. My funny little house, which is +quite a dear little house too, assumes a new interest in my eyes from +the fact that you so soon are to see it. It is somewhat queer, as you +might know my house would be; but I think you will like it. + +"I saw Silvery Mary the other day and told her you were coming. She is +the same mouse as ever. I shall ask her and some of the other girls to +come out to lunch on one of your days. Good-by, with a hundred and fifty +kisses to Clovy and the rest. + +"Your loving + +"ROSE RED." + +"She never signs herself Browne, I observe," said Clover, as she +finished the letter. + +"Oh, Rose Red Browne would sound too funny. Rose Red she must stay till +the end of the chapter; no other name could suit her half so well, and I +can't imagine her being called anything else. What fun it will be to see +her and little Rose!" + +"And Deniston Browne," put in Clover. + +"Somehow I find it rather hard to take in the fact that there is a +Deniston Browne," observed Katy. + +"It will be easier after you have seen him, perhaps." + +The last day came, as last days will. Katy's trunk, most carefully +and exactly packed by the united efforts of the family, stood in the +hall, locked and strapped, not to be opened again till the party +reached London. This fact gave it a certain awful interest in the +eyes of Phil and Johnnie, and even Elsie gazed upon it with respect. +The little valise was also ready; and Dorry, the neat-handed, had +painted a red star on both ends of both it and the trunk, that they +might be easily picked from among a heap of luggage. He now proceeded +to prepare and paste on two square cards, labelled respectively, +"Hold" and "State-room." Mrs. Hall had told them that this was the +correct thing to do. + +Mrs. Ashe had been full of business likewise in putting her house to +rights for a family who had rented it for the time of her absence, and +Katy and Clover had taken a good many hours from their own preparations +to help her. All was done at last; and one bright morning in October, +Katy stood on the wharf with her family about her, and a lump in her +throat which made it difficult to speak to any of them. She stood so +very still and said so very little, that a bystander not acquainted with +the circumstances might have dubbed her "unfeeling;" while the fact was +that she was feeling too much! + +The first bell rang. Katy kissed everybody quietly and went on board +with her father. Her parting from him, hardest of all, took place in the +midst of a crowd of people; then he had to leave her, and as the wheels +began to revolve she went out on the side deck to have a last glimpse of +the home faces. There they were: Elsie crying tumultuously, with her +head on papa's coat-sleeve; John laughing, or trying to laugh, with big +tears running down her cheeks the while; and brave little Clover waving +her handkerchief encouragingly, but with a very sober look on her face. +Katy's heart went out to the little group with a sudden passion of +regret and yearning. Why had she said she would go? What was all Europe +in comparison with what she was leaving? Life was so short, how could +she take a whole year out of it to spend away from the people she loved +best? If it had been left to her to choose, I think she would have flown +back to the shore then and there, and given up the journey, I also think +she would have been heartily sorry a little later, had she done so. + +But it was not left for her to choose. Already the throb of the engines +was growing more regular and the distance widening between the great +boat and the wharf. Gradually the dear faces faded into distance; and +after watching till the flutter of Clover's handkerchief became an +undistinguishable speck, Katy went to the cabin with a heavy heart. But +there were Mrs. Ashe and Amy, inclined to be homesick also, and in need +of cheering; and Katy, as she tried to brighten them, gradually grew +bright herself, and recovered her hopeful spirits. Burnet pulled less +strongly as it got farther away, and Europe beckoned more brilliantly +now that they were fairly embarked on their journey. The sun shone, the +lake was a beautiful, dazzling blue, and Katy said to herself, "After +all, a year is not very long, and how happy I am going to be!" + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +ROSE AND ROSEBUD. + + +Thirty-six hours later the Albany train, running smoothly across the +green levels beyond the Mill Dam, brought the travellers to Boston. + +Katy looked eagerly from the window for her first glimpse of the city of +which she had heard so much. "Dear little Boston! How nice it is to see +it again!" she heard a lady behind her say; but why it should be called +"little Boston" she could not imagine. Seen from the train, it looked +large, imposing, and very picturesque, after flat Burnet with its one +bank down to the edge of the lake. She studied the towers, steeples, and +red roofs crowding each other up the slopes of the Tri-Mountain, and the +big State House dome crowning all, and made up her mind that she liked +the looks of it better than any other city she had ever seen. + +The train slackened its speed, ran for a few moments between rows of +tall, shabby brick walls, and with a long, final screech of its whistle +came to halt in the station-house. Every one made a simultaneous rush +for the door; and Katy and Mrs. Ashe, waiting to collect their books and +bags, found themselves wedged into their seats and unable to get out. It +was a confusing moment, and not comfortable; such moments never are. + +But the discomfort brightened into a sense of relief as, looking out of +the window, Katy caught sight of a face exactly opposite, which had +evidently caught sight of her,--a fresh, pretty face, with light, waving +hair, pink cheeks all a-dimple, and eyes which shone with laughter and +welcome. It was Rose herself, not a bit changed during the years since +they parted. A tall young man stood beside her, who must, of course, be +her husband, Deniston Browne. + +"There is Rose Red," cried Katy to Mrs. Ashe. "Oh, doesn't she look dear +and natural? Do wait and let me introduce you. I want you to know her." + +But the train had come in a little behind time, and Mrs. Ashe was +afraid of missing the Hingham boat; so she only took a hasty peep +from the window at Rose, pronounced her to be charming-looking, +kissed Katy hurriedly, reminded her that they must be on the steamer +punctually at twelve o'clock the following Saturday, and was gone, +with Amy beside her; so that Katy, following last of all the +slow-moving line of passengers, stepped all alone down from the +platform into the arms of Rose Red. + +"You darling!" was Rose's first greeting. "I began to think you meant +to spend the night in the car, you were so long in getting out. Well, +how perfectly lovely this is! Deniston, here is Katy; Katy, this is +my husband." + +Rose looked about fifteen as she spoke, and so absurdly young to have a +"husband," that Katy could not help laughing as she shook hands with +"Deniston;" and his own eyes twinkled with fun and evident recognition +of the same joke. He was a tall young man, with a pleasant, "steady" +face, and seemed to be infinitely amused, in a quiet way, with +everything which his wife said and did. + +"Let us make haste and get out of this hole," went on Rose. "I can +scarcely see for the smoke. Deniston, dear, please find the cab, and +have Katy's luggage put on it. I am wild to get her home, and exhibit +baby before she chews up her new sash or does something else that is +dreadful, to spoil her looks. I left her sitting in state, Katy, with +all her best clothes on, waiting to be made known to you." + +"My large trunk is to go straight to the steamer," explained Katy, as +she gave her checks to Mr. Browne. "I only want the little one taken out +to Longwood, please." + +"Now, this is cosey," remarked Rose, when they were seated in the cab +with Katy's bag at their feet. "Deniston, my love, I wish you were going +out with us. There's a nice little bench here all ready and vacant, +which is just suited to a man of your inches. You won't? Well, come in +the early train, then. Don't forget.--Now, isn't he just as nice as I +told you he was?" she demanded, the moment the cab began to move. + +"He looks very nice indeed, as far as I can judge in three minutes and +a quarter." + +"My dear, it ought not to take anybody of ordinary discernment a minute +and a quarter to perceive that he is simply the dearest fellow that ever +lived," said Rose. "I discovered it three seconds after I first beheld +him, and was desperately in love with him before he had fairly finished +his first bow after introduction." + +"And was he equally prompt?" asked Katy. + +"He says so," replied Rose, with a pretty blush. "But then, you know, he +could hardly say less after such a frank confession on my part. It is no +more than decent of him to make believe, even if it is not true. Now, +Katy, look at Boston, and see if you don't _love_ it!" + +The cab had now turned into Boylston Street; and on the right hand lay +the Common, green as summer after the autumn rains, with the elm arches +leafy still. Long, slant beams of afternoon sun were filtering through +the boughs and falling across the turf and the paths, where people were +walking and sitting, and children and babies playing together. It was a +delightful scene; and Katy received an impression of space and cheer and +air and freshness, which ever after was associated with her recollection +of Boston. + +Rose was quite satisfied with her raptures as they drove through Charles +Street, between the Common and the Public Garden, all ablaze with autumn +flowers, and down the length of Beacon Street with the blue bay shining +between the handsome houses on the water side. Every vestibule and +bay-window was gay with potted plants and flower-boxes; and a concourse +of happy-looking people, on foot, on horseback, and in carriages, was +surging to and fro like an equal, prosperous tide, while the sunlight +glorified all. + +"'Boston shows a soft Venetian side,'" quoted Katy, after a while. "I +know now what Mr. Lowell meant when he wrote that. I don't believe there +is a more beautiful place in the world." + +"Why, of course there isn't," retorted Rose, who was a most devoted +little Bostonian, in spite of the fact that she had lived in Washington +nearly all her life. "I've not seen much beside, to be sure, but that is +no matter; I know it is true. It is the dream of my life to come into +the city to live. I don't care what part I live in,--West End, South +End, North End; it's all one to me, so long as it is Boston!" + +"But don't you like Longwood?" asked Katy, looking out admiringly at the +pretty places set amid vines and shrubberies, which they were now +passing. "It looks so very pretty and pleasant." + +"Yes, it's well enough for any one who has a taste for natural +beauties," replied Rose. "I haven't; I never had. There is nothing I +hate so much as Nature! I'm a born cockney. I'd rather live in one room +over Jordan and Marsh's, and see the world wag past, than be the owner +of the most romantic villa that ever was built, I don't care where it +may be situated." + +The cab now turned in at a gate and followed a curving drive bordered +with trees to a pretty stone house with a porch embowered with Virginia +creepers, before which it stopped. + +"Here we are!" cried Rose, springing out. "Now, Katy, you mustn't even +take time to sit down before I show you the dearest baby that ever was +sent to this sinful earth. Here, let me take your bag; come straight +upstairs, and I will exhibit her to you." + +They ran up accordingly, and Rose took Katy into a large sunny nursery, +where, tied with pink ribbon into a little basket-chair and watched over +by a pretty young nurse, sat a dear, fat, fair baby, so exactly like +Rose in miniature that no one could possibly have mistaken the +relationship. The baby began to laugh and coo as soon as it caught sight +of its gay little mother, and exhibited just such another dimple as +hers, in the middle of a pink cheek. Katy was enchanted. + +"Oh, you darling!" she said. "Would she come to me, do you think, Rose?" + +"Why, of course she shall," replied Rose, picking up the baby as if she +had been a pillow, and stuffing her into Katy's arms head first. "Now, +just look at her, and tell me if ever you saw anything so enchanting in +the whole course of your life before? Isn't she big? Isn't she +beautiful? Isn't she good? Just see her little hands and her hair! She +never cries except when it is clearly her duty to cry. See her turn her +head to look at me! Oh, you angel!" And seizing the long-suffering baby, +she smothered it with kisses. "I never, never, never did see anything so +sweet. Smell her, Katy! Doesn't she smell like heaven?" + +Little Rose was indeed a delicious baby, all dimples and good-humor and +violet-powder, with a skin as soft as a lily's leaf, and a happy +capacity for allowing herself to be petted and cuddled without +remonstrance. Katy wanted to hold her all the time; but this Rose would +by no means permit; in fact, I may as well say at once that the two +girls spent a great part of their time during the visit in fighting for +the possession of the baby, who looked on at the struggle, and smiled on +the victor, whichever it happened to be, with all the philosophic +composure of Helen of Troy. She was so soft and sunny and equable, that +it was no more trouble to care for and amuse her than if she had been a +bird or a kitten; and, as Rose remarked, it was "ten times better fun." + +"I was never allowed as much doll as I wanted in my infancy," she said. +"I suppose I tore them to pieces too soon; and they couldn't give me tin +ones to play with, as they did wash-bowls when I broke the china ones." + +"Were you such a very bad child?" asked Katy. + +"Oh, utterly depraved, I believe. You wouldn't think so now, would you? +I recollect some dreadful occasions at school. Once I had my head pinned +up in my apron because I _would_ make faces at the other scholars, and +they laughed; but I promptly bit a bay-window through the apron, and ran +my tongue out of it till they laughed worse than ever. The teacher used +to send me home with notes fastened to my pinafore with things like this +written in them: 'Little Frisk has been more troublesome than usual +to-day. She has pinched all the younger children, and bent the bonnets +of all the older ones. We hope to see an amendment soon, or we do not +know what we shall do.'" + +"Why did they call you Little Frisk?" inquired Katy, after she had +recovered from the laugh which Rose's reminiscences called forth. + +"It was a term of endearment, I suppose; but somehow my family never +seemed to enjoy it as they ought. I cannot understand," she went on +reflectively, "why I had not sense enough to suppress those awful +little notes. It would have been so easy to lose them on the way home, +but somehow it never occurred to me. Little Rose will be wiser than +that; won't you, my angel? She will tear up the horrid notes--mammy +will show her how!" + +All the time that Katy was washing her face and brushing the dust of the +railway from her dress, Rose sat by with the little Rose in her lap, +entertaining her thus. When she was ready, the droll little mamma tucked +her baby under her arm and led the way downstairs to a large square +parlor with a bay-window, through which the westering sun was shining. +It was a pretty room, and had a flavor about it "just like Rose," Katy +declared. No one else would have hung the pictures or looped back the +curtains in exactly that way, or have hit upon the happy device of +filling the grate with a great bunch of marigolds, pale brown, golden, +and orange, to simulate the fire, which would have been quite too warm +on so mild an evening. Morris papers and chintzes and "artistic" shades +of color were in their infancy at that date; but Rose's taste was in +advance of her time, and with a foreshadowing of the coming "reaction," +she had chosen a "greenery, yallery" paper for her walls, against which +hung various articles which looked a great deal queerer then than they +would to-day. There was a mandolin, picked up at some Eastern sale, a +warming-pan in shining brass from her mother's attic, two old samplers +worked in faded silks, and a quantity of gayly tinted Japanese fans and +embroideries. She had also begged from an old aunt at Beverly Farms a +couple of droll little armchairs in white painted wood, with covers of +antique needle-work. One had "Chit" embroidered on the middle of its +cushion; the other, "Chat." These stood suggestively at the corners of +the hearth. + +"Now, Katy," said Rose, seating herself in "Chit," "pull up 'Chat' and +let us begin." + +So they did begin, and went on, interrupted only by Baby Rose's coos and +splutters, till the dusk fell, till appetizing smells floated through +from the rear of the house, and the click of a latch-key announced Mr. +Browne, come home just in time for dinner. + +The two days' visit went only too quickly. There is nothing more +fascinating to a girl than the menage of a young couple of her own age. +It is a sort of playing at real life without the cares and the sense of +responsibility that real life is sure to bring. Rose was an adventurous +housekeeper. She was still new to the position, she found it very +entertaining, and she delighted in experiments of all sorts. If they +turned out well, it was good fun; if not, that was funnier still! Her +husband, for all his serious manner, had a real boy's love of a lark, +and he aided and abetted her in all sorts of whimsical devices. They +owned a dog who was only less dear than the baby, a cat only less dear +than the dog, a parrot whose education required constant supervision, +and a hutch of ring-doves whose melancholy little "whuddering" coos were +the delight of Rose the less. The house seemed astir with young life all +over. The only elderly thing in it was the cook, who had the reputation +of a dreadful temper; only, unfortunately, Rose made her laugh so much +that she never found time to be cross. + +Katy felt quite an old, experienced person amid all this movement and +liveliness and cheer. It seemed to her that nobody in the world could +possibly be having such a good time as Rose; but Rose did not take the +same view of the situation. + +"It's all very well now," she said, "while the warm weather lasts; but +in winter Longwood is simply grewsome. The wind never stops blowing day +nor night. It howls and it roars and it screams, till I feel as if every +nerve in my body were on the point of snapping in two. And the snow, +ugh! And the wind, ugh! And burglars! Every night of our lives they +come,--or I think they come,--and I lie awake and hear them sharpening +their tools and forcing the locks and murdering the cook and kidnapping +Baby, till I long to die, and have done with them forever! Oh, Nature is +the most unpleasant thing!" + +"Burglars are not Nature," objected Katy. + +"What are they, then? Art? High Art? Well, whatever they are, I do not +like them. Oh, if ever the happy day comes when Deniston consents to +move into town, I never wish to set my eyes on the country again as long +as I live, unless--well, yes, I should like to come out just once more +in the horse-cars and _kick_ that elm-tree by the fence! The number of +times that I have lain awake at night listening to its creaking!" + +"You might kick it without waiting to have a house in town." + +"Oh, I shouldn't dare as long as we are living here! You never know what +Nature may do. She has ways of her own of getting even with people," +remarked her friend, solemnly. + +No time must be lost in showing Boston to Katy, Rose said. So the +morning after her arrival she was taken in bright and early to see the +sights. There were not quite so many sights to be seen then as there are +today. The Art Museum had not got much above its foundations; the new +Trinity Church was still in the future; but the big organ and the bronze +statue of Beethoven were in their glory, and every day at high noon a +small straggling audience wandered into Music Hall to hear the +instrument played. To this extempore concert Katy was taken, and to +Faneuil Hall and the Athenaeum, to Doll and Richards's, where was an +exhibition of pictures, to the Granary Graveyard, and the Old South. +Then the girls did a little shopping; and by that time they were quite +tired enough to make the idea of luncheon agreeable, so they took the +path across the Common to the Joy Street Mall. + +Katy was charmed by all she had seen. The delightful nearness of so many +interesting things surprised her. She perceived what is one of Boston's +chief charms,--that the Common and its surrounding streets make a +natural centre and rallying-point for the whole city; as the heart is +the centre of the body and keeps up a quick correspondence and regulates +the life of all its extremities. The stately old houses on Beacon +Street, with their rounded fronts, deep window-casements, and here and +there a mauve or a lilac pane set in the sashes, took her fancy greatly; +and so did the State House, whose situation made it sufficiently +imposing, even before the gilding of the dome. + +Up the steep steps of the Joy Street Mall they went, to the house on Mt. +Vernon Street which the Reddings had taken on their return from +Washington nearly three years before. Rose had previously shown Katy the +site of the old family house on Summer Street, where she was born, now +given over wholly to warehouses and shops. Their present residence was +one of those wide old-fashioned brick houses on the crest of the hill, +whose upper windows command the view across to the Boston Highlands; in +the rear was a spacious yard, almost large enough to be called a garden, +walled in with ivies and grapevines, under which were long beds full of +roses and chrysanthemums and marigolds and mignonette. + +Rose carried a latch-key in her pocket, which she said had been one of +her wedding-gifts; with this she unlocked the front door and let Katy +into a roomy white-painted hall. + +"We will go straight through to the back steps," she said. "Mamma is +sure to be sitting there; she always sits there till the first frost; +she says it makes her think of the country. How different people are! I +don't want to think of the country, but I'm never allowed to forget it +for a moment. Mamma is so fond of those steps and the garden." + +There, to be sure, Mrs. Redding was found sitting in a wicker-work +chair under the shade of the grapevines, with a big basket of mending +at her side. It looked so homely and country-like to find a person +thus occupied in the middle of a busy city, that Katy's heart warmed +to her at once. + +Mrs. Redding was a fair little woman, scarcely taller than Rose and very +much like her. She gave Katy a kind welcome. + +"You do not seem like a stranger," she said, "Rose has told us so much +about you and your sister. Sylvia will be very disappointed not to see +you. She went off to make some visits when we broke up in the country, +and is not to be home for three weeks yet." + +Katy was disappointed, too, for she had heard a great deal about Sylvia +and had wished very much to meet her. She was shown her picture, from +which she gathered that she did not look in the least like Rose; for +though equally fair, her fairness was of the tall aquiline type, quite +different from Rose's dimpled prettiness. In fact, Rose resembled her +mother, and Sylvia her father; they were only alike in little +peculiarities of voice and manner, of which a portrait did not enable +Katy to judge. + +The two girls had a cosey little luncheon with Mrs. Redding, after which +Rose carried Katy off to see the house and everything in it which was in +any way connected with her own personal history,--the room where she +used to sleep, the high-chair in which she sat as a baby and which was +presently to be made over to little Rose, the sofa where Deniston +offered himself, and the exact spot on the carpet on which she had stood +while they were being married! Last of all,-- + +"Now you shall see the best and dearest thing in the whole house," +she said, opening the door of a room in the second story.-- +"Grandmamma, here is my friend Katy Carr, whom you have so often +heard me tell about." + +It was a large pleasant room, with a little wood-fire blazing in a +grate, by which, in an arm-chair full of cushions, with a +Solitaire-board on a little table beside her, sat a sweet old lady. +This was Rose's father's mother. She was nearly eighty; but she was +beautiful still, and her manner had a gracious old-fashioned courtesy +which was full of charm. She had been thrown from a carriage the year +before, and had never since been able to come downstairs or to mingle +in the family life. + +"They come to me instead," she told Katy. "There is no lack of pleasant +company," she added; "every one is very good to me. I have a reader for +two hours a day, and I read to myself a little, and play Patience and +Solitaire, and never lack entertainment." + +There was something restful in the sight of such a lovely specimen of +old age. Katy realized, as she looked at her, what a loss it had been +to her own life that she had never known either of her grandparents. +She sat and gazed at old Mrs. Redding with a mixture of regret and +fascination. She longed to hold her hand, and kiss her, and play with +her beautiful silvery hair, as Rose did. Rose was evidently the old +lady's peculiar darling. They were on the most intimate terms; and +Rose dimpled and twinkled, and made saucy speeches, and told all her +little adventures and the baby's achievements, and made jests, and +talked nonsense as freely as to a person of her own age. It was a +delightful relation. + +"Grandmamma has taken a fancy to you, I can see," she told Katy, as they +drove back to Longwood. "She always wants to know my friends; and she +has her own opinions about them, I can tell you." + +"Do you really think she liked me?" said Katy, warmly. "I am so glad +if she did, for I _loved_ her. I never saw a really beautiful old +person before." + +"Oh, there's nobody like her," rejoined Rose. "I can't imagine what it +would be not to have her." Her merry little face was quite sad and +serious as she spoke. "I wish she were not so old," she added with a +sigh. "If we could only put her back twenty years! Then, perhaps, she +would live as long as I do." + +But, alas! there is no putting back the hands on the dial of time, no +matter how much we may desire it. + +The second day of Katy's visit was devoted to the luncheon-party of +which Rose had written in her letter, and which was meant to be a +reunion or "side chapter" of the S.S.U.C. Rose had asked every old +Hillsover girl who was within reach. There was Mary Silver, of course, +and Esther Dearborn, both of whom lived in Boston; and by good luck +Alice Gibbons happened to be making Esther a visit, and Ellen Gray came +in from Waltham, where her father had recently been settled over a +parish, so that all together they made six of the original nine of the +society; and Quaker Row itself never heard a merrier confusion of +tongues than resounded through Rose's pretty parlor for the first hour +after the arrival of the guests. + +There was everybody to ask after, and everything to tell. The girls all +seemed wonderfully unchanged to Katy, but they professed to find her +very grown up and dignified. + +"I wonder if I am," she said. "Clover never told me so. But perhaps she +has grown dignified too." + +"Nonsense!" cried Rose; "Clover could no more be dignified than my baby +could. Mary Silver, give me that child this moment! I never saw such a +greedy thing as you are; you have kept her to yourself at least a +quarter of an hour, and it isn't fair." + +"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Mary, laughing and covering her mouth with +her hand exactly in her old, shy, half-frightened way. + +"We only need Mrs. Nipson to make our little party complete," went on +Rose, "or dear Miss Jane! What has become of Miss Jane, by the way? Do +any of you know?" + +"Oh, she is still teaching at Hillsover and waiting for her missionary. +He has never come back. Berry Searles says that when he goes out to walk +he always walks away from the United States, for fear of diminishing the +distance between them." + +"What a shame!" said Katy, though she could not help laughing. "Miss +Jane was really quite nice,--no, not nice exactly, but she had good +things about her." + +"Had she!" remarked Rose, satirically. "I never observed them. It +required eyes like yours, real 'double million magnifying-glasses of +h'extra power,' to find them out. She was all teeth and talons as far +as I was concerned; but I think she really did have a softish spot in +her old heart for you, Katy, and it's the only good thing I ever knew +about her." + +"What has become of Lilly Page?" asked Ellen. + +"She's in Europe with her mother. I dare say you'll meet, Katy, and what +a pleasure that will be! And have you heard about Bella? she's teaching +school in the Indian Territory. Just fancy that scrap teaching school!" + +"Isn't it dangerous?" asked Mary Silver. + +"Dangerous? How? To her scholars, do you mean? Oh, the Indians! Well, +her scalp will be easy to identify if she has adhered to her favorite +pomatum; that's one comfort," put in naughty Rose. + +It was a merry luncheon indeed, as little Rose seemed to think, for she +laughed and cooed incessantly. The girls were enchanted with her, and +voted her by acclamation an honorary member of the S.S.U.C. Her health +was drunk in Apollinaris water with all the honors, and Rose returned +thanks in a droll speech. The friends told each other their histories +for the past three years; but it was curious how little, on the whole, +most of them had to tell. Though, perhaps, that was because they did not +tell all; for Alice Gibbons confided to Katy in a whisper that she +strongly suspected Esther of being engaged, and at the same moment Ellen +Gray was convulsing Rose by the intelligence that a theological student +from Andover was "very attentive" to Mary Silver. + +"My dear, I don't believe it," Rose said, "not even a theological +student would dare! and if he did, I am quite sure Mary would consider +it most improper. You must be mistaken, Ellen." + +"No, I'm not mistaken; for the theological student is my second cousin, +and his sister told me all about it. They are not engaged exactly, but +she hasn't said no; so he hopes she will say yes." + +"Oh, she'll never say no; but then she will never say yes, either. He +would better take silence as consent! Well, I never did think I should +live to see Silvery Mary married. I should as soon have expected to find +the Thirty-nine Articles engaged in a flirtation. She's a dear old +thing, though, and as good as gold; and I shall consider your second +cousin a lucky man if he persuades her." + +"I wonder where we shall all be when you come back, Katy," said Esther +Dearborn as they parted at the gate. "A year is a long time; all sorts +of things may happen in a year." + +These words rang in Katy's ears as she fell asleep that night. "All +sorts of things may happen in a year," she thought, "and they may not be +all happy things, either." Almost she wished that the journey to Europe +had never been thought of! + +But when she waked the next morning to the brightest of October suns +shining out of a clear blue sky, her misgivings fled. There could not +have been a more beautiful day for their start. + +She and Rose went early into town, for old Mrs. Bedding had made Katy +promise to come for a few minutes to say good-by. They found her sitting +by the fire as usual, though her windows were open to admit the +sun-warmed air. A little basket of grapes stood on the table beside her, +with a nosegay of tea-roses on top. These were from Rose's mother, for +Katy to take on board the steamer; and there was something else, a small +parcel twisted up in thin white paper. + +"It is my good-by gift," said the dear old lady. "Don't open it now. +Keep it till you are well out at sea, and get some little thing with it +as a keepsake from me." + +Grateful and wondering, Katy put the little parcel in her pocket. With +kisses and good wishes she parted from these new made friends, and she +and Rose drove to the steamer, stopping for Mr. Browne by the way. They +were a little late, so there was not much time for farewells after they +arrived; but Rose snatched a moment for a private interview with the +stewardess, unnoticed by Katy, who was busy with Mrs. Ashe and Amy. + +The bell rang, and the great steam-vessel slowly backed into the stream. +Then her head was turned to sea, and down the bay she went, leaving Rose +and her husband still waving their handkerchiefs on the pier. Katy +watched them to the last, and when she could no longer distinguish them, +felt that her final link with home was broken. + +It was not till she had settled her things in the little cabin which +was to be her home for the next ten days, had put her bonnet and dress +for safe keeping in the upper berth, nailed up her red and yellow bag, +and donned the woollen gown, ulster, and soft felt hat which were to do +service during the voyage, that she found time to examine the +mysterious parcel. + +Behold, it was a large, beautiful gold-piece, twenty dollars! + +"What a darling old lady!" said Katy; and she gave the gold-piece a +kiss. "How did she come to think of such a thing? I wonder if there is +anything in Europe good enough to buy with it?" + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +ON THE "SPARTACUS." + + +The ulster and the felt hat soon came off again, for a head wind lay +waiting in the offing, and the "Spartacus" began to pitch and toss in a +manner which made all her unseasoned passengers glad to betake +themselves to their berths. Mrs. Ashe and Amy were among the earliest +victims of sea-sickness; and Katy, after helping them to settle in their +staterooms, found herself too dizzy and ill to sit up a moment longer, +and thankfully resorted to her own. + +As the night came on, the wind grew stronger and the motion worse. The +"Spartacus" had the reputation of being a dreadful "roller," and seemed +bound to justify it on this particular voyage. Down, down, down the +great hull would slide till Katy would hold her breath with fear lest it +might never right itself again; then slowly, slowly the turn would be +made, and up, up, up it would go, till the cant on the other side was +equally alarming. On the whole, Katy preferred to have her own side of +the ship, the downward one; for it was less difficult to keep herself in +the berth, from which she was in continual danger of being thrown. The +night seemed endless, for she was too frightened to sleep except in +broken snatches; and when day dawned, and she looked through the little +round pane of glass in the port-hole, only gray sky and gray weltering +waves and flying spray and rain met her view. + +"Oh, dear, why do people ever go to sea, unless they must?" she thought +feebly to herself. She wanted to get up and see how Mrs. Ashe had lived +through the night, but the attempt to move made her so miserably ill +that she was glad to sink again on her pillows. + +The stewardess looked in with offers of tea and toast, the very idea +of which was simply dreadful, and pronounced the other lady "'orridly +ill, worse than you are, Miss," and the little girl "takin' on +dreadful in the h'upper berth." Of this fact Katy soon had audible +proof; for as her dizzy senses rallied a little, she could hear Amy in +the opposite stateroom crying and sobbing pitifully. She seemed to be +angry as well as sick, for she was scolding her poor mother in the +most vehement fashion. + +"I hate being at sea," Katy heard her say. "I won't stay in this nasty +old ship. Mamma! Mamma! do you hear me? I won't stay in this ship! It +wasn't a bit kind of you to bring me to such a horrid place. It was very +unkind; it was cru-el. I want to go back, mamma. Tell the captain to +take me back to the land. Mamma, why don't you speak to me? Oh, I am so +sick and so very un-happy. Don't you wish you were dead? I do!" + +And then came another storm of sobs, but never a sound from Mrs. Ashe, +who, Katy suspected, was too ill to speak. She felt very sorry for poor +little Amy, raging there in her high berth like some imprisoned +creature, but she was powerless to help her. She could only resign +herself to her own discomforts, and try to believe that somehow, +sometime, this state of things must mend,--either they should all get to +land or all go to the bottom and be drowned, and at that moment she +didn't care very much which it turned out to be. + +The gale increased as the day wore on, and the vessel pitched +dreadfully. Twice Katy was thrown out of her berth on the floor; then +the stewardess came and fixed a sort of movable side to the berth, which +held her in, but made her feel like a child fastened into a railed crib. +At intervals she could still hear Amy crying and scolding her mother, +and conjectured that they were having a dreadful time of it in the other +stateroom. It was all like a bad dream. "And they call this travelling +for pleasure!" thought poor Katy. + +One droll thing happened in the course of the second night,--at least it +seemed droll afterward; at the time Katy was too uncomfortable to enjoy +it. Amid the rush of the wind, the creaking of the ship's timbers, and +the shrill buzz of the screw, she heard a sound of queer little +footsteps in the entry outside of her open door, hopping and leaping +together in an odd irregular way, like a regiment of mice or toy +soldiers. Nearer and nearer they came; and Katy opening her eyes saw a +procession of boots and shoes of all sizes and shapes, which had +evidently been left on the floors or at the doors of various staterooms, +and which in obedience to the lurchings of the vessel had collected in +the cabin. They now seemed to be acting in concert with one another, and +really looked alive as they bumped and trotted side by side, and two by +two, in at the door and up close to her bedside. There they remained for +several moments executing what looked like a dance; then the leading +shoe turned on its heel as if giving a signal to the others, and they +all hopped slowly again into the passage-way and disappeared. It was +exactly like one of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tales, Katy wrote to +Clover afterward. She heard them going down the cabin; but how it ended, +or whether the owners of the boots and shoes ever got their own +particular pairs again, she never knew. + +Toward morning the gale abated, the sea became smoother, and she dropped +asleep. When she woke the sun was struggling through the clouds, and she +felt better. + +The stewardess opened the port-hole to freshen the air, and helped her +to wash her face and smooth her tangled hair; then she produced a little +basin of gruel and a triangular bit of toast, and Katy found that her +appetite was come again and she could eat. + +"And 'ere's a letter, ma'am, which has come for you by post this +morning," said the nice old stewardess, producing an envelope from her +pocket, and eying her patient with great satisfaction. + +"By post!" cried Katy, in amazement; "why, how can that be?" Then +catching sight of Rose's handwriting on the envelope, she understood, +and smiled at her own simplicity. + +The stewardess beamed at her as she opened it, then saying again, "Yes, +'m, by post, m'm," withdrew, and left Katy to enjoy the little surprise. + +The letter was not long, but it was very like its writer. Rose drew a +picture of what Katy would probably be doing at the time it reached +her,--a picture so near the truth that Katy felt as if Rose must have +the spirit of prophecy, especially as she kindly illustrated the +situation with a series of pen-and-ink drawings, in which Katy was +depicted as prone in her berth, refusing with horror to go to dinner, +looking longingly backward toward the quarter where the United States +was supposed to be, and fishing out of her port-hole with a crooked pin +in hopes of grappling the submarine cable and sending a message to her +family to come out at once and take her home. It ended with this short +"poem," over which Katy laughed till Mrs. Ashe called feebly across the +entry to ask what _was_ the matter? + + "Break, break, break + And mis-behave, O sea, + And I wish that my tongue could utter + The hatred I feel for thee! + + "Oh, well for the fisherman's child + On the sandy beach at his play; + Oh, well for all sensible folk + Who are safe at home to-day! + + "But this horrible ship keeps on, + And is never a moment still, + And I yearn for the touch of the nice dry land, + Where I needn't feel so ill! + + "Break! break! break! + There is no good left in me; + For the dinner I ate on the shore so late + Has vanished into the sea!" + +Laughter is very restorative after the forlornity of sea-sickness; and +Katy was so stimulated by her letter that she managed to struggle into +her dressing-gown and slippers and across the entry to Mrs. Ashe's +stateroom. Amy had fallen asleep at last and must not be waked up, so +their interview was conducted in whispers. Mrs. Ashe had by no means got +to the tea-and-toast stage yet, and was feeling miserable enough. + +"I have had the most dreadful time with Amy," she said. "All day +yesterday, when she wasn't sick she was raging at me from the upper +berth, and I too ill to say a word in reply. I never knew her so +naughty! And it seemed very neglectful not to come to see after you, +poor dear child! but really I couldn't raise my head." + +"Neither could I, and I felt just as guilty not to be taking care of +you," said Katy. "Well, the worst is over with all of us, I hope. The +vessel doesn't pitch half so much now, and the stewardess says we shall +feel a great deal better as soon as we get on deck. She is coming +presently to help me up; and when Amy wakes, won't you let her be +dressed, and I will take care of her while Mrs. Barrett attends to you." + +"I don't think I can be dressed," sighed poor Mrs. Ashe. "I feel as if I +should just lie here till we get to Liverpool." + +"Oh no, h'indeed, mum,--no, you won't," put in Mrs. Barrett, who at that +moment appeared, gruel-cup in hand. "I don't never let my ladies lie in +their berths a moment longer than there is need of. I h'always gets them +on deck as soon as possible to get the h'air. It's the best medicine you +can 'ave, ma'am, the fresh h'air; h'indeed it h'is." + +Stewardesses are all-powerful on board ship, and Mrs. Barrett was so +persuasive as well as positive that it was not possible to resist her. +She got Katy into her dress and wraps, and seated her on deck in a chair +with a great rug wrapped about her feet, with very little effort on +Katy's part. Then she dived down the companion-way again, and in the +course of an hour appeared escorting a big burly steward, who carried +poor little pale Amy in his arms as easily as though she had been a +kitten. Amy gave a scream of joy at the sight of Katy, and cuddled down +in her lap under the warm rug with a sigh of relief and satisfaction. + +"I thought I was never going to see you again," she said, with a little +squeeze. "Oh, Miss Katy, it has been so horrid! I never thought that +going to Europe meant such dreadful things as this!" + +"This is only the beginning; we shall get across the sea in a few days, +and then we shall find out what going to Europe really means. But what +made you behave so, Amy, and cry and scold poor mamma when she was sick? +I could hear you all the way across the entry." + +"Could you? Then why didn't you come to me?" + +"I wanted to; but I was sick too, so sick that I couldn't move. But why +were you so naughty?--you didn't tell me." + +"I didn't mean to be naughty, but I couldn't help crying. You would have +cried too, and so would Johnnie, if you had been cooped up in a dreadful +old berth at the top of the wall that you couldn't get out of, and +hadn't had anything to eat, and nobody to bring you any water when you +wanted some. And mamma wouldn't answer when I called to her." + +"She couldn't answer; she was too ill," explained Katy. "Well, my pet, +it _was_ pretty hard for you. I hope we sha'n't have any more such days. +The sea is a great deal smoother now." + +"Mabel looks quite pale; she was sick, too," said Amy, regarding the +doll in her arms with an anxious air. "I hope the fresh h'air will do +her good." + +"Is she going to have any fresh hair?" asked Katy, wilfully +misunderstanding. + +"That was what that woman called it,--the fat one who made me come up +here. But I'm glad she did, for I feel heaps better already; only I keep +thinking of poor little Maria Matilda shut up in the trunk in that dark +place, and wondering if she's sick. There's nobody to explain to her +down there." + +"They say that you don't feel the motion half so much in the bottom of +the ship," said Katy. "Perhaps she hasn't noticed it at all. Dear me, +how good something smells! I wish they would bring us something to eat." + +A good many passengers had come up by this time; and Robert, the deck +steward, was going about, tray in hand, taking orders for lunch. Amy and +Katy both felt suddenly ravenous; and when Mrs. Ashe awhile later was +helped up the stairs, she was amazed to find them eating cold beef and +roasted potatoes, with the finest appetites in the world. "They had +served out their apprenticeships," the kindly old captain told them, +"and were made free of the nautical guild from that time on." So it +proved; for after these two bad days none of the party were sick again +during the voyage. + +Amy had a clamorous appetite for stories as well as for cold beef; and +to appease this craving, Katy started a sort of ocean serial, called +"The History of Violet and Emma," which she meant to make last till they +got to Liverpool, but which in reality lasted much longer. It might with +equal propriety have been called "The Adventures of two little Girls who +didn't have any Adventures," for nothing in particular happened to +either Violet or Emma during the whole course of their long-drawn-out +history. Amy, however, found them perfectly enchanting, and was never +weary of hearing how they went to school and came home again, how they +got into scrapes and got out of them, how they made good resolutions and +broke them, about their Christmas presents and birthday treats, and what +they said and how they felt. The first instalment of this un-exciting +romance was given that first afternoon on deck; and after that, Amy +claimed a new chapter daily, and it was a chief ingredient of her +pleasure during the voyage. + +On the third morning Katy woke and dressed so early, that she gained the +deck before the sailors had finished their scrubbing and holystoning. +She took refuge within the companion-way, and sat down on the top step +of the ladder, to wait till the deck was dry enough to venture upon it. +There the Captain found her and drew near for a talk. + +Captain Bryce was exactly the kind of sea-captain that is found in +story-books, but not always in real life. He was stout and grizzled and +brown and kind. He had a bluff weather-beaten face, lit up with a pair +of shrewd blue eyes which twinkled when he was pleased; and his manner, +though it was full of the habit of command, was quiet and pleasant. He +was a Martinet on board his ship. Not a sailor under him would have +dared dispute his orders for a moment; but he was very popular with +them, notwithstanding; they liked him as much as they feared him, for +they knew him to be their best friend if it came to sickness or trouble +with any of them. + +Katy and he grew quite intimate during their long morning talk. The +Captain liked girls. He had one of his own, about Katy's age, and was +fond of talking about her. Lucy was his mainstay at home, he told Katy. +Her mother had been "weakly" now this long time back, and Bess and Nanny +were but children yet, so Lucy had to take command and keep things +ship-shape when he was away. + +"She'll be on the lookout when the steamer comes in," said the Captain. +"There's a signal we've arranged which means 'All's well,' and when we +get up the river a little way I always look to see if it's flying. It's +a bit of a towel hung from a particular window; and when I see it I say +to myself, 'Thank God! another voyage safely done and no harm come of +it.' It's a sad kind of work for a man to go off for a twenty-four days' +cruise leaving a sick wife on shore behind him. If it wasn't that I have +Lucy to look after things, I should have thrown up my command long ago." + +"Indeed, I am glad you have Lucy; she must he a great comfort to you," +said Katy, sympathetically; for the Captain's hearty voice trembled a +little as he spoke. She made him tell her the color of Lucy's hair and +eyes, and exactly how tall she was, and what she had studied, and what +sort of books she liked. She seemed such a very nice girl, and Katy +thought she should like to know her. + +The deck had dried fast in the fresh sea-wind, and the Captain had just +arranged Katy in her chair, and was wrapping the rug about her feet in a +fatherly way, when Mrs. Barrett, all smiles, appeared from below. + +"Oh, 'ere you h'are, Miss. I couldn't think what 'ad come to you so +early; and you're looking ever so well again, I'm pleased to see; and +'ere's a bundle just arrived, Miss, by the Parcels Delivery." + +"What!" cried simple Katy. Then she laughed at her own foolishness, and +took the "bundle," which was directed in Rose's unmistakable hand. + +It contained a pretty little green-bound copy of Emerson's Poems, with +Katy's name and "To be read at sea," written on the flyleaf. Somehow the +little gift seemed to bridge the long misty distance which stretched +between the vessel's stern and Boston Bay, and to bring home and friends +a great deal nearer. With a half-happy, half-tearful pleasure Katy +recognized the fact that distance counts for little if people love one +another, and that hearts have a telegraph of their own whose messages +are as sure and swift as any of those sent over the material lines which +link continent to continent and shore with shore. + +Later in the morning, Katy, going down to her stateroom for something, +came across a pallid, exhausted-looking lady, who lay stretched on one +of the long sofas in the cabin, with a baby in her arms and a little +girl sitting at her feet, quite still, with a pair of small hands folded +in her lap. The little girl did not seem to be more than four years old. +She had two pig-tails of thick flaxen hair hanging over her shoulders, +and at Katy's approach raised a pair of solemn blue eyes, which had so +much appeal in them, though she said nothing, that Katy stopped at once. + +"Can I do anything for you?" she asked. "I am afraid you have been +very ill." + +At the sound of her voice the lady on the sofa opened her eyes. She +tried to speak, but to Katy's dismay began to cry instead; and when the +words came they were strangled with sobs. + +"You are so kin-d to ask," she said. "If you would give my little girl +something to eat! She has had nothing since yesterday, and I have been +so ill; and no-nobody has c-ome near us!" + +"Oh!" cried Katy, with horror, "nothing to eat since yesterday! How did +it happen?" + +"Everybody has been sick on our side the ship," explained the poor lady, +"and I suppose the stewardess thought, as I had a maid with me, that I +needed her less than the others. But my maid has been sick, too; and oh, +so selfish! She wouldn't even take the baby into the berth with her; and +I have had all I could do to manage with him, when I couldn't lift up my +head. Little Gretchen has had to go without anything; and she has been +so good and patient!" + +Katy lost no time, but ran for Mrs. Barrett, whose indignation knew no +bounds when she heard how the helpless party had been neglected. + +"It's a new person that stewardess h'is, ma'am," she explained, "and +most h'inefficient! I told the Captain when she come aboard that I +didn't 'ave much opinion of her, and now he'll see how it h'is. I'm +h'ashamed that such a thing should 'appen on the 'Spartacus,' ma'am,--I +h'am, h'indeed. H'it never would 'ave ben so h'under h'Eliza, +ma'am,--she's the one that went h'off and got herself married the trip +before last, when this person came to take her place." + +All the time that she talked Mrs. Barrett was busy in making Mrs. +Ware--for that, it seemed, was the sick lady's name--more comfortable; +and Katy was feeding Gretchen out of a big bowl full of bread and milk +which one of the stewards had brought. The little uncomplaining thing +was evidently half starved, but with the mouthfuls the pink began to +steal back into her cheeks and lips, and the dark circles lessened under +the blue eyes. By the time the bottom of the bowl was reached she could +smile, but still she said not a word except a whispered _Danke schon_. +Her mother explained that she had been born in Germany, and always till +now had been cared for by a German nurse, so that she knew that language +better than English. + +[Illustration: Katy was feeding Gretchen out of a big bowl full of bread +and milk.] + +Gretchen was a great amusement to Katy and Amy during the rest of the +voyage. They kept her on deck with them a great deal, and she was +perfectly content with them and very good, though always solemn and +quiet. Pleasant people turned up among the passengers, as always happens +on an ocean steamship, and others not so pleasant, perhaps, who were +rather curious and interesting to watch. + +Katy grew to feel as if she knew a great deal about her fellow +travellers as time went on. There was the young girl going out to join +her parents under the care of a severe governess, whom everybody on +board rather pitied. There was the other girl on her way to study art, +who was travelling quite alone, and seemed to have nobody to meet her or +to go to except a fellow student of her own age, already in Paris, but +who seemed quite unconscious of her lonely position and competent to +grapple with anything or anybody. There was the queer old gentleman who +had "crossed" eleven times before, and had advice and experience to +spare for any one who would listen to them; and the other gentleman, not +so old but even more queer, who had "frozen his stomach," eight years +before, by indulging, on a hot summer's day, in sixteen successive +ice-creams, alternated with ten glasses of equally cold soda-water, and +who related this exciting experience in turn to everybody on board. +There was the bad little boy, whose parents were powerless to oppose +him, and who carried terror to the hearts of all beholders whenever he +appeared; and the pretty widow who filled the role of reigning belle; +and the other widow, not quite so pretty or so much a belle, who had a +good deal to say, in a voice made discreetly low, about what a pity it +was that dear Mrs. So-and-so should do this or that, and "Doesn't it +strike you as very unfortunate that she should not consider" the other +thing? A great sea-going steamer is a little world in itself, and gives +one a glimpse of all sorts and conditions of people and characters. + +On the whole, there was no one on the "Spartacus" whom Katy liked so +well as sedate little Gretchen except the dear old Captain, with whom +she was a prime favorite. He gave Mrs. Ashe and herself the seats next +to him at table, looked after their comfort in every possible way, and +each night at dinner sent Katy one of the apple-dumplings made specially +for him by the cook, who had gone many voyages with the Captain and knew +his fancies. Katy did not care particularly for the dumpling, but she +valued it as a mark of regard, and always ate it when she could. + +Meanwhile, every morning brought a fresh surprise from that dear, +painstaking Rose, who had evidently worked hard and thought harder in +contriving pleasures for Katy's first voyage at sea. Mrs. Barrett was +enlisted in the plot, there could be no doubt of that, and enjoyed the +joke as much as any one, as she presented herself each day with the +invariable formula, "A letter for you, ma'am," or "A bundle, Miss, come +by the Parcels Delivery." On the fourth morning it was a photograph of +Baby Rose, in a little flat morocco case. The fifth brought a wonderful +epistle, full of startling pieces of news, none of them true. On the +sixth appeared a long narrow box containing a fountain pen. Then came +Mr. Howells's "A Foregone Conclusion," which Katy had never seen; then a +box of quinine pills; then a sachet for her trunk; then another +burlesque poem; last of all, a cake of delicious violet soap, "to wash +the sea-smell from her hands," the label said. It grew to be one of the +little excitements of ship life to watch for the arrival of these daily +gifts; and "What did the mail bring for you this time, Miss Carr?" was a +question frequently asked. Each arrival Katy thought must be the final +one; but Rose's forethought had gone so far even as to provide an extra +parcel in case the voyage was a day longer than usual, and "Miss Carr's +mail" continued to come in till the very last morning. + +Katy never forgot the thrill that went through her when, after so many +days of sea, her eyes first caught sight of the dim line of the Irish +coast. An exciting and interesting day followed as, after stopping at +Queenstown to leave the mails, they sped northeastward between shores +which grew more distinct and beautiful with every hour,--on one side +Ireland, on the other the bold mountain lines of the Welsh coast. It was +late afternoon when they entered the Mersey, and dusk had fallen before +the Captain got out his glass to look for the white fluttering speck in +his own window which meant so much to him. Long he studied before he +made quite sure that it was there. At last he shut the glass with a +satisfied air. + +"It's all right," he said to Katy, who stood near, almost as much +interested as he. "Lucy never forgets, bless her! Well, there's another +voyage over and done with, thank God, and my Mary is where she was. It's +a load taken from my mind." + +The moon had risen and was shining softly on the river as the +crowded tender landed the passengers from the "Spartacus" at the +Liverpool docks. + +"We shall meet again in London or in Paris," said one to another, and +cards and addresses were exchanged. Then after a brief delay at the +Custom House they separated, each to his own particular destination; +and, as a general thing, none of them ever saw any of the others again. +It is often thus with those who have been fellow voyagers at sea; and it +is always a surprise and perplexity to inexperienced travellers that it +can be so, and that those who have been so much to each other for ten +days can melt away into space and disappear as though the brief intimacy +had never existed. + +"Four-wheeler or hansom, ma'am?" said a porter to Mrs. Ashe. + +"Which, Katy?" + +"Oh, let us have a hansom! I never saw one, and they look so nice +in 'Punch.'" + +So a hansom cab was called, the two ladies got in, Amy cuddled down +between them, the folding-doors were shut over their knees like a +lap-robe, and away they drove up the solidly paved streets to the hotel +where they were to pass the night. It was too late to see or do anything +but enjoy the sense of being on firm land once more. + +"How lovely it will be to sleep in a bed that doesn't tip or roll from +side to side!" said Mrs. Ashe. + +"Yes, and that is wide enough and long enough and soft enough to be +comfortable!" replied Katy. "I feel as if I could sleep for a fortnight +to make up for the bad nights at sea." + +Everything seemed delightful to her,--the space for undressing, the +great tub of fresh water which stood beside the English-looking +washstand with its ample basin and ewer, the chintz-curtained bed, the +coolness, the silence,--and she closed her eyes with the pleasant +thought in her mind, "It is really England and we are really here!" + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +STORYBOOK ENGLAND. + + +"Oh, is it raining?" was Katy's first question next morning, when the +maid came to call her. The pretty room, with its gayly flowered chintz, +and china, and its brass bedstead, did not look half so bright as when +lit with gas the night before; and a dim gray light struggled in at the +window, which in America would certainly have meant bad weather coming +or already come. + +"Oh no, h'indeed, ma'am, it's a very fine day,--not bright, ma'am, but +very dry," was the answer. + +Katy couldn't imagine what the maid meant, when she peeped between the +curtains and saw a thick dull mist lying over everything, and the +pavements opposite her window shining with wet. Afterwards, when she +understood better the peculiarities of the English climate, she too +learned to call days not absolutely rainy "fine," and to be grateful for +them; but on that first morning her sensations were of bewildered +surprise, almost vexation. + +Mrs. Ashe and Amy were waiting in the coffee-room when she went in +search of them. + +"What shall we have for breakfast," asked Mrs. Ashe,--"our first meal in +England? Katy, you order it." + +"Let's have all the things we have read about in books and don't have at +home," said Katy, eagerly. But when she came to look over the bill of +fare there didn't seem to be many such things. Soles and muffins she +finally decided upon, and, as an after-thought, gooseberry jam. + +"Muffins sound so very good in Dickens, you know," she explained to Mrs. +Ashe; "and I never saw a sole." + +The soles when they came proved to be nice little pan-fish, not unlike +what in New England are called "scup." All the party took kindly to +them; but the muffins were a great disappointment, tough and tasteless, +with a flavor about them as of scorched flannel. + +"How queer and disagreeable they are!" said Katy. "I feel as if I were +eating rounds cut from an old ironing-blanket and buttered! Dear me! +what did Dickens mean by making such a fuss about them, I wonder? And I +don't care for gooseberry jam, either; it isn't half as good as the jams +we have at home. Books are very deceptive." + +"I am afraid they are. We must make up our minds to find a great many +things not quite so nice as they sound when we read about them," replied +Mrs. Ashe. + +Mabel was breakfasting with them, of course, and was heard to remark at +this juncture that she didn't like muffins, either, and would a great +deal rather have waffles; whereupon Amy reproved her, and explained that +nobody in England knew what waffles were, they were such a stupid +nation, and that Mabel must learn to eat whatever was given her and not +find fault with it! + +After this moral lesson it was found to be dangerously near train-time; +and they all hurried to the railroad station, which, fortunately, was +close by. There was rather a scramble and confusion for a few moments; +for Katy, who had undertaken to buy the tickets, was puzzled by the +unaccustomed coinage; and Mrs. Ashe, whose part was to see after the +luggage, found herself perplexed and worried by the absence of checks, +and by no means disposed to accept the porter's statement, that if she'd +only bear in mind that the trunks were in the second van from the +engine, and get out to see that they were safe once or twice during the +journey, and call for them as soon as they reached London, she'd have no +trouble,--"please remember the porter, ma'am!" However all was happily +settled at last; and without any serious inconveniences they found +themselves established in a first-class carriage, and presently after +running smoothly at full speed across the rich English midlands toward +London and the eastern coast. + +The extreme greenness of the October landscape was what struck them +first, and the wonderfully orderly and trim aspect of the country, with +no ragged, stump-dotted fields or reaches of wild untended woods. Late +in October as it was, the hedgerows and meadows were still almost +summer-like in color, though the trees were leafless. The +delightful-looking old manor-houses and farm-houses, of which they had +glimpses now and again, were a constant pleasure to Katy, with their +mullioned windows, twisted chimney-stacks, porches of quaint build, and +thick-growing ivy. She contrasted them with the uncompromising ugliness +of farm-houses which she remembered at home, and wondered whether it +could be that at the end of another thousand years or so, America would +have picturesque buildings like these to show in addition to her +picturesque scenery. + +Suddenly into the midst of these reflections there glanced a picture so +vivid that it almost took away her breath, as the train steamed past a +pack of hounds in full cry, followed by a galloping throng of +scarlet-coated huntsmen. One horse and rider were in the air, going over +a wall. Another was just rising to the leap. A string of others, headed +by a lady, were tearing across a meadow bounded by a little brook, and +beyond that streamed the hounds following the invisible fox. It was like +one of Muybridge's instantaneous photographs of "The Horse in Motion," +for the moment that it lasted; and Katy put it away in her memory, +distinct and brilliant, as she might a real picture. + +Their destination in London was Batt's Hotel in Dover Street. The old +gentleman on the "Spartacus," who had "crossed" so many times, had +furnished Mrs. Ashe with a number of addresses of hotels and +lodging-houses, from among which Katy had chosen Batt's for the reason +that it was mentioned in Miss Edgeworth's "Patronage." "It was the +place," she explained, "where Godfrey Percy didn't stay when Lord +Oldborough sent him the letter." It seemed an odd enough reason for +going anywhere that a person in a novel didn't stay there. But Mrs. Ashe +knew nothing of London, and had no preference of her own; so she was +perfectly willing to give Katy hers, and Batt's was decided upon. + +"It is just like a dream or a story," said Katy, as they drove away from +the London station in a four-wheeler. "It is really ourselves, and this +is really London! Can you imagine it?" + +She looked out. Nothing met her eyes but dingy weather, muddy streets, +long rows of ordinary brick or stone houses. It might very well have +been New York or Boston on a foggy day, yet to her eyes all things had a +subtle difference which made them unlike similar objects at home. + +"Wimpole Street!" she cried suddenly, as she caught sight of the name on +the corner; "that is the street where Maria Crawford in Mansfield Park, +you know, 'opened one of the best houses' after she married Mr. +Rushworth. Think of seeing Wimpole Street! What fun!" She looked eagerly +out after the "best houses," but the whole street looked uninteresting +and old-fashioned; the best house to be seen was not of a kind, Katy +thought, to reconcile an ambitious young woman to a dull husband. Katy +had to remind herself that Miss Austen wrote her novels nearly a century +ago, that London was a "growing" place, and that things were probably +much changed since that day. + +More "fun" awaited them when they arrived at Batt's, and exactly such a +landlady sailed forth to welcome them as they had often met with in +books,--an old landlady, smiling and rubicund, with a towering lace cap +on her head, a flowered silk gown, a gold chain, and a pair of fat +mittened hands demurely crossed over a black brocade apron. She alone +would have been worth crossing the ocean to see, they all declared. +Their telegram had been received, and rooms were ready, with a bright, +smoky fire of soft coals; the dinner-table was set, and a nice, formal, +white-cravated old waiter, who seemed to have stepped out of the same +book with the landlady, was waiting to serve it. Everything was dingy +and old-fashioned, but very clean and comfortable; and Katy concluded +that on the whole Godfrey Percy would have done wisely to go to Batt's, +and could have fared no better at the other hotel where he did stay. + +The first of Katy's "London sights" came to her next morning before she +was out of her bedroom. She heard a bell ring and a queer squeaking +little voice utter a speech of which she could not make out a single +word. Then came a laugh and a shout, as if several boys were amused at +something or other; and altogether her curiosity was roused, so that she +finished dressing as fast as she could, and ran to the drawing-room +window which commanded a view of the street. Quite a little crowd was +collected under the window, and in their midst was a queer box raised +high on poles, with little red curtains tied back on either side to form +a miniature stage, on which puppets were moving and vociferating. Katy +knew in a moment that she was seeing her first Punch and Judy! + +The box and the crowd began to move away. Katy in despair ran to +Wilkins, the old waiter who was setting the breakfast-table. + +"Oh, please stop that man!" she said. "I want to see him." + +"What man is it, Miss?" said Wilkins. + +When he reached the window and realized what Katy meant, his sense of +propriety seemed to receive a severe shock. He even ventured on +remonstrance. + +"H'I wouldn't, Miss, h'if h'I was you. Them Punches are a low lot, Miss; +they h'ought to be put down, really they h'ought. Gentlefolks, h'as a +general thing, pays no h'attention to them." + +But Katy didn't care what "gentlefolks" did or did not do, and insisted +upon having Punch called back. So Wilkins was forced to swallow his +remonstrances and his dignity, and go in pursuit of the objectionable +object. Amy came rushing out, with her hair flying and Mabel in her +arms; and she and Katy had a real treat of Punch and Judy, with all the +well-known scenes, and perhaps a few new ones thrown in for their +especial behoof; for the showman seemed to be inspired by the rapturous +enjoyment of his little audience of three at the first-floor windows. +Punch beat Judy and stole the baby, and Judy banged Punch in return, and +the constable came in and Punch outwitted him, and the hangman and the +devil made their appearance duly; and it was all perfectly satisfactory, +and "just exactly what she hoped it would be, and it quite made up for +the muffins," Katy declared. + +Then, when Punch had gone away, the question arose as to what they +should choose, out of the many delightful things in London, for their +first morning. + +Like ninety-nine Americans out of a hundred, they decided on Westminster +Abbey; and indeed there is nothing in England better worth seeing, or +more impressive, in its dim, rich antiquity, to eyes fresh from the +world which still calls itself "new." So to the Abbey they went, and +lingered there till Mrs. Ashe declared herself to be absolutely dropping +with fatigue. + +"If you don't take me home and give me something to eat," she said, "I +shall drop down on one of these pedestals and stay there and be +exhibited forever after as an 'h'effigy' of somebody belonging to +ancient English history." + +So Katy tore herself away from Henry the Seventh and the Poets' Corner, +and tore Amy away from a quaint little tomb shaped like a cradle, with +the marble image of a baby in it, which had greatly taken her fancy. She +could only be consoled by the promise that she should soon come again +and stay as long as she liked. She reminded Katy of this promise the +very next morning. + +"Mamma has waked up with rather a bad headache, and she thinks she +will lie still and not come to breakfast," she reported. "And she +sends her love, and says will you please have a cab and go where you +like; and if I won't be a trouble, she would be glad if you would take +me with you. And I won't be a trouble, Miss Katy, and I know where I +wish you would go." + +"Where is that!" + +"To see that cunning little baby again that we saw yesterday. I want to +show her to Mabel,--she didn't go with us, you know, and I don't like to +have her mind not improved; and, darling Miss Katy, mayn't I buy some +flowers and put them on the Baby? She's so dusty and so old that I don't +believe anybody has put any flowers for her for ever so long." + +Katy found this idea rather pretty, and willingly stopped at Covent +Garden, where they bought a bunch of late roses for eighteen pence, +which entirely satisfied Amy. With them in her hand, and Mabel in her +arms, she led the way through the dim aisles of the Abbey, through +grates and doors and up and down steps; the guide following, but not at +all needed, for Amy seemed to have a perfectly clear recollection of +every turn and winding. When the chapel was reached, she laid the roses +on the tomb with gentle fingers, and a pitiful, reverent look in her +gray eyes. Then she lifted Mabel up to kiss the odd little baby effigy +above the marble quilt; whereupon the guide seemed altogether surprised +out of his composure, and remarked to Katy,-- + +"Little Miss is an h'American, as is plain to see; no h'English child +would be likely to think of doing such a thing." + +"Do not English children take any interest in the tombs of the Abbey?" +asked Katy. + +"Oh yes, m'm,--h'interest; but they don't take no special notice of one +tomb above h'another." + +Katy could scarcely keep from laughing, especially as she heard Amy, who +had been listening to the conversation, give an audible sniff, and +inform Mabel that she was glad _she_ was not an English child, who +didn't notice things and liked grown-up graves as much as she did dear +little cunning ones like this! + +Later in the day, when Mrs. Ashe was better, they all drove together to +the quaint old keep which has been the scene of so many tragedies, and +is known as the Tower of London. Here they were shown various rooms and +chapels and prisons; and among the rest the apartments where Queen +Elizabeth, when a friendless young Princess, was shut up for many months +by her sister, Queen Mary. Katy had read somewhere, and now told Amy, +the pretty legend of the four little children who lived with their +parents in the Tower, and used to play with the royal captive; and how +one little boy brought her a key which he had picked up on the ground, +and said, "Now you can go out when you will, lady;" and how the Lords of +the Council, getting wind of it, sent for the children to question them, +and frightened them and their friends almost to death, and forbade them +to go near the Princess again. + +A story about children always brings the past much nearer to a child, +and Amy's imagination was so excited by this tale, that when they got to +the darksome closet which is said to have been the prison of Sir Walter +Raleigh, she marched out of it with a pale and wrathful face. + +"If this is English history, I never mean to learn any more of it, and +neither shall Mabel," she declared. + +But it is not possible for Amy or any one else not to learn a great deal +of history simply by going about London. So many places are associated +with people or events, and seeing the places makes one care so much more +for the people or the events, that one insensibly questions and wonders. +Katy, who had "browsed" all through her childhood in a good +old-fashioned library, had her memory stuffed with all manner of little +scraps of information and literary allusions, which now came into use. +It was like owning the disjointed bits of a puzzle, and suddenly +discovering that properly put together they make a pattern. Mrs. Ashe, +who had never been much of a reader, considered her young friend a +prodigy of intelligence; but Katy herself realized how inadequate and +inexact her knowledge was, and how many bits were missing from the +pattern of her puzzle. She wished with all her heart, as every one +wishes under such circumstances, that she had studied harder and more +wisely while the chance was in her power. On a journey you cannot read +to advantage. Remember that, dear girls, who are looking forward to +travelling some day, and be industrious in time. + +October is not a favorable month in which to see England. Water, water +is everywhere; you breathe it, you absorb it; it wets your clothes and +it dampens your spirits. Mrs. Ashe's friends advised her not to think of +Scotland at that time of the year. One by one their little intended +excursions were given up. A single day and night in Oxford and +Stratford-on-Avon; a short visit to the Isle of Wight, where, in a +country-place which seemed provokingly pretty as far as they could see +it for the rain, lived that friend of Mrs. Ashe who had married an +Englishman and in so doing had, as Katy privately thought, "renounced +the sun;" a peep at Stonehenge from under the shelter of an umbrella, +and an hour or two in Salisbury Cathedral,--was all that they +accomplished, except a brief halt at Winchester, that Katy might have +the privilege of seeing the grave of her beloved Miss Austen. Katy had +come abroad with a terribly long list of graves to visit, Mrs. Ashe +declared. They laid a few rain-washed flowers upon the tomb, and +listened with edification to the verger, who inquired,-- + +"Whatever was it, ma'am, that lady did which brings so many h'Americans +to h'ask about her? Our h'English people don't seem to take the same +h'interest." + +"She wrote such delightful stories," explained Katy; but the old verger +shook his head. + +"I think h'it must be some other party, Miss, you've confused with this +here. It stands to reason, Miss, that we'd have heard of 'em h'over 'ere +in England sooner than you would h'over there in h'America, if the books +'ad been h'anything so h'extraordinary." + +The night after their return to London they were dining for the second +time with the cousins of whom Mrs. Ashe had spoken to Dr. Carr; and as +it happened Katy sat next to a quaint elderly American, who had lived +for twenty years in London and knew it much better than most Londoners +do. This gentleman, Mr. Allen Beach, had a hobby for antiquities, old +books especially, and passed half his time at the British Museum, and +the other half in sales rooms and the old shops in Wardour Street. + +Katy was lamenting over the bad weather which stood in the way of +their plans. + +"It is so vexatious," she said. "Mrs. Ashe meant to go to York and +Lincoln and all the cathedral towns and to Scotland; and we have had to +give it all up because of the rains. We shall go away having seen hardly +anything." + +"You can see London." + +"We have,--that is, we have seen the things that everybody sees." + +"But there are so many things that people in general do not see. How +much longer are you to stay, Miss Carr?" + +"A week, I believe." + +"Why don't you make out a list of old buildings which are connected with +famous people in history, and visit them in turn? I did that the second +year after I came. I gave up three months to it, and it was most +interesting. I unearthed all manner of curious stories and traditions." + +"Or," cried Katy, struck with a sudden bright thought, "why mightn't +I put into the list some of the places I know about in books,--novels +as well as history,--and the places where the people who wrote the +books lived?" + +"You might do that, and it wouldn't be a bad idea, either," said Mr. +Beach, pleased with her enthusiasm. "I will get a pencil after dinner +and help you with your list if you will allow me." + +Mr. Beach was better than his word. He not only suggested places and +traced a plan of sight-seeing, but on two different mornings he went +with them himself; and his intelligent knowledge of London added very +much to the interest of the excursions. Under his guidance the little +party of four--for Mabel was never left out; it was _such_ a chance for +her to improve her mind, Amy declared--visited the Charter-House, where +Thackeray went to school, and the Home of the Poor Brothers connected +with it, in which Colonel Newcome answered "Adsum" to the roll-call of +the angels. They took a look at the small house in Curzon Street, which +is supposed to have been in Thackeray's mind when he described the +residence of Becky Sharpe; and the other house in Russell Square which +is unmistakably that where George Osborne courted Amelia Sedley. They +went to service in the delightful old church of St. Mary in the Temple, +and thought of Ivanhoe and Brian de Bois-Guilbert and Rebecca the +Jewess. From there Mr. Beach took them to Lamb's Court, where Pendennis +and George Warrington dwelt in chambers together; and to Brick Court, +where Oliver Goldsmith passed so much of his life, and the little rooms +in which Charles and Mary Lamb spent so many sadly happy years. On +another day they drove to Whitefriars, for the sake of Lord Glenvarloch +and the old privilege of Sanctuary in the "Fortunes of Nigel;" and took +a peep at Bethnal Green, where the Blind Beggar and his "Pretty Bessee" +lived, and at the old Prison of the Marshalsea, made interesting by its +associations with "Little Dorrit." They also went to see Milton's house +and St. Giles Church, in which he is buried; and stood a long time +before St. James Palace, trying to make out which could have been Miss +Burney's windows when she was dresser to Queen Charlotte of bitter +memory. And they saw Paternoster Row and No. 5 Cheyne Walk, sacred +forevermore to the memory of Thomas Carlyle, and Whitehall, where Queen +Elizabeth lay in state and King Charles was beheaded, and the state +rooms of Holland House; and by great good luck had a glimpse of George +Eliot getting out of a cab. She stood for a moment while she gave her +fare to the cabman, and Katy looked as one who might not look again, and +carried away a distinct picture of the unbeautiful, interesting, +remarkable face. + +With all this to see and to do, the last week sped all too swiftly, and +the last day came before they were at all ready to leave what Katy +called "Story-book England." Mrs. Ashe had decided to cross by Newhaven +and Dieppe, because some one had told her of the beautiful old town of +Rouen, and it seemed easy and convenient to take it on the way to Paris. +Just landed from the long voyage across the Atlantic, the little passage +of the Channel seemed nothing to our travellers, and they made ready for +their night on the Dieppe steamer with the philosophy which is born of +ignorance. They were speedily undeceived! + +The English Channel has a character of its own, which distinguishes it +from other seas and straits. It seems made fractious and difficult by +Nature, and set as on purpose to be barrier between two nations who are +too unlike to easily understand each other, and are the safer neighbors +for this wholesome difficulty of communication between them. The "chop" +was worse than usual on the night when our travellers crossed; the +steamer had to fight her way inch by inch. And oh, such a little +steamer! and oh, such a long night! + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +ACROSS THE CHANNEL. + + +Dawn had given place to day, and day was well advanced toward noon, +before the stout little steamer gained her port. It was hours after +the usual time for arrival; the train for Paris must long since have +started, and Katy felt dejected and forlorn as, making her way out of +the terrible ladies'-cabin, she crept on deck for her first glimpse +of France. + +The sun was struggling through the fog with a watery smile, and his +faint beams shone on a confusion of stone piers, higher than the +vessel's deck, intersected with canal-like waterways, through whose +intricate windings the steamer was slowly threading her course to the +landing-place. Looking up, Katy could see crowds of people assembled to +watch the boat come in,--workmen, peasants, women, children, soldiers, +custom-house officers, moving to and fro,--and all this crowd were +talking all at once and all were talking French! + +I don't know why this should have startled her as it did. She knew, of +course, that people of different countries were liable to be found +speaking their own languages; but somehow the spectacle of the +chattering multitude, all seeming so perfectly at ease with their +preterits and subjunctives and never once having to refer to Ollendorf +or a dictionary, filled her with a sense of dismayed surprise. + +"Good gracious!" she said to herself, "even the babies understand it!" +She racked her brains to recall what she had once known of French, but +very little seemed to have survived the horrors of the night! + +"Oh dear! what is the word for trunk-key?" she asked herself. "They will +all begin to ask questions, and I shall not have a word to say; and Mrs. +Ashe will be even worse off, I know." She saw the red-trousered +custom-house officers pounce upon the passengers as they landed one by +one, and she felt her heart sink within her. + +But after all, when the time came it did not prove so very bad. Katy's +pleasant looks and courteous manner stood her in good stead. She did not +trust herself to say much; but the officials seemed to understand +without saying. They bowed and gestured, whisked the keys in and out, +and in a surprisingly short time all was pronounced right, the baggage +had "passed," and it and its owners were free to proceed to the +railway-station, which fortunately was close at hand. + +Inquiry revealed the fact that no train for Paris left till four in the +afternoon. + +"I am rather glad," declared poor Mrs. Ashe, "for I feel too used up to +move. I will lie here on this sofa; and, Katy dear, please see if there +is an eating-place, and get some breakfast for yourself and Amy, and +send me a cup of tea." + +"I don't like to leave you alone," Katy was beginning; but at that +moment a nice old woman who seemed to be in charge of the waiting-room +appeared, and with a flood of French which none of them could follow, +but which was evidently sympathetic in its nature, flew at Mrs. Ashe and +began to make her comfortable. From a cupboard in the wall she produced +a pillow, from another cupboard a blanket; in a trice she had one under +Mrs. Ashe's head and the other wrapped round her feet. + +"Pauvre madame," she said, "si pale! si souffrante! Il faut avoir +quelque chose a boire et a manger tout de suite." She trotted across the +room and into the restaurant which opened out of it, while Mrs. Ashe +smiled at Katy and said, "You see you can leave me quite safely; I am to +be taken care of." And Katy and Amy passed through the same door into +the _buffet_, and sat down at a little table. + +It was a particularly pleasant-looking place to breakfast in. There were +many windows with bright polished panes and very clean short muslin +curtains, and on the window-sills stood rows of thrifty potted plants in +full bloom,--marigolds, balsams, nasturtiums, and many colored +geraniums. Two birds in cages were singing loudly; the floor was waxed +to a glass-like polish; nothing could have been whiter than the marble +of the tables except the napkins laid over them. And such a good +breakfast as was presently brought to them,--delicious coffee in +bowl-like cups, crisp rolls and rusks, an omelette with a delicate +flavor of fine herbs, stewed chicken, little pats of freshly churned +butter without salt, shaped like shells and tasting like solidified +cream, and a pot of some sort of nice preserve. Amy made great delighted +eyes at Katy, and remarking, "I think France is heaps nicer than that +old England," began to eat with a will; and Katy herself felt that if +this railroad meal was a specimen of what they had to expect in the +future, they had indeed come to a land of plenty. + +Fortified with the satisfactory breakfast, she felt equal to a walk; and +after they had made sure that Mrs. Ashe had all she needed, she and Amy +(and Mabel) set off by themselves to see the sights of Dieppe. I don't +know that travellers generally have considered Dieppe an interesting +place, but Katy found it so. There was a really old church and some +quaint buildings of the style of two centuries back, and even the more +modern streets had a novel look to her unaccustomed eyes. At first they +only ventured a timid turn or two, marking each corner, and going back +now and then to reassure themselves by a look at the station; but after +a while, growing bolder, Katy ventured to ask a question or two in +French, and was surprised and charmed to find herself understood. After +that she grew adventurous, and, no longer fearful of being lost, led Amy +straight down a long street lined with shops, almost all of which were +for the sale of articles in ivory. + +Ivory wares are one of the chief industries of Dieppe. There were cases +full, windows full, counters full, of the most exquisite combs and +brushes, some with elaborate monograms in silver and colors, others +plain; there were boxes and caskets of every size and shape, ornaments, +fans, parasol handles, looking-glasses, frames for pictures large and +small, napkin-rings. + +Katy was particularly smitten with a paper-knife in the form of an angel +with long slender wings raised over its head and meeting to form a +point. Its price was twenty francs, and she was strongly tempted to buy +it for Clover or Rose Red. But she said to herself sensibly, "This is +the first shop I have been into and the first thing I have really wanted +to buy, and very likely as we go on I shall see things I like better and +want more, so it would be foolish to do it. No, I won't." And she +resolutely turned her back on the ivory angel, and walked away. + +The next turn brought them to a gay-looking little market-place, where +old women in white caps were sitting on the ground beside baskets and +panniers full of apples, pears, and various queer and curly vegetables, +none of which Katy recognized as familiar; fish of all shapes and colors +were flapping in shallow tubs of sea-water; there were piles of +stockings, muffetees, and comforters in vivid blue and red worsted, and +coarse pottery glazed in bright patterns. The faces of the women were +brown and wrinkled; there were no pretty ones among them, but their +black eyes were full of life and quickness, and their fingers one and +all clicked with knitting-needles, as their tongues flew equally fast in +the chatter and the chaffer, which went on without stop or stay, though +customers did not seem to be many and sales were few. + +Returning to the station they found that Mrs. Ashe had been asleep +during their absence, and seemed so much better that it was with greatly +amended spirits that they took their places in the late afternoon train +which was to set them down at Rouen. Katy said they were like the Wise +Men of the East, "following a star," in their choice of a hotel; for, +having no better advice, they had decided upon one of those thus +distinguished in Baedeker's Guide-book. + +The star did not betray their confidence; for the Hotel de la Cloche, to +which it led them, proved to be quaint and old, and very pleasant of +aspect. The lofty chambers, with their dimly frescoed ceilings, and beds +curtained with faded patch, might to all appearances have been furnished +about the time when "Columbus crossed the ocean blue;" but everything +was clean, and had an air of old-time respectability. The dining-room, +which was evidently of more modern build, opened into a square courtyard +where oleanders and lemon trees in boxes stood round the basin of a +little fountain, whose tinkle and plash blended agreeably with the +rattle of the knives and forks. In one corner of the room was a raised +and railed platform, where behind a desk sat the mistress of the house, +busy with her account-books, but keeping an eye the while on all that +went forward. + +Mrs. Ashe walked past this personage without taking any notice of her, +as Americans are wont to do under such circumstances; but presently the +observant Katy noticed that every one else, as they went in or out of +the room, addressed a bow or a civil remark to this lady. She quite +blushed at the recollection afterward, as she made ready for bed. + +"How rude we must have seemed!" she thought. "I am afraid the people +here think that Americans have _awful_ manners, everybody is so polite. +They said 'Bon soir' and 'Merci' and 'Voulez-vous avoir la bonte,' to +the waiters even! Well, there is one thing,--I am going to reform. +To-morrow I will be as polite as anybody. They will think that I am +miraculously improved by one night on French soil; but, never mind! I am +going to do it." + +She kept her resolution, and astonished Mrs. Ashe next morning, by +bowing to the dame on the platform in the most winning manner, and +saying, "Bon jour, madame," as they went by. + +"But, Katy, who is that person? Why do you speak to her?" + +"Don't you see that they all do? She is the landlady, I think; at all +events, everybody bows to her. And just notice how prettily these ladies +at the next table speak to the waiter. They do not order him to do +things as we do at home. I noticed it last night, and I liked it so much +that I made a resolution to get up and be as polite as the French +themselves this morning." + +So all the time that they went about the sumptuous old city, rich in +carvings and sculptures and traditions, while they were looking at the +Cathedral and the wonderful church of St. Ouen, and the Palace of +Justice, and the "Place of the Maid," where poor Jeanne d'Arc was burned +and her ashes scattered to the winds, Katy remembered her manners, and +smiled and bowed, and used courteous prefixes in a soft pleasant voice; +and as Mrs. Ashe and Amy fell in with her example more or less, I think +the guides and coachmen and the old women who showed them over the +buildings felt that the air of France was very civilizing indeed, and +that these strangers from savage countries over the sea were in a fair +way to be as well bred as if they had been born in a more favored part +of the world! + +Paris looked very modern after the peculiar quaint richness and air of +the Middle Ages which distinguish Rouen. Rooms had been engaged for +Mrs. Ashe's party in a _pension_ near the Arc d'Etoile, and there they +drove immediately on arriving. The rooms were not in the _pension_ +itself, but in a house close by,--a sitting-room with six mirrors, +three clocks, and a pinched little grate about a foot wide, a +dining-room just large enough for a table and four chairs, and two +bedrooms. A maid called Amandine had been detailed to take charge of +these rooms and serve their meals. + +Dampness, as Katy afterward wrote to Clover, was the first impression +they received of "gay Paris." The tiny fire in the tiny grate had only +just been lighted, and the walls and the sheets and even the blankets +felt chilly and moist to the touch. They spent their first evening in +hanging the bedclothes round the grate and piling on fuel; they even set +the mattresses up on edge to warm and dry! It was not very enlivening, +it must be confessed. Amy had taken a cold, Mrs. Ashe looked worried, +and Katy thought of Burnet and the safety and comfort of home with a +throb of longing. + +The days that ensued were not brilliant enough to remove this +impression. The November fogs seemed to have followed them across the +Channel, and Paris remained enveloped in a wet blanket which dimmed and +hid its usually brilliant features. Going about in cabs with the windows +drawn up, and now and then making a rush through the drip into shops, +was not exactly delightful, but it seemed pretty much all that they +could do. It was worse for Amy, whose cold kept her indoors and denied +her even the relaxation of the cab. Mrs. Ashe had engaged a +well-recommended elderly English maid to come every morning and take +care of Amy while they were out; and with this respectable functionary, +whose ideas were of a rigidly British type and who did not speak a word +of any language but her own, poor Amy was compelled to spend most of her +time. Her only consolation was in persuading this serene attendant to +take a part in the French lessons which she made a daily point of giving +to Mabel out of her own little phrase-book. + +"Wilkins is getting on, I think," she told Katy one night. "She says +'Biscuit glace' quite nicely now. But I never will let her look at the +book, though she always wants to; for if once she saw how the words are +spelled, she would never in the world pronounce them right again. They +look so very different, you know." + +Katy looked at Amy's pale little face and eager eyes with a real +heartache. Her rapture when at the end of the long dull afternoons her +mother returned to her was touching. Paris was very _triste_ to poor +Amy, with all her happy facility for amusing herself; and Katy felt that +the sooner they got away from it the better it would be. So, in spite of +the delight which her brief glimpses at the Louvre gave her, and the fun +it was to go about with Mrs. Ashe and see her buy pretty things, and the +real satisfaction she took in the one perfectly made walking-suit to +which she had treated herself, she was glad when the final day came, +when the belated dressmakers and artistes in jackets and wraps had sent +home their last wares, and the trunks were packed. It had been rather +the fault of circumstances than of Paris; but Katy had not learned to +love the beautiful capital as most Americans do, and did not feel at all +as if she wanted that her "reward of virtue" should be to go there when +she died! There must be more interesting places for live people, and +ghosts too, to be found on the map of Europe, she was sure. + +Next morning as they drove slowly down the Champs Elysees, and +looked back for a last glimpse of the famous Arch, a bright object +met their eyes, moving vaguely against the mist. It was the gay red +wagon of the Bon Marche, carrying bundles home to the dwellers of +some up-town street. + +Katy burst out laughing. "It is an emblem of Paris," she said,--"of our +Paris, I mean. It has been all Bon Marche and fog!" + +"Miss Katy," interrupted Amy, "_do_ you like Europe? For my part, I was +never so disgusted with any place in my life!" + +"Poor little bird, her views of 'Europe' are rather dark just now, and +no wonder," said her mother. "Never mind, darling, you shall have +something pleasanter by and by if I can find it for you." + +"Burnet is a great deal pleasanter than Paris," pronounced Amy, +decidedly. "It doesn't keep always raining there, and I can take walks, +and I understand everything that people say." + +All that day they sped southward, and with every hour came a change in +the aspect of their surroundings. Now they made brief stops in large +busy towns which seemed humming with industry. Now they whirled through +grape countries with miles of vineyards, where the brown leaves still +hung on the vines. Then again came glimpses of old Roman ruins, +amphitheatres, viaducts, fragments of wall or arch; or a sudden chill +betokened their approach to mountains, where snowy peaks could be seen +on the far horizon. And when the long night ended and day roused them +from broken slumbers, behold, the world was made over! Autumn had +vanished, and the summer, which they thought fled for good, had taken +his place. Green woods waved about them, fresh leaves were blowing in +the wind, roses and hollyhocks beckoned from white-walled gardens; and +before they had done with exclaiming and rejoicing, the Mediterranean +shot into view, intensely blue, with white fringes of foam, white sails +blowing across, white gulls flying above it, and over all a sky of the +same exquisite blue, whose clouds were white as the drifting sails on +the water below, and they were at Marseilles. + +It was like a glimpse of Paradise to eyes fresh from autumnal grays and +glooms, as they sped along the lovely coast, every curve and turn +showing new combinations of sea and shore, olive-crowned cliff and +shining mountain-peak. With every mile the blue became bluer, the wind +softer, the feathery verdure more dense and summer-like. Hyeres and +Cannes and Antibes were passed, and then, as they rounded a long point, +came the view of a sunshiny city lying on a sunlit shore; the train +slackened its speed, and they knew that their journey's end was come and +they were in Nice. + +The place seemed to laugh with gayety as they drove down the Promenade +des Anglais and past the English garden, where the band was playing +beneath the acacias and palm-trees. On one side was a line of +bright-windowed hotels and _pensions_, with balconies and striped +awnings; on the other, the long reach of yellow sand-beach, where ladies +were grouped on shawls and rugs, and children ran up and down in the +sun, while beyond stretched the waveless sea. The December sun felt as +warm as on a late June day at home, and had the same soft caressing +touch. The pavements were thronged with groups of leisurely-looking +people, all wearing an unmistakable holiday aspect; pretty girls in +correct Parisian costumes walked demurely beside their mothers, with +cavaliers in attendance; and among these young men appeared now and +again the well-known uniform of the United States Navy. + +"I wonder," said Mrs. Ashe, struck by a sudden thought, "if by any +chance our squadron is here." She asked the question the moment they +entered the hotel; and the porter, who prided himself on understanding +"zose Eenglesh," replied,-- + +"Mais oui, Madame, ze Americaine fleet it is here; zat is, not here, +but at Villefranche, just a leetle four mile away,--it is ze same +zing exactly." + +"Katy, do you hear that?" cried Mrs. Ashe. "The frigates _are_ here, and +the 'Natchitoches' among them of course; and we shall have Ned to go +about with us everywhere. It is a real piece of good luck for us. Ladies +are at such a loss in a place like this with nobody to escort them. I am +perfectly delighted." + +"So am I," said Katy. "I never saw a frigate, and I always wanted to see +one. Do you suppose they will let us go on board of them?" + +"Why, of course they will." Then to the porter, "Give me a sheet +of paper and an envelope, please.--I must let Ned know that I am +here at once." + +Mrs. Ashe wrote her note and despatched it before they went upstairs to +take off their bonnets. She seemed to have a half-hope that some bird of +the air might carry the news of her arrival to her brother, for she kept +running to the window as if in expectation of seeing him. She was too +restless to lie down or sleep, and after she and Katy had lunched, +proposed that they should go out on the beach for a while. + +"Perhaps we may come across Ned," she remarked. + +They did not come across Ned, but there was no lack of other +delightful objects to engage their attention. The sands were smooth +and hard as a floor. Soft pink lights were beginning to tinge the +western sky. To the north shone the peaks of the maritime Alps, and +the same rosy glow caught them here and there, and warmed their grays +and whites into color. + +"I wonder what that can be?" said Katy, indicating the rocky point which +bounded the beach to the east, where stood a picturesque building of +stone, with massive towers and steep pitches of roof. "It looks half +like a house and half like a castle, but it is quite fascinating, I +think. Do you suppose that people live there?" + +"We might ask," suggested Mrs. Ashe. + +Just then they came to a shallow river spanned by a bridge, beside whose +pebbly bed stood a number of women who seemed to be washing clothes by +the simple and primitive process of laying them in the water on top of +the stones, and pounding them with a flat wooden paddle till they were +white. Katy privately thought that the clothes stood a poor chance of +lasting through these cleansing operations; but she did not say so, and +made the inquiry which Mrs. Ashe had suggested, in her best French. + +"Celle-la?" answered the old woman whom she had addressed. "Mais c'est +la Pension Suisse." + +"A _pension_; why, that means a boarding-house," cried Katy. "What fun +it must be to board there!" + +"Well, why shouldn't we board there!" said her friend. "You know we +meant to look for rooms as soon as we were rested and had found out a +little about the place. Let us walk on and see what the Pension Suisse +is like. If the inside is as pleasant as the outside, we could not do +better, I should think." + +"Oh, I do hope all the rooms are not already taken," said Katy, who had +fallen in love at first sight with the Pension Suisse. She felt quite +oppressed with anxiety as they rang the bell. + +The Pension Suisse proved to be quite as charming inside as out. The +thick stone walls made deep sills and embrasures for the casement +windows, which were furnished with red cushions to serve as seats and +lounging-places. Every window seemed to command a view, for those which +did not look toward the sea looked toward the mountains. The house was +by no means full, either. Several sets of rooms were to be had; and Katy +felt as if she had walked straight into the pages of a romance When Mrs. +Ashe engaged for a month a delightful suite of three, a sitting-room and +two sleeping-chambers, in a round tower, with a balcony overhanging the +water, and a side window, from which a flight of steps led down into a +little walled garden, nestled in among the masonry, where tall +laurestinus and lemon trees grew, and orange and brown wallflowers made +the air sweet. Her contentment knew no bounds. + +"I am so glad that I came," she told Mrs. Ashe. "I never confessed it to +you before; but sometimes.--when we were sick at sea, you know, and when +it would rain all the time, and after Amy caught that cold in Paris--I +have almost wished, just for a minute or two at a time, that we hadn't. +But now I wouldn't not have come for the world! This is perfectly +delicious. I am glad, glad, glad we are here, and we are going to have a +lovely time, I know." + +They were passing out of the rooms into the hall as she said these +words, and two ladies who were walking up a cross passage turned their +heads at the sound of her voice. To her great surprise Katy recognized +Mrs. Page and Lilly. + +"Why, Cousin Olivia, is it you?" she cried, springing forward with +the cordiality one naturally feels in seeing a familiar face in a +foreign land. + +Mrs. Page seemed rather puzzled than cordial. She put up her eyeglass +and did not seem to quite make out who Katy was. + +"It is Katy Carr, mamma," explained Lilly. "Well, Katy, this _is_ a +surprise! Who would have thought of meeting you in Nice!" + +There was a decided absence of rapture in Lilly's manner. She was +prettier than ever, as Katy saw in a moment, and beautifully dressed in +soft brown velvet, which exactly suited her complexion and her +pale-colored wavy hair. + +"Katy Carr! why, so it is," admitted Mrs. Page. "It is a surprise +indeed. We had no idea that you were abroad. What has brought you so far +from Tunket,--Burnet, I mean? Who are you with?" + +"With my friend Mrs. Ashe," explained Katy, rather chilled by this cool +reception. + +"Let me introduce you. Mrs. Ashe, these are my cousins Mrs. Page and +Miss Page. Amy,--why where is Amy?" + +Amy had walked back to the door of the garden staircase, and was +standing there looking down upon the flowers. + +Cousin Olivia bowed rather distantly. Her quick eye took in the details +of Mrs. Ashe's travelling-dress and Katy's dark blue ulster. + +"Some countrified friend from that dreadful Western town where they +live," she said to herself. "How foolish of Philip Carr to try to send +his girls to Europe! He can't afford it, I know." Her voice was rather +rigid as she inquired,-- + +"And what brings you here?--to this house, I mean?" + +"Oh, we are coming to-morrow to stay; we have taken rooms for a month," +explained Katy. "What a delicious-looking old place it is." + +"Have you?" said Lilly, in a voice which did not express any particular +pleasure. "Why, we are staying here too." + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE PENSION SUISSE. + + +"What do you suppose can have brought Katy Carr to Europe?" inquired +Lilly, as she stood in the window watching the three figures walk slowly +down the sands. "She is the last person I expected to turn up here. I +supposed she was stuck in that horrid place--what is the name of +it?--where they live, for the rest of her life." + +"I confess I am surprised at meeting her myself," rejoined Mrs. Page. "I +had no idea that her father could afford so expensive a journey." + +"And who is this woman that she has got along with her?" + +"I have no idea, I'm sure. Some Western friend, I suppose." + +"Dear me, I wish they were going to some other house than this," said +Lilly, discontentedly. "If they were at the Rivoir, for instance, or one +of those places at the far end of the beach, we shouldn't need to see +anything of them, or even know that they were in town! It's a real +nuisance to have people spring upon you this way, people you don't want +to meet; and when they happen to be relations it is all the worse. Katy +will be hanging on us all the time, I'm afraid." + +"Oh, my dear, there is no fear of that. A little repression on our part +will prevent her from being any trouble, I'm quite certain. But we +_must_ treat her politely, you know, Lilly; her father is my cousin." + +"That's the saddest part of it! Well, there's one thing, I shall _not_ +take her with me every time we go to the frigates," said Lilly, +decisively. "I am not going to inflict a country cousin on Lieutenant +Worthington, and spoil all my own fun beside. So I give you fair +warning, mamma, and you must manage it somehow." + +"Certainly, dear, I will. It would be a great pity to have your visit to +Nice spoiled in any way, with the squadron here too, and that pleasant +Mr. Worthington so very attentive." + +Unconscious of these plans for her suppression, Katy walked back to the +hotel in a mood of pensive pleasure. Europe at last promised to be as +delightful as it had seemed when she only knew it from maps and books, +and Nice so far appeared to her the most charming place in the world. + +Somebody was waiting for them at the Hotel des Anglais,--a tall, +bronzed, good-looking somebody in uniform, with pleasant brown eyes +beaming from beneath a gold-banded cap; at the sight of whom Amy rushed +forward with her long locks flying, and Mrs. Ashe uttered an exclamation +of pleasure. It was Ned Worthington, Mrs. Ashe's only brother, whom she +had not met for two years and a half; and you can easily imagine how +glad she was to see him. + +"You got my note then?" she said after the first eager greetings were +over and she had introduced him to Katy. + +"Note? No. Did you write me a note?" + +"Yes; to Villefranche." + +"To the ship? I shan't get that till tomorrow. No; finding out that you +were here is just a bit of good fortune. I came over to call on some +friends who are staying down the beach a little way, and dropping in to +look over the list of arrivals, as I generally do, I saw your names; and +the porter not being able to say which way you had gone, I waited for +you to come in." + +"We have been looking at such a delightful old place, the Pension +Suisse, and have taken rooms." + +"The Pension Suisse, eh? Why, that was where I was going to call. I know +some people who are staying there. It seems a pleasant house; I'm glad +you are going there, Polly. It's first-rate luck that the ships happen +to be here just now. I can see you every day." + +"But, Ned, surely you are not leaving me so soon? Surely you will stay +and dine with us?" urged his sister, as he took up his cap. + +"I wish I could, but I can't to-night, Polly. You see I had engaged to +take some ladies out to drive, and they will expect me. I had no idea +that you would be here, or I should have kept myself free," +apologetically. "Tomorrow I will come over early, and be at your service +for whatever you like to do." + +"That's right, dear boy. We shall expect you." Then, the moment he was +gone, "Now, Katy, isn't he nice?" + +"Very nice, I should think," said Katy, who had watched the brief +interview with interest. "I like his face so much, and how fond he +is of you!" + +"Dear fellow! so he is. I am seven years older than he, but we have +always been intimate. Brothers and sisters are not always intimate, you +know,--or perhaps you don't know, for all of yours are." + +"Yes, indeed," said Katy, with a happy smile. "There is nobody like +Clover and Elsie, except perhaps Johnnie and Dorry and Phil," she added +with a laugh. + +The remove to the Pension Suisse was made early the next morning. Mrs. +Page and Lilly did not appear to welcome them. Katy rather rejoiced in +their absence, for she wanted the chance to get into order without +interruptions. + +There was something comfortable in the thought that they were to stay a +whole month in these new quarters; for so long a time, it seemed worth +while to make them pretty and homelike. So, while Mrs. Ashe unpacked her +own belongings and Amy's, Katy, who had a natural turn for arranging +rooms, took possession of the little parlor, pulled the furniture into +new positions, laid out portfolios and work-cases and their few books, +pinned various photographs which they had bought in Oxford and London on +the walls, and tied back the curtains to admit the sunshine. Then she +paid a visit to the little garden, and came back with a long branch of +laurestinus, which she trained across the mantelpiece, and a bunch of +wallflowers for their one little vase. The maid, by her orders, laid a +fire of wood and pine cones ready for lighting; and when all was done +she called Mrs. Ashe to pronounce upon the effect. + +"It is lovely," she said, sinking into a great velvet arm-chair which +Katy had drawn close to the seaward window. "I haven't seen anything so +pleasant since we left home. You are a witch, Katy, and the comfort of +my life. I am so glad I brought you! Now, pray go and unpack your own +things, and make yourself look nice for the second breakfast. We have +been a shabby set enough since we arrived. I saw those cousins of yours +looking askance at our old travelling-dresses yesterday. Let us try to +make a more respectable impression to-day." + +So they went down to breakfast, Mrs. Ashe in one of her new Paris gowns, +Katy in a pretty dress of olive serge, and Amy all smiles and ruffled +pinafore, walking hand in hand with her uncle Ned, who had just arrived +and whose great ally she was; and Mrs. Page and Lilly, who were already +seated at table, had much ado to conceal their somewhat unflattering +surprise at the conjunction. For one moment Lilly's eyes opened into a +wide stare of incredulous astonishment; then she remembered herself, +nodded as pleasantly as she could to Mrs. Ashe and Katy, and favored +Lieutenant Worthington with a pretty blushing smile as he went by, while +she murmured,-- + +"Mamma, do you see that? What does it mean?" + +"Why, Ned, do you know those people?" asked Mrs. Ashe at the same +moment. + +"Do _you_ know them!" + +"Yes; we met yesterday. They are connections of my friend Miss Carr." + +"Really? There is not the least family likeness between them." And Mr. +Worthington's eyes travelled deliberately from Lilly's delicate, golden +prettiness to Katy, who, truth to say, did not shine by the contrast. + +"She has a nice, sensible sort of face," he thought, "and she looks like +a lady, but for beauty there is no comparison between the two." Then he +turned to listen to his sister as she replied,-- + +"No, indeed, not the least; no two girls could be less like." Mrs. Ashe +had made the same comparison, but with quite a different result. Katy's +face was grown dear to her, and she had not taken the smallest fancy to +Lilly Page. + +Her relationship to the young naval officer, however, made a wonderful +difference in the attitude of Mrs. Page and Lilly toward the party. Katy +became a person to be cultivated rather than repressed, and +thenceforward there was no lack of cordiality on their part. + +"I want to come in and have a good talk," said Lilly, slipping her arm +through Katy's as they left the dining-room. "Mayn't I come now while +mamma is calling on Mrs. Ashe?" This arrangement brought her to the side +of Lieutenant Worthington, and she walked between him and Katy down the +hall and into the little drawing-room. + +"Oh, how perfectly charming! You have been fixing up ever since you +came, haven't you? It looks like home. I wish we had a _salon_, but +mamma thought it wasn't worth while, as we were only to be here such a +little time. What a delicious balcony over the water, too! May I go out +on it? Oh, Mr. Worthington, do see this!" + +She pushed open the half-closed window and stepped out as she spoke. Mr. +Worthington, after hesitating a moment, followed. Katy paused uncertain. +There was hardly room for three in the balcony, yet she did not quite +like to leave them. But Lilly had turned her back, and was talking in a +low tone; it was nothing more in reality than the lightest chit-chat, +but it had the air of being something confidential; so Katy, after +waiting a little while, retreated to the sofa, and took up her work, +joining now and then in the conversation which Mrs. Ashe was keeping up +with Cousin Olivia. She did not mind Lilly's ill-breeding, nor was she +surprised at it. Mrs. Ashe was less tolerant. + +"Isn't it rather damp out there, Ned?" she called to her brother; "you +had better throw my shawl round Miss Page's shoulders." + +"Oh, it isn't a bit damp," said Lilly, recalled to herself by this broad +hint. "Thank you so much for thinking of it, Mrs. Ashe, but I am just +coming in." She seated herself beside Katy, and began to question her +rather languidly. + +"When did you leave home, and how were they all when you came away?" + +"All well, thank you. We sailed from Boston on the 14th of October; and +before that I spent two days with Rose Red,--you remember her? She is +married now, and has the dearest little home and such a darling baby." + +"Yes, I heard of her marriage. It didn't seem much of a match for Mr. +Redding's daughter to make, did it? I never supposed she would be +satisfied with anything less than a member of Congress or a Secretary of +Legation." + +"Rose isn't particularly ambitious, I think, and she seems perfectly +happy," replied Katy, flushing. + +"Oh, you needn't fire up in her defence; you and Clover always did adore +Rose Red, I know, but I never could see what there was about her that +was so wonderfully fascinating. She never had the least style, and she +was always just as rude to me as she could be." + +"You were not intimate at school, but I am sure Rose was never rude," +said Katy, with spirit. + +"Well, we won't fight about her at this late day. Tell me where you have +been, and where you are going, and how long you are to stay in Europe." + +Katy, glad to change the subject, complied, and the conversation +diverged into comparison of plans and experiences. Lilly had been in +Europe nearly a year, and had seen "almost everything," as she phrased +it. She and her mother had spent the previous winter in Italy, had taken +a run into Russia, "done" Switzerland and the Tyrol thoroughly, and +France and Germany, and were soon going into Spain, and from there to +Paris, to shop in preparation for their return home in the spring. + +"Of course we shall want quantities of things," she said. "No one will +believe that we have been abroad unless we bring home a lot of clothes. +The _lingerie_ and all that is ordered already; but the dresses must be +made at the last moment, and we shall have a horrid time of it, I +suppose. Worth has promised to make me two walking-suits and two +ball-dresses, but he's very bad about keeping his word. Did you do much +when you were in Paris, Katy?" + +"We went to the Louvre three times, and to Versailles and St. Cloud," +said Katy, wilfully misunderstanding her. + +"Oh, I didn't mean that kind of stupid thing; I meant gowns. What +did you buy?" + +"One tailor-made suit of dark blue cloth." + +"My! what moderation!" + +Shopping played a large part in Lilly's reminiscences. She recollected +places, not from their situation or beauty or historical associations, +or because of the works of art which they contained, but as the places +where she bought this or that. + +"Oh, that dear Piazza di Spagna!" she would say; "that was where I +found my rococo necklace, the loveliest thing you ever saw, Katy." Or, +"Prague--oh yes, mother got the most enchanting old silver chatelaine +there, with all kinds of things hanging to it,--needlecases and watches +and scent-bottles, all solid, and so beautifully chased." Or again, +"Berlin was horrid, we thought; but the amber is better and cheaper +than anywhere else,--great strings of beads, of the largest size and +that beautiful pale yellow, for a hundred francs. You must get yourself +one, Katy." + +Poor Lilly! Europe to her was all "things." She had collected trunks +full of objects to carry home, but of the other collections which do not +go into trunks, she had little or none. Her mind was as empty, her heart +as untouched as ever; the beauty and the glory and the pathos of art and +history and Nature had been poured out in vain before her closed and +indifferent eyes. + +Life soon dropped into a peaceful routine at the Pension Suisse, which +was at the same time restful and stimulating. Katy's first act in the +morning, as soon as she opened her eyes, was to hurry to the window in +hopes of getting a glimpse of Corsica. She had discovered that this +elusive island could almost always be seen from Nice at the dawning, but +that as soon as the sun was fairly up, it vanished to appear no more for +the rest of the day. There was something fascinating to her imagination +in the hovering mountain outline between sea and sky. She felt as if she +were under an engagement to be there to meet it, and she rarely missed +the appointment. Then, after Corsica had pulled the bright mists over +its face and melted from view, she would hurry with her dressing, and as +soon as was practicable set to work to make the _salon_ look bright +before the coffee and rolls should appear, a little after eight o'clock. +Mrs. Ashe always found the fire lit, the little meal cosily set out +beside it, and Katy's happy untroubled face to welcome her when she +emerged from her room; and the cheer of these morning repasts made a +good beginning for the day. + +Then came walking and a French lesson, and a long sitting on the beach, +while Katy worked at her home letters and Amy raced up and down in the +sun; and then toward noon Lieutenant Ned generally appeared, and some +scheme of pleasure was set on foot. Mrs. Ashe ignored his evident +_penchant_ for Lilly Page, and claimed his time and attentions as hers +by right. Young Worthington was a good deal "taken" with the pretty +Lilly; still, he had an old-time devotion for his sister and the habit +of doing what she desired, and he yielded to her behests with no audible +objections. He made a fourth in the carriage while they drove over the +lovely hills which encircle Nice toward the north, to Cimiers and the +Val de St. Andre, or down the coast toward Ventimiglia. He went with +them to Monte-Carlo and Mentone, and was their escort again and again +when they visited the great war-ships as they lay at anchor in a bay +which in its translucent blue was like an enormous sapphire. + +Mrs. Page and her daughter were included in these parties more than +once; but there was something in Mrs. Ashe's cool appropriation of her +brother which was infinitely vexatious to Lilly, who before her +arrival had rather looked upon Lieutenant Worthington as her own +especial property. + +"I wish _that_ Mrs. Ashe had stayed at home," she told her mother. "She +quite spoils everything. Mr. Worthington isn't half so nice as he was +before she came. I do believe she has a plan for making him fall in love +with Katy; but there she makes a miss of it, for he doesn't seem to care +anything about her." + +"Katy is a nice girl enough," pronounced her mother, "but not of the +sort to attract a gay young man, I should fancy. I don't believe _she_ +is thinking of any such thing. You needn't be afraid, Lilly." + +"I'm not afraid," said Lilly, with a pout; "only it's so provoking." + +Mrs. Page was quite right. Katy was not thinking of any such thing. She +liked Ned Worthington's frank manners; she owned, quite honestly, that +she thought him handsome, and she particularly admired the sort of +deferential affection which he showed to Mrs. Ashe, and his nice ways +with Amy. For herself, she was aware that he scarcely noticed her except +as politeness demanded that he should be civil to his sister's friend; +but the knowledge did not trouble her particularly. Her head was full of +interesting things, plans, ideas. She was not accustomed to being made +the object of admiration, and experienced none of the vexations of a +neglected belle. If Lieutenant Worthington happened to talk to her, she +responded frankly and freely; if he did not, she occupied herself with +something else; in either case she was quite unembarrassed both in +feeling and manner, and had none of the awkwardness which comes from +disappointed vanity and baffled expectations, and the need for +concealing them. + +Toward the close of December the officers of the flag-ship gave a ball, +which was the great event of the season to the gay world of Nice. +Americans were naturally in the ascendant on an American frigate; and of +all the American girls present, Lilly Page was unquestionably the +prettiest. Exquisitely dressed in white lace, with bands of turquoises +on her neck and arms and in her hair, she had more partners than she +knew what to do with, more bouquets than she could well carry, and +compliments enough to turn any girl's head. Thrown off her guard by her +triumphs, she indulged a little vindictive feeling which had been +growing in her mind of late on account of what she chose to consider +certain derelictions of duty on the part of Lieutenant Worthington, and +treated him to a taste of neglect. She was engaged three deep when he +asked her to dance; she did not hear when he invited her to walk; she +turned a cold shoulder when he tried to talk, and seemed absorbed by the +other cavaliers, naval and otherwise, who crowded about her. + +Piqued and surprised, Ned Worthington turned to Katy. She did not dance, +saying frankly that she did not know how and was too tall; and she was +rather simply dressed in a pearl-gray silk, which had been her best gown +the winter before in Burnet, with a bunch of red roses in the white lace +of the tucker, and another in her hand, both the gifts of little Amy; +but she looked pleasant and serene, and there was something about her +which somehow soothed his disturbed mind, as he offered her his arm for +a walk on the decks. + +For a while they said little, and Katy was quite content to pace up and +down in silence, enjoying the really beautiful scene,--the moonlight on +the Bay, the deep wavering reflections of the dark hulls and slender +spars, the fairy effect of the colored lamps and lanterns, and the +brilliant moving maze of the dancers. + +"Do you care for this sort of thing?" he suddenly asked. + +"What sort of thing do you mean?" + +"Oh, all this jigging and waltzing and amusement." + +"I don't know how to 'jig,' but it's delightful to look on," she +answered merrily. "I never saw anything so pretty in my life." + +The happy tone of her voice and the unruffled face which she turned upon +him quieted his irritation. + +"I really believe you mean it," he said; "and yet, if you won't think me +rude to say so, most girls would consider the thing dull enough if they +were only getting out of it what you are,--if they were not dancing, I +mean, and nobody in particular was trying to entertain them." + +"But everything _is_ being done to entertain me," cried Katy. "I can't +imagine what makes you think that it could seem dull. I am in it all, +don't you see,--I have my share--. Oh, I am stupid, I can't make you +understand." + +"Yes, you do. I understand perfectly, I think; only it is such a +different point of view from what girls in general would take." (By +girls he meant Lilly!) "Please do not think me uncivil." + +"You are not uncivil at all; but don't let us talk any more about me. +Look at the lights between the shadows of the masts on the water. How +they quiver! I never saw anything so beautiful, I think. And how warm it +is! I can't believe that we are in December and that it is nearly +Christmas." + +"How is Polly going to celebrate her Christmas? Have you decided?" + +"Amy is to have a Christmas-tree for her dolls, and two other dolls are +coming. We went out this morning to buy things for it,--tiny little toys +and candles fit for Lilliput. And that reminds me, do you suppose one +can get any Christmas greens here?" + +"Why not? The place seems full of green." + +"That's just it; the summer look makes it unnatural. But I should like +some to dress the parlor with if they could be had." + +"I'll see what I can find, and send you a load." + +I don't know why this very simple little talk should have made an +impression on Lieutenant Worthington's mind, but somehow he did not +forget it. + +"'Don't let us talk any more about me,'" he said to himself that night +when alone in his cabin. "I wonder how long it would be before the other +one did anything to divert the talk from herself. Some time, I fancy." +He smiled rather grimly as he unbuckled his sword-belt. It is unlucky +for a girl when she starts a train of reflection like this. Lilly's +little attempt to pique her admirer had somehow missed its mark. + +The next afternoon Katy in her favorite place on the beach was at work +on the long weekly letter which she never failed to send home to Burnet. +She held her portfolio in her lap, and her pen ran rapidly over the +paper, as rapidly almost as her tongue would have run could her +correspondents have been brought nearer. + + + "Nice, December 22. + + "Dear Papa and everybody,--Amy and I are sitting on my old purple + cloak, which is spread over the sand just where it was spread the + last time I wrote you. We are playing the following game: I am a + fairy and she is a little girl. Another fairy--not sitting on the + cloak at present--has enchanted the little girl, and I am telling + her various ways by which she can work out her deliverance. At + present the task is to find twenty-four dull red pebbles of the same + color, failing to do which she is to be changed into an owl. When we + began to play, I was the wicked fairy; but Amy objected to that + because I am 'so nice,' so we changed the characters. I wish you + could see the glee in her pretty gray eyes over this infantile game, + into which she has thrown herself so thoroughly that she half + believes in it. 'But I needn't really be changed into an owl! 'she + says, with a good deal of anxiety in her voice. + + "To think that you are shivering in the first snow-storm, or sending + the children out with their sleds and india-rubbers to slide! How I + wish instead that you were sharing the purple cloak with Amy and me, + and could sit all this warm balmy afternoon close to the surf-line + which fringes this bluest of blue seas! There is plenty of room for + you all. Not many people come down to this end of the beach, and if + you were very good we would let you play. + + "Our life here goes on as delightfully as ever. Nice is very full of + people, and there seem to be some pleasant ones among them. Here at + the Pension Suisse we do not see a great many Americans. The + fellow-boarders are principally Germans and Austrians with a + sprinkling of French. (Amy has found her twenty-four red pebbles, so + she is let off from being an owl. She is now engaged in throwing + them one by one into the sea. Each must hit the water under penalty + of her being turned into a Muscovy duck. She doesn't know exactly + what a Muscovy duck is, which makes her all the more particular + about her shots.) But, as I was saying, our little _suite_ in the + round tower is so on one side of the rest of the Pension that it is + as good as having a house of our own. The _salon_ is very bright and + sunny; we have two sofas and a square table and a round table and a + sort of what-not and two easy-chairs and two uneasy chairs and a + lamp of our own and a clock. There is also a sofa-pillow. There's + richness for you! We have pinned up all our photographs on the + walls, including Papa's and Clovy's and that bad one of Phil and + Johnnie making faces at each other, and three lovely red and yellow + Japanese pictures on muslin which Rose Red put in my trunk the last + thing, for a spot of color. There are some autumn leaves too; and we + always have flowers and in the mornings and evenings a fire. + + "Amy is now finding fifty snow-white pebbles, which when found are + to be interred in one common grave among the shingle. If she fails + to do this, she is to be changed to an electrical eel. The chief + difficulty is that she loses her heart to particular pebbles. 'I + can't bury you,' I hear her saying. + + "To return,--we have jolly little breakfasts together in the + _salon_. They consist of coffee and rolls, and are served by a + droll, snappish little _garcon_ with no teeth, and an Italian-French + patois which is very hard to understand when he sputters. He told me + the other day that he had been a _garcon_ for forty-six years, which + seemed rather a long boyhood. + + "The company, as we meet them at table, are rather entertaining. + Cousin Olivia and Lilly are on their best behavior to me because I + am travelling with Mrs. Ashe, and Mrs. Ashe is Lieutenant + Worthington's sister, and Lieutenant Worthington is Lilly's admirer, + and they like him very much. In fact, Lilly has intimated + confidentially that she is all but engaged to him; but I am not sure + about it, or if that was what she meant; and I fear, if it proves + true, that dear Polly will not like it at all. She is quite + unmanageable, and snubs Lilly continually in a polite way, which + makes me fidgety for fear Lilly will be offended, but she never + seems to notice it. Cousin Olivia looks very handsome and gorgeous. + She quite takes the color out of the little Russian Countess who + sits next to her, and who is as dowdy and meek as if she came from + Akron or Binghampton, or any other place where countesses are + unknown. Then there are two charming, well-bred young Austrians. The + one who sits nearest to me is a 'Candidat' for a Doctorate of Laws, + and speaks eight languages well. He has only studied English for the + past six weeks, but has made wonderful progress. I wish my French + were half as good as his English is already. + + "There is a very gossiping young woman on the story beneath ours, + whom I meet sometimes in the garden, and from her I hear all manner + of romantic tales about people in the house. One little French girl + is dying of consumption and a broken heart, because of a quarrel + with her lover, who is a courier; and the _padrona_, who is young + and pretty, and has only been married a few months to our elderly + landlord, has a story also. I forget some of the details; but there + was a stern parent and an admirer, and a cup of cold poison, and now + she says she wishes she were dying of consumption like poor + Alphonsine. For all that, she looks quite fat and rosy, and I often + see her in her best gown with a great deal of Roman scarf and mosaic + jewelry, stationed in the doorway, 'making the Pension look + attractive to the passers-by.' So she has a sense of duty, though + she is unhappy. + + "Amy has buried all her pebbles, and says she is tired of playing + fairy. She is now sitting with her head on my shoulder, and + professedly studying her French verb for to-morrow, but in reality, + I am sorry to say, she is conversing with me about be-headings,--a + subject which, since her visit to the Tower, has exercised a + horrible fascination over her mind. 'Do people die right away?' she + asks. 'Don't they feel one minute, and doesn't it feel awfully?' + There is a good deal of blood, she supposes, because there was so + much straw laid about the block in the picture of Lady Jane Gray's + execution, which enlivened our walls in Paris. On the whole, I am + rather glad that a fat little white dog has come waddling down the + beach and taken off her attention. + + "Speaking of Paris seems to renew the sense of fog which we had + there. Oh, how enchanting sunshine is after weeks of gloom! I shall + never forget how the Mediterranean looked when we saw it first,--all + blue, and such a lovely color. There ought, according to Morse's + Atlas, to have been a big red letter T on the water about where we + were, but I didn't see any. Perhaps they letter it so far out from + shore that only people in boats notice it. + + "Now the dusk is fading, and the odd chill which hides under these + warm afternoons begins to be felt. Amy has received a message + written on a mysterious white pebble to the effect--" + +Katy was interrupted at this point by a crunching step on the gravel +behind her. + +"Good afternoon," said a voice. "Polly has sent me to fetch you and Amy +in. She says it is growing cool." + +"We were just coming," said Katy, beginning to put away her papers. + +Ned Worthington sat down on the cloak beside her. The distance was now +steel gray against the sky; then came a stripe of violet, and then a +broad sheet of the vivid iridescent blue which one sees on the necks of +peacocks, which again melted into the long line of flashing surf. + +"See that gull," he said, "how it drops plumb into the sea, as if bound +to go through to China!" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne calls skylarks 'little raptures,'" replied Katy. +"Sea-gulls seem to me like grown-up raptures." + +"Are you going?" said Lieutenant Worthington in a tone of surprise, +as she rose. + +"Didn't you say that Polly wanted us to come in?" + +"Why, yes; but it seems too good to leave, doesn't it? Oh, by the way, +Miss Carr, I came across a man to-day and ordered your greens. They will +be sent on Christmas Eve. Is that right?" + +"Quite right, and we are ever so much obliged to you." She turned for a +last look at the sea, and, unseen by Ned Worthington, formed her lips +into a "good-night." Katy had made great friends with the Mediterranean. + +The promised "greens" appeared on the afternoon before Christmas Day, in +the shape of an enormous fagot of laurel and laurestinus and holly and +box; orange and lemon boughs with ripe fruit hanging from them, thick +ivy tendrils whole yards long, arbutus, pepper tree, and great branches +of acacia, covered with feathery yellow bloom. The man apologized for +bringing so little. The gentleman had ordered two francs worth, he said, +but this was all he could carry; he would fetch some more if the young +lady wished! But Katy, exclaiming with delight over her wealth, wished +no more; so the man departed, and the three friends proceeded to turn +the little _salon_ into a fairy bower. Every photograph and picture was +wreathed in ivy, long garlands hung on either side the windows, and the +chimney-piece and door-frames became clustering banks of leaf and +blossom. A great box of flowers had come with the greens, and bowls of +fresh roses and heliotrope and carnations were set everywhere; violets +and primroses, gold-hearted brown auriculas, spikes of veronica, all the +zones and all the seasons, combining to make the Christmas-tide sweet, +and to turn winter topsy-turvy in the little parlor. + +Mabel and Mary Matilda, with their two doll visitors, sat gravely round +the table, in the laps of their little mistresses; and Katy, putting on +an apron and an improvised cap, and speaking Irish very fast, served +them with a repast of rolls and cocoa, raspberry jam, and delicious +little almond cakes. The fun waxed fast and furious; and Lieutenant +Worthington, coming in with his hands full of parcels for the +Christmas-tree, was just in time to hear Katy remark in a strong County +Kerry brogue,-- + +"Och, thin indade, Miss Amy, and it's no more cake you'll be getting out +of me the night. That's four pieces you've ate, and it's little slape +your poor mother'll git with you a tossin' and tumblin' forenenst her +all night long because of your big appetite." + +"Oh, Miss Katy, talk Irish some more!" cried the delighted children. + +"Is it Irish you'd be afther having me talk, when it's me own langwidge, +and sorrow a bit of another do I know?" demanded Katy. Then she caught +sight of the new arrival and stopped short with a blush and a laugh. + +"Come in, Mr. Worthington," she said; "we're at supper, as you see, and +I am acting as waitress." + +"Oh, Uncle Ned, please go away," pleaded Amy, "or Katy will be polite, +and not talk Irish any more." + +"Indade, and the less ye say about politeness the betther, when ye're +afther ordering the jantleman out of the room in that fashion!" said the +waitress. Then she pulled off her cap and untied her apron. + +"Now for the Christmas-tree," she said. + +It was a very little tree, but it bore some remarkable fruits; for in +addition to the "tiny toys and candles fit for Lilliput," various +parcels were found to have been hastily added at the last moment for +various people. The "Natchitoches" had lately come from the Levant, and +delightful Oriental confections now appeared for Amy and Mrs. Ashe; +Turkish slippers, all gold embroidery; towels, with richly decorated +ends in silks and tinsel;--all the pretty superfluities which the East +holds out to charm gold from the pockets of her Western visitors. A +pretty little dagger in agate and silver fell to Katy's share out of +what Lieutenant Worthington called his "loot;" and beside, a most +beautiful specimen of the inlaid work for which Nice is famous,--a +looking-glass, with a stand and little doors to close it in,--which was +a present from Mrs. Ashe. It was quite unlike a Christmas Eve at home, +but altogether delightful; and as Katy sat next morning on the sand, +after the service in the English church, to finish her home letter, and +felt the sun warm on her cheek, and the perfumed air blow past as softly +as in June, she had to remind herself that Christmas is not necessarily +synonymous with snow and winter, but means the great central heat and +warmth, the advent of Him who came to lighten the whole earth. + +A few days after this pleasant Christmas they left Nice. All of them +felt a reluctance to move, and Amy loudly bewailed the necessity. + +"If I could stay here till it is time to go home, I shouldn't be +homesick at all," she declared. + +"But what a pity it would be not to see Italy!" said her mother. "Think +of Naples and Rome and Venice." + +"I don't want to think about them. It makes me feel as if I was studying +a great long geography lesson, and it tires me so to learn it." + +"Amy, dear, you're not well." + +"Yes, I am,--quite well; only I don't want to go away from Nice." + +"You only have to learn a little bit at a time of your geography lesson, +you know," suggested Katy; "and it's a great deal nicer way to study it +than out of a book." But though she spoke cheerfully she was conscious +that she shared Amy's reluctance. + +"It's all laziness," she told herself. "Nice has been so pleasant that +it has spoiled me." + +It was a consolation and made going easier that they were to drive over +the famous Cornice Road as far as San Remo, instead of going to Genoa +by rail as most travellers now-a-days do. They departed from the +Pension Suisse early on an exquisite morning, fair and balmy as June, +but with a little zest and sparkle of coolness in the air which made it +additionally delightful. The Mediterranean was of the deepest +violet-blue; a sort of bloom of color seemed to lie upon it. The sky +was like an arch of turquoise; every cape and headland shone jewel-like +in the golden sunshine. The carriage, as it followed the windings of +the road cut shelf-like on the cliffs, seemed poised between earth and +heaven; the sea below, the mountain summits above, with a fairy world +of verdure between. The journey was like a dream of enchantment and +rapidly changing surprises; and when it ended in a quaint hostelry at +San Remo, with palm-trees feathering the Bordighera Point and Corsica, +for once seen by day, lying in bold, clear outlines against the sunset, +Katy had to admit to herself that Nice, much as she loved it, was not +the only, not even the most beautiful place in Europe. Already she felt +her horizon growing, her convictions changing; and who should say what +lay beyond? + +The next day brought them to Genoa, to a hotel once the stately palace +of an archbishop, where they were lodged, all three together, in an +enormous room, so high and broad and long that their three little +curtained beds set behind a screen of carved wood made no impression on +the space. There were not less than four sofas and double that number of +arm-chairs in the room, besides a couple of monumental wardrobes; but, +as Katy remarked, several grand pianos could still have been moved in +without anybody's feeling crowded. On one side of them lay the port of +Genoa, filled with craft from all parts of the world, and flying the +flags of a dozen different nations. From the other they caught glimpses +of the magnificent old city, rising in tier over tier of churches and +palaces and gardens; while nearer still were narrow streets, which +glittered with gold filigree and the shops of jewel-workers. And while +they went in and out and gazed and wondered, Lilly Page, at the Pension +Suisse, was saying,-- + +"I am so glad that Katy and _that_ Mrs. Ashe are gone. Nothing has been +so pleasant since they came. Lieutenant Worthington is dreadfully stiff +and stupid, and seems quite different from what he used to be. But now +that we have got rid of them it will all come right again." + +"I really don't think that Katy was to blame," said Mrs. Page. "She +never seemed to me to be making any effort to attract him." + +"Oh, Katy is sly," responded Lilly, vindictively. "She never _seems_ to +do anything, but somehow she always gets her own way. I suppose she +thought I didn't see her keeping him down there on the beach the other +day when he was coming in to call on us, but I did. It was just out of +spite, and because she wanted to vex me; I know it was." + +"Well, dear, she's gone now, and you won't be worried with her again," +said her mother, soothingly. "Don't pout so, Lilly, and wrinkle up your +forehead. It's very unbecoming." + +"Yes, she's gone," snapped Lilly; "and as she's bound for the East, and +we for the West, we are not likely to meet again, for which I am +devoutly thankful." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. + + +"We are going to follow the track of Ulysses," said Katy, with her eyes +fixed on the little travelling-map in her guide-book. "Do you realize +that, Polly dear? He and his companions sailed these very seas before +us, and we shall see the sights they saw,--Circe's Cape and the Isles of +the Sirens, and Polyphemus himself, perhaps, who knows?" + +The "Marco Polo" had just cast off her moorings, and was slowly steaming +out of the crowded port of Genoa into the heart of a still rosy sunset. +The water was perfectly smooth; no motion could be felt but the engine's +throb. The trembling foam of the long wake showed glancing points of +phosphorescence here and there, while low on the eastern sky a great +silver planet burned like a signal lamp. + +"Polyphemus was a horrible giant. I read about him once, and I don't +want to see him," observed Amy, from her safe protected perch in her +mother's lap. + +"He may not be so bad now as he was in those old times. Some missionary +may have come across him and converted him. If he were good, you +wouldn't mind his being big, would you?" suggested Katy. + +"N-o," replied Amy, doubtfully; "but it would take a great lot of +missionaries to make _him_ good, I should think. One all alone would be +afraid to speak to him. We shan't really see him, shall we?" + +"I don't believe we shall; and if we stuff cotton in our ears and look +the other way, we need not hear the sirens sing," said Katy, who was in +the highest spirits.--"And oh, Polly dear, there is one delightful thing +I forgot to tell you about. The captain says he shall stay in Leghorn +all day to-morrow taking on freight, and we shall have plenty of time to +run up to Pisa and see the Cathedral and the Leaning Tower and +everything else. Now, that is something Ulysses didn't do! I am so glad +I didn't die of measles when I was little, as Rose Red used to say." She +gave her book a toss into the air as she spoke, and caught it again as +it fell, very much as the Katy Carr of twelve years ago might have done. + +"What a child you are!" said Mrs. Ashe, approvingly; "you never seem out +of sorts or tired of things." + +"Out of sorts? I should think not! And pray why should I be, +Polly dear?" + +Katy had taken to calling her friend "Polly dear" of late,--a trick +picked up half unconsciously from Lieutenant Ned. Mrs. Ashe liked it; +it was sisterly and intimate, she said, and made her feel nearer +Katy's age. + +"Does the tower really lean?" questioned Amy,--"far over, I mean, so +that we can see it?" + +"We shall know to-morrow," replied Katy. "If it doesn't, I shall lose +all my confidence in human nature." + +Katy's confidence in human nature was not doomed to be impaired. There +stood the famous tower, when they reached the Place del Duomo in Pisa, +next morning, looking all aslant, exactly as it does in the pictures and +the alabaster models, and seeming as if in another moment it must topple +over, from its own weight, upon their heads. Mrs. Ashe declared that it +was so unnatural that it made her flesh creep; and when she was coaxed +up the winding staircase to the top, she turned so giddy that they were +all thankful to get her safely down to firm ground again. She turned her +back upon the tower, as they crossed the grassy space to the majestic +old Cathedral, saying that if she thought about it any more, she should +become a disbeliever in the attraction of gravitation, which she had +always been told all respectable people _must_ believe in. + +The guide showed them the lamp swinging by a long slender chain, before +which Galileo is said to have sat and pondered while he worked out his +theory of the pendulum. This lamp seemed a sort of own cousin to the +attraction of gravitation, and they gazed upon it with respect. Then +they went to the Baptistery to see Niccolo Pisano's magnificent pulpit +of creamy marble, a mass of sculpture supported on the backs of lions, +and the equally lovely font, and to admire the extraordinary sound +which their guide evoked from a mysterious echo, with which he seemed +to be on intimate terms, for he made it say whatever he would and +almost "answer back." + +It was in coming out of the Baptistery that they met with an adventure +which Amy could never quite forget. Pisa is the mendicant city of Italy, +and her streets are infested with a band of religious beggars who call +themselves the Brethren of the Order of Mercy. They wear loose black +gowns, sandals laced over their bare feet, and black cambric masks with +holes, through which their eyes glare awfully; and they carry tin cups +for the reception of offerings, which they thrust into the faces of all +strangers visiting the city, whom they look upon as their lawful prey. + +As our party emerged from the Baptistery, two of these Brethren espied +them, and like great human bats came swooping down upon them with long +strides, their black garments flying in the wind, their eyes rolling +strangely behind their masks, and brandishing their alms-cups, which had +"Pour les Pauvres" lettered upon them, and gave forth a clapping sound +like a watchman's rattle. There was something terrible in their +appearance and the rushing speed of their movements. Amy screamed and +ran behind her mother, who visibly shrank. Katy stood her ground; but +the bat-winged fiends in Dore's illustrations to Dante occurred to her, +and her fingers trembled as she dropped some money in the cups. + +Even mendicant friars are human. Katy ceased to tremble as she observed +that one of them, as he retreated, walked backward for some distance in +order to gaze longer at Mrs. Ashe, whose cheeks were flushed with bright +pink and who was looking particularly handsome. She began to laugh +instead, and Mrs. Ashe laughed too; but Amy could not get over the +impression of having been attacked by demons, and often afterward +recurred with a shudder to the time when those awful black _things_ flew +at her and she hid behind mamma. The ghastly pictures of the Triumph of +Death, which were presently exhibited to them on the walls of the Campo +Santo, did not tend to reassure her, and it was with quite a pale, +scared little face that she walked toward the hotel where they were to +lunch, and she held fast to Katy's hand. + +Their way led them through a narrow street inhabited by the poorer +classes,--a dusty street with high shabby buildings on either side and +wide doorways giving glimpses of interior courtyards, where empty +hogsheads and barrels and rusty caldrons lay, and great wooden trays of +macaroni were spread out in the sun to dry. Some of the macaroni was +gray, some white, some yellow; none of it looked at all desirable to +eat, as it lay exposed to the dust, with long lines of ill-washed +clothes flapping above on wires stretched from one house to another. As +is usual in poor streets, there were swarms of children; and the +appearance of little Amy with her long bright hair falling over her +shoulders and Mabel clasped in her arms created a great sensation. The +children in the street shouted and exclaimed, and other children within +the houses heard the sounds and came trooping out, while mothers and +older sisters peeped from the doorways. The very air seemed full of +eager faces and little brown and curly heads bobbing up and down with +excitement, and black eyes all fixed upon big beautiful Mabel, who with +her thick wig of flaxen hair, her blue velvet dress and jacket, +feathered hat, and little muff, seemed to them like some strange small +marvel from another world. They could not decide whether she was a +living child or a make-believe one, and they dared not come near enough +to find out; so they clustered at a little distance, pointed with their +fingers, and whispered and giggled, while Amy, much pleased with the +admiration shown for her darling, lifted Mabel up to view. + +At last one droll little girl with a white cap on her round head seemed +to make up _her_ mind, and darting indoors returned with her doll,--a +poor little image of wood, its only garment a coarse shirt of red +cotton. This she held out for Amy to see. Amy smiled for the first time +since her encounter with the bat-like friars; and Katy, taking Mabel +from her, made signs that the two dolls should kiss each other. But +though the little Italian screamed with laughter at the idea of a +_bacio_ between two dolls, she would by no means allow it, and hid her +treasure behind her back, blushing and giggling, and saying something +very fast which none of them understood, while she waved two fingers at +them with a curious gesture. + +"I do believe she is afraid Mabel will cast the evil eye on her doll," +said Katy at last, with a sudden understanding as to what this +pantomime meant. + +"Why, you silly thing!" cried the outraged Amy; "do you suppose for one +moment that my child could hurt your dirty old dolly? You ought to be +glad to have her noticed at all by anybody that's clean." + +The sound of the foreign tongue completed the discomfiture of the +little Italian. With a shriek she fled, and all the other children +after her; pausing at a distance to look back at the alarming creatures +who didn't speak the familiar language. Katy, wishing to leave a +pleasant impression, made Mabel kiss her waxen fingers toward them. +This sent the children off into another fit of laughter and chatter, +and they followed our friends for quite a distance as they proceeded on +their way to the hotel. + +All that night, over a sea as smooth as glass, the "Marco Polo" slipped +along the coasts past which the ships of Ulysses sailed in those old +legendary days which wear so charmed a light to our modern eyes. Katy +roused at three in the morning, and looking from her cabin window had a +glimpse of an island, which her map showed her must be Elba, where that +war-eagle Napoleon was chained for a while. Then she fell asleep again, +and when she roused in full daylight the steamer was off the coast of +Ostia and nearing the mouth of the Tiber. Dreamy mountain-shapes rose +beyond the far-away Campagna, and every curve and indentation of the +coast bore a name which recalled some interesting thing. + +About eleven a dim-drawn bubble appeared on the horizon, which the +captain assured them was the dome of St. Peter's, nearly thirty miles +distant. This was one of the "moments" which Clover had been fond of +speculating about; and Katy, contrasting the real with the imaginary +moment, could not help smiling. Neither she nor Clover had ever supposed +that her first glimpse of the great dome was to be so little impressive. + +On and on they went till the air-hung bubble disappeared; and Amy, grown +very tired of scenery with which she had no associations, and grown-up +raptures which she did not comprehend, squeezed herself into the end of +the long wooden settee on which Katy sat, and began to beg for another +story concerning Violet and Emma. + +"Just a little tiny chapter, you know, Miss Katy, about what they did on +New Year's Day or something. It's so dull to keep sailing and sailing +all day and have nothing to do, and it's ever so long since you told me +anything about them, really and truly it is!" + +Now, Violet and Emma, if the truth is to be told, had grown to be the +bane of Katy's existence. She had rung the changes on their uneventful +adventures, and racked her brains to invent more and more details, till +her imagination felt like a dry sponge from which every possible drop of +moisture had been squeezed. Amy was insatiable. Her interest in the tale +never flagged; and when her exhausted friend explained that she really +could not think of another word to say on the subject, she would turn +the tables by asking, "Then, Miss Katy, mayn't I tell _you_ a chapter?" +whereupon she would proceed somewhat in this fashion:-- + +"It was the day before Christmas--no, we won't have it the day before +Christmas; it shall be three days before Thanksgiving. Violet and Emma +got up in the morning, and--well, they didn't do anything in particular +that day. They just had their breakfasts and dinners, and played and +studied a little, and went to bed early, you know, and the next morning +--well, there didn't much happen that day, either; they just had their +breakfasts and dinners, and played." + +Listening to Amy's stories was so much worse than telling them to her, +that Katy in self-defence was driven to recommence her narrations, but +she had grown to hate Violet and Emma with a deadly hatred. So when Amy +made this appeal on the steamer's deck, a sudden resolution took +possession of her, and she decided to put an end to these dreadful +children once for all. + +"Yes, Amy," she said, "I will tell you one more story about Violet and +Emma; but this is positively the last." + +So Amy cuddled close to her friend, and listened with rapt attention as +Katy told how on a certain day just before the New Year, Violet and Emma +started by themselves in a little sleigh drawn by a pony, to carry to a +poor woman who lived in a lonely house high up on a mountain slope a +basket containing a turkey, a mould of cranberry jelly, a bunch of +celery, and a mince-pie. + +"They were so pleased at having all these nice things to take to poor +widow Simpson and in thinking how glad she would be to see them," +proceeded the naughty Katy, "that they never noticed how black the sky +was getting to be, or how the wind howled through the bare boughs of the +trees. They had to go slowly, for the road was up hill all the way, and +it was hard work for the poor pony. But he was a stout little fellow, +and tugged away up the slippery track, and Violet and Emma talked and +laughed, and never thought what was going to happen. Just half-way up +the mountain there was a rocky cliff which overhung the road, and on +this cliff grew an enormous hemlock tree. The branches were loaded with +snow, which made them much heavier than usual. Just as the sleigh passed +slowly underneath the cliff, a violent blast of wind blew up from the +ravine, struck the hemlock and tore it out of the ground, roots and all. +It fell directly across the sleigh, and Violet and Emma and the pony and +the basket with the turkey and the other things in it were all crushed +as flat as pancakes!" + +"Well," said Amy, as Katy stopped, "go on! what happened then?" + +"Nothing happened then," replied Katy, in a tone of awful solemnity; +"nothing could happen! Violet and Emma were dead, the pony was dead, the +things in the basket were broken all to little bits, and a great +snowstorm began and covered them up, and no one knew where they were or +what had become of them till the snow melted in the spring." + +With a loud shriek Amy jumped up from the bench. + +"No! no! no!" she cried; "they aren't dead! I won't let them be dead!" +Then she burst into tears, ran down the stairs, locked herself into her +mother's stateroom, and did not appear again for several hours. + +Katy laughed heartily at first over this outburst, but presently she +began to repent and to think that she had treated her pet unkindly. She +went down and knocked at the stateroom door; but Amy would not answer. +She called her softly through the key-hole, and coaxed and pleaded, but +it was all in vain. Amy remained invisible till late in the afternoon; +and when she finally crept up again to the deck, her eyes were red with +crying, and her little face as pale and miserable as if she had been +attending the funeral of her dearest friend. + +Katy's heart smote her. + +"Come here, my darling," she said, holding out her hand; "come and sit +in my lap and forgive me. Violet and Emma shall not be dead. They shall +go on living, since you care so much for them, and I will tell stories +about them to the end of the chapter." + +"No," said Amy, shaking her head mournfully; "you can't. They're dead, +and they won't come to life again ever. It's all over, and I'm so +so-o-rry." + +All Katy's apologies and efforts to resuscitate the story were useless. +Violet and Emma were dead to Amy's imagination, and she could not make +herself believe in them any more. + +She was too woe-begone to care for the fables of Circe and her swine +which Katy told as they rounded the magnificent Cape Circello, and the +isles where the sirens used to sing appealed to her in vain. The sun +set, the stars came out; and under the beams of their countless lamps +and the beckonings of a slender new moon, the "Marco Polo" sailed into +the Bay of Naples, past Vesuvius, whose dusky curl of smoke could be +seen outlined against the luminous sky, and brought her passengers to +their landing-place. + +They woke next morning to a summer atmosphere full of yellow sunshine +and true July warmth. Flower-vendors stood on every corner, and pursued +each newcomer with their fragrant wares. Katy could not stop exclaiming +over the cheapness of the flowers, which were thrust in at the carriage +windows as they drove slowly up and down the streets. They were tied +into flat nosegays, whose centre was a white camellia, encircled with +concentric rows of pink tea rosebuds, ring after ring, till the whole +was the size of an ordinary milk-pan; all to be had for the sum of ten +cents! But after they had bought two or three of these enormous +bouquets, and had discovered that not a single rose boasted an inch of +stem, and that all were pierced with long wires through their very +hearts, she ceased to care for them. + +"I would rather have one Souvenir or General Jacqueminot, with a long +stem and plenty of leaves, than a dozen of these stiff platters of +bouquets," Katy told Mrs. Ashe. But when they drove beyond the city +gates, and the coachman came to anchor beneath walls overhung with the +same roses, and she found that she might stand on the seat and pull down +as many branches of the lovely flowers as she desired, and gather +wallflowers for herself out of the clefts in the masonry, she was +entirely satisfied. + +"This is the Italy of my dreams," she said. + +With all its beauty there was an underlying sense of danger about +Naples, which interfered with their enjoyment of it. Evil smells came +in at the windows, or confronted them as they went about the city. +There seemed something deadly in the air. Whispered reports met their +ears of cases of fever, which the landlords of the hotels were doing +their best to hush up. An American gentleman was said to be lying very +ill at one house. A lady had died the week before at another. Mrs. Ashe +grew nervous. + +"We will just take a rapid look at a few of the principal things," she +told Katy, "and then get away as fast as we can. Amy is so on my mind +that I have no peace of my life. I keep feeling her pulse and imagining +that she does not look right; and though I know it is all my fancy, I am +impatient to be off. You won't mind, will you, Katy?" + +After that everything they did was done in a hurry. Katy felt as if she +were being driven about by a cyclone, as they rushed from one sight to +another, filling up all the chinks between with shopping, which was +irresistible where everything was so pretty and so wonderfully cheap. +She herself purchased a tortoise-shell fan and chain for Rose Red, and +had her monogram carved upon it; a coral locket for Elsie; some studs +for Dorry; and for her father a small, beautiful vase of bronze, copied +from one of the Pompeian antiques. + +"How charming it is to have money to spend in such a place as this!" she +said to herself with a sigh of satisfaction as she surveyed these +delightful buyings. "I only wish I could get ten times as many things +and take them to ten times as many people. Papa was so wise about it. I +can't think how it is that he always knows beforehand exactly how people +are going to feel, and what they will want!" + +Mrs. Ashe also bought a great many things for herself and Amy, and to +take home as presents; and it was all very pleasant and satisfactory +except for that subtle sense of danger from which they could not escape +and which made them glad to go. "See Naples and die," says the old +adage; and the saying has proved sadly true in the case of many an +American traveller. + +Beside the talk of fever there was also a good deal of gossip about +brigands going about, as is generally the case in Naples and its +vicinity. Something was said to have happened to a party on one of the +heights above Sorrento; and though nobody knew exactly what the +something was, or was willing to vouch for the story, Mrs. Ashe and +Katy felt a good deal of trepidation as they entered the carriage which +was to take them to the neighborhood where the mysterious "something" +had occurred. + +The drive between Castellamare and Sorrento is in reality as safe as +that between Boston and Brookline; but as our party did not know this +fact till afterward, it did them no good. It is also one of the most +beautiful drives in the world, following the windings of the exquisite +coast mile after mile, in long links of perfectly made road, carved on +the face of sharp cliffs, with groves of oranges and lemons and olive +orchards above, and the Bay of Naples beneath, stretching away like a +solid sheet of lapis-lazuli, and gemmed with islands of the most +picturesque form. + +It is a pity that so much beauty should have been wasted on Mrs. Ashe +and Katy, but they were too frightened to half enjoy it. Their carriage +was driven by a shaggy young savage, who looked quite wild enough to be +a bandit himself. He cracked his whip loudly as they rolled along, and +every now and then gave a long shrill whistle. Mrs. Ashe was sure that +these were signals to his band, who were lurking somewhere on the +olive-hung hillsides. She thought she detected him once or twice making +signs to certain questionable-looking characters as they passed; and she +fancied that the people they met gazed at them with an air of +commiseration, as upon victims who were being carried to execution. Her +fears affected Katy; so, though they talked and laughed, and made jokes +to amuse Amy, who must not be scared or led to suppose that anything was +amiss, and to the outward view seemed a very merry party, they were +privately quaking in their shoes all the way, and enjoying a deal of +highly superfluous misery. And after all they reached Sorrento in +perfect safety; and the driver, who looked so dangerous, turned out to +be a respectable young man enough, with a wife and family to support, +who considered a plateful of macaroni and a glass of sour red wine as +the height of luxury, and was grateful for a small gratuity of thirty +cents or so, which would enable him to purchase these dainties. Mrs. +Ashe had a very bad headache next day, to pay for her fright; but she +and Katy agreed that they had been very foolish, and resolved to pay no +more attention to unaccredited rumors or allow them to spoil their +enjoyment, which was a sensible resolution to make. + +Their hotel was perched directly over the sea. From the balcony of their +sitting-room they looked down a sheer cliff some sixty feet high, into +the water; their bedrooms opened on a garden of roses, with an orange +grove beyond. Not far from them was the great gorge which cuts the +little town of Sorrento almost in two, and whose seaward end makes the +harbor of the place. Katy was never tired of peering down into this +strange and beautiful cleft, whose sides, two hundred feet in depth, are +hung with vines and trailing growths of all sorts, and seem all +a-tremble with the fairy fronds of maiden-hair ferns growing out of +every chink and crevice. She and Amy took walks along the coast toward +Massa, to look off at the lovely island shapes in the bay, and admire +the great clumps of cactus and Spanish bayonet which grew by the +roadside; and they always came back loaded with orange-flowers, which +could be picked as freely as apple-blossoms from New England orchards in +the spring. The oranges themselves at that time of the year were very +sour, but they answered as well for a romantic date, "From an orange +grove," as if they had been the sweetest in the world. + +They made two different excursions to Pompeii, which is within easy +distance of Sorrento. They scrambled on donkeys over the hills, and had +glimpses of the far-away Calabrian shore, of the natural arch, and the +temples of Paestum shining in the sun many miles distant. On Katy's +birthday, which fell toward the end of January, Mrs. Ashe let her have +her choice of a treat; and she elected to go to the Island of Capri, +which none of them had seen. It turned out a perfect day, with sea and +wind exactly right for the sail, and to allow of getting into the famous +"Blue Grotto," which can only be entered under particular conditions of +tide and weather. And they climbed the great cliff-rise at the island's +end, and saw the ruins of the villa built by the wicked emperor +Tiberius, and the awful place known as his "Leap," down which, it is +said, he made his victims throw themselves; and they lunched at a hotel +which bore his name, and just at sunset pushed off again for the row +home over the charmed sea. This return voyage was almost the pleasantest +thing of all the day. The water was smooth, the moon at its full. It was +larger and more brilliant than American moons are, and seemed to possess +an actual warmth and color. The boatmen timed their oar-strokes to the +cadence of Neapolitan _barcaroles_ and folk-songs, full of rhythmic +movement, which seemed caught from the pulsing tides. And when at last +the bow grated on the sands of the Sorrento landing-place, Katy drew a +long, regretful breath, and declared that this was her best +birthday-gift of all, better than Amy's flowers, or the pretty +tortoise-shell locket that Mrs. Ashe had given her, better even than the +letter from home, which, timed by happy accident, had arrived by the +morning's post to make a bright opening for the day. + +All pleasant things must come to an ending. + +"Katy," said Mrs. Ashe, one afternoon in early February, "I heard some +ladies talking just now in the _salon_, and they said that Rome is +filling up very fast. The Carnival begins in less than two weeks, and +everybody wants to be there then. If we don't make haste, we shall not +be able to get any rooms." + +"Oh dear!" said Katy, "it is very trying not to be able to be in two +places at once. I want to see Rome dreadfully, and yet I cannot bear to +leave Sorrento. We have been very happy here, haven't we?" + +So they took up their wandering staves again, and departed for Rome, +like the Apostle, "not knowing what should befall them there." + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +A ROMAN HOLIDAY. + + +"Oh dear!" said Mrs. Ashe, as she folded her letters and laid them +aside, "I wish those Pages would go away from Nice, or else that the +frigates were not there." + +"Why! what's the matter?" asked Katy, looking up from the many-leaved +journal from Clover over which she was poring. + +"Nothing is the matter except that those everlasting people haven't gone +to Spain yet, as they said they would, and Ned seems to keep on seeing +them," replied Mrs. Ashe, petulantly. + +"But, dear Polly, what difference does it make? And they never did +promise you to go on any particular time, did they?" + +"N-o, they didn't; but I wish they would, all the same. Not that Ned is +such a goose as really to care anything for that foolish Lilly!" Then +she gave a little laugh at her own inconsistency, and added, "But I +oughtn't to abuse her when she is your cousin." + +"Don't mention it," said Katy, cheerfully. "But, really, I don't see why +poor Lilly need worry you so, Polly dear." + +The room in which this conversation took place was on the very topmost +floor of the Hotel del Hondo in Rome. It was large and many-windowed; +and though there was a little bed in one corner half hidden behind a +calico screen, with a bureau and washing-stand, and a sort of stout +mahogany hat-tree on which Katy's dresses and jackets were hanging, the +remaining space, with a sofa and easy-chairs grouped round a fire, and a +round table furnished with books and a lamp, was ample enough to make a +good substitute for the private sitting-room which Mrs. Ashe had not +been able to procure on account of the near approach of the Carnival and +the consequent crowding of strangers to Rome. In fact, she was assured +that under the circumstances she was lucky in finding rooms as good as +these; and she made the most of the assurance as a consolation for the +somewhat unsatisfactory food and service of the hotel, and the four long +flights of stairs which must be passed every time they needed to reach +the dining-room or the street door. + +The party had been in Rome only four days, but already they had seen a +host of interesting things. They had stood in the strange sunken space +with its marble floor and broken columns, which is all that is left of +the great Roman Forum. They had visited the Coliseum, at that period +still overhung with ivy garlands and trailing greeneries, and not, as +now, scraped clean and bare and "tidied" out of much of its +picturesqueness. They had seen the Baths of Caracalla and the Temple of +Janus and St. Peter's and the Vatican marbles, and had driven out on the +Campagna and to the Pamphili-Doria Villa to gather purple and red +anemones, and to the English cemetery to see the grave of Keats. They +had also peeped into certain shops, and attended a reception at the +American Minister's,--in short, like most unwarned travellers, they had +done about twice as much as prudence and experience would have +permitted, had those worthies been consulted. + +All the romance of Katy's nature responded to the fascination of the +ancient city,--the capital of the world, as it may truly be called. The +shortest drive or walk brought them face to face with innumerable and +unexpected delights. Now it was a wonderful fountain, with plunging +horses and colossal nymphs and Tritons, holding cups and horns from +which showers of white foam rose high in air to fall like rushing rain +into an immense marble basin. Now it was an arched doorway with +traceries as fine as lace,--sole-remaining fragment of a heathen temple, +flung and stranded as it were by the waves of time on the squalid shore +of the present. Now it was a shrine at the meeting of three streets, +where a dim lamp burned beneath the effigy of the Madonna, with always a +fresh rose beside it in a vase, and at its foot a peasant woman kneeling +in red bodice and blue petticoat, with a lace-trimmed towel folded over +her hair. Or again it would be a sunlit terrace lifted high on a +hillside, and crowded with carriages full of beautifully dressed people, +while below all Rome seemed spread out like a panorama, dim, mighty, +majestic, and bounded by the blue wavy line of the Campagna and the +Alban hills. Or perhaps it might be a wonderful double flight of steps +with massive balustrades and pillars with urns, on which sat a crowd of +figures in strange costumes and attitudes, who all looked as though they +had stepped out of pictures, but who were in reality models waiting for +artists to come by and engage them. No matter what it was,--a bit of +oddly tinted masonry with a tuft of brown and orange wallflowers hanging +upon it, or a vegetable stall where endive and chiccory and curly +lettuces were arranged in wreaths with tiny orange gourds and scarlet +peppers for points of color,--it was all Rome, and, by virtue of that +word, different from any other place,--more suggestive, more +interesting, ten times more mysterious than any other could possibly be, +so Katy thought. + +This fact consoled her for everything and anything,--for the fleas, the +dirt, for the queer things they had to eat and the still queerer odors +they were forced to smell! Nothing seemed of any particular consequence +except the deep sense of enjoyment, and the newly discovered world of +thought and sensation of which she had become suddenly conscious. + +The only drawback to her happiness, as the days went on, was that +little Amy did not seem quite well or like herself. She had taken a +cold on the journey from Naples, and though it did not seem serious, +that, or something, made her look pale and thin. Her mother said she +was growing fast, but the explanation did not quite account for the +wistful look in the child's eyes and the tired feeling of which she +continually complained. Mrs. Ashe, with vague uneasiness, began to talk +of cutting short their Roman stay and getting Amy off to the more +bracing air of Florence. But meanwhile there was the Carnival close at +hand, which they must by no means lose; and the feeling that their +opportunity might be a brief one made her and Katy all the more anxious +to make the very most of their time. So they filled the days full with +sights to see and things to do, and came and went; sometimes taking Amy +with them, but more often leaving her at the hotel under the care of a +kind German chambermaid, who spoke pretty good English and to whom Amy +had taken a fancy. + +"The marble things are so cold, and the old broken things make me so +sorry," she explained; "and I hate beggars because they are dirty, and +the stairs make my back ache; and I'd a great deal rather stay with +Maria and go up on the roof, if you don't mind, mamma." + +This roof, which Amy had chosen as a playplace, covered the whole of the +great hotel, and had been turned into a sort of upper-air garden by the +simple process of gravelling it all over, placing trellises of ivy here +and there, and setting tubs of oranges and oleanders and boxes of gay +geraniums and stock-gillyflowers on the balustrades. A tame fawn was +tethered there. Amy adopted him as a playmate; and what with his company +and that of the flowers, the times when her mother and Katy were absent +from her passed not unhappily. + +Katy always repaired to the roof as soon as they came in from their long +mornings and afternoons of sight-seeing. Years afterward, she would +remember with contrition how pathetically glad Amy always was to see +her. She would put her little head on Katy's breast and hold her tight +for many minutes without saying a word. When she did speak it was always +about the house and the garden that she talked. She never asked any +questions as to where Katy had been, or what she had done; it seemed to +tire her to think about it. + +"I should be very lonely sometimes if it were not for my dear little +fawn," she told Katy once. "He is so sweet that I don't miss you and +mamma very much while I have him to play with. I call him Florio,--don't +you think that is a pretty name? I like to stay with him a great deal +better than to go about with you to those nasty-smelling old churches, +with fleas hopping all over them!" + +So Amy was left in peace with her fawn, and the others made haste to see +all they could before the time came to go to Florence. + +[Illustration: Amy was left in peace with her fawn.] + +Katy realized one of the "moments" for which she had come to Europe when +she stood for the first time on the balcony overhanging the Corso, which +Mrs. Ashe had hired in company with some acquaintances made at the +hotel, and looked down at the ebb and surge of the just-begun Carnival. +The narrow street seemed humming with people of all sorts and +conditions. Some were masked; some were not. There were ladies and +gentlemen in fashionable clothes, peasants in the gayest costumes, +surprised-looking tourists in tall hats and linen dusters, harlequins, +clowns, devils, nuns, dominoes of every color,--red, white, blue, black; +while above, the balconies bloomed like a rose-garden with pretty faces +framed in lace veils or picturesque hats. Flowers were everywhere, +wreathed along the house-fronts, tied to the horses' ears, in ladies' +hands and gentlemen's button-holes, while venders went up and down the +street bearing great trays of violets and carnations and camellias for +sale. The air was full of cries and laughter, and the shrill calls of +merchants advertising their wares,--candy, fruit, birds, lanterns, and +_confetti_, the latter being merely lumps of lime, large or small, with +a pea or a bean embedded in each lump to give it weight. Boxes full of +this unpleasant confection were suspended in front of each balcony, with +tin scoops to use in ladling it out and flinging it about. Everybody +wore or carried a wire mask as protection against this white, incessant +shower; and before long the air became full of a fine dust which hung +above the Corso like a mist, and filled the eyes and noses and clothes +of all present with irritating particles. + +Pasquino's Car was passing underneath just as Katy and Mrs. Ashe +arrived,--a gorgeous affair, hung with silken draperies, and bearing as +symbol an enormous egg, in which the Carnival was supposed to be in act +of incubation. A huge wagon followed in its wake, on which was a house +some sixteen feet square, whose sole occupant was a gentleman attended +by five servants, who kept him supplied with _confetti_, which he +showered liberally on the heads of the crowd. Then came a car in the +shape of a steamboat, with a smoke-pipe and sails, over which flew the +Union Jack, and which was manned with a party wearing the dress of +British tars. The next wagon bore a company of jolly maskers equipped +with many-colored bladders, which they banged and rattled as they went +along. Following this was a troupe of beautiful circus horses, +cream-colored with scarlet trappings, or sorrel with blue, ridden by +ladies in pale green velvet laced with silver, or blue velvet and gold. +Another car bore a bird-cage which was an exact imitation of St. +Peter's, within which perched a lonely old parrot. This device evidently +had a political signification, for it was alternately hissed and +applauded as it went along. The whole scene was like a brilliant, +rapidly shifting dream; and Katy, as she stood with lips apart and eyes +wide open with wonderment and pleasure, forgot whether she was in the +body or not,--forgot everything except what was passing before her gaze. + +She was roused by a stinging shower of lime-dust. An Englishman in the +next balcony had take courteous advantage of her preoccupation, and had +flung a scoopful of _confetti_ in her undefended face! It is generally +Anglo-Saxons of the less refined class, English or Americans, who do +these things at Carnival times. The national love of a rough joke comes +to the surface, encouraged by the license of the moment, and all the +grace and prettiness of the festival vanish. Katy laughed, and dusted +herself as well as she could, and took refuge behind her mask; while a +nimble American boy of the party changed places with her, and +thenceforward made that particular Englishman his special target, plying +such a lively and adroit shovel as to make Katy's assailant rue the hour +when he evoked this national reprisal. His powdered head and rather +clumsy efforts to retaliate excited shouts of laughter from the +adjoining balconies. The young American, fresh from tennis and college +athletics, darted about and dodged with an agility impossible to his +heavily built foe; and each effective shot and parry on his side was +greeted with little cries of applause and the clapping of hands on the +part of those who were watching the contest. + +Exactly opposite them was a balcony hung with white silk, in which sat a +lady who seemed to be of some distinction; for every now and then an +officer in brilliant uniform, or some official covered with orders and +stars, would be shown in by her servants, bow before her with the utmost +deference, and after a little conversation retire, kissing her gloved +hand as he went. The lady was a beautiful person, with lustrous black +eyes and dark hair, over which a lace mantilla was fastened with diamond +stars. She wore pale blue with white flowers, and altogether, as Katy +afterward wrote to Clover, reminded her exactly of one of those +beautiful princesses whom they used to play about in their childhood and +quarrel over, because every one of them wanted to be the Princess and +nobody else. + +"I wonder who she is," said Mrs. Ashe in a low tone. "She might be +almost anybody from her looks. She keeps glancing across to us, Katy. Do +you know, I think she has taken a fancy to you." + +Perhaps the lady had; for just then she turned her head and said a word +to one of her footmen, who immediately placed something in her hand. It +was a little shining bonbonniere, and rising she threw it straight at +Katy. Alas! it struck the edge of the balcony and fell into the street +below, where it was picked up by a ragged little peasant girl in a red +jacket, who raised a pair of astonished eyes to the heavens, as if sure +that the gift must have fallen straight from thence. Katy bent forward +to watch its fate, and went through a little pantomime of regret and +despair for the benefit of the opposite lady, who only laughed, and +taking another from her servant flung with better aim, so that it fell +exactly at Katy's feet. This was a gilded box in the shape of a +mandolin, with sugar-plums tucked cunningly away inside. Katy kissed +both her hands in acknowledgment for the pretty toy, and tossed back a +bunch of roses which she happened to be wearing in her dress. After that +it seemed the chief amusement of the fair unknown to throw bonbons at +Katy. Some went straight and some did not; but before the afternoon +ended, Katy had quite a lapful of confections and trifles,--roses, +sugared almonds, a satin casket, a silvered box in the shape of a +horseshoe, a tiny cage with orange blossoms for birds on the perches, a +minute gondola with a _marron glacee_ by way of passenger, and, +prettiest of all, a little ivory harp strung with enamelled violets +instead of wires. For all these favors she had nothing better to offer, +in return, than a few long-tailed bonbons with gay streamers of ribbon. +These the lady opposite caught very cleverly, rarely missing one, and +kissing her hand in thanks each time. + +"Isn't she exquisite?" demanded Katy, her eyes shining with +excitement. "Did you ever see any one so lovely in your life, Polly +dear? I never did. There, now! she is buying those birds to set them +free, I do believe." + +It was indeed so. A vender of larks had, by the aid of a long staff, +thrust a cage full of wretched little prisoners up into the balcony; and +"Katy's lady," as Mrs. Ashe called her, was paying for the whole. As +they watched she opened the cage door, and with the sweetest look on her +face encouraged the birds to fly away. The poor little creatures cowered +and hesitated, not knowing at first what use to make of their new +liberty; but at last one, the boldest of the company, hopped to the door +and with a glad, exultant chirp flew straight upward. Then the others, +taking courage from his example, followed, and all were lost to view in +the twinkling of an eye. + +"Oh, you angel!" cried Katy, leaning over the edge of the balcony and +kissing both hands impulsively, "I never saw any one so sweet as you are +in my life. Polly dear, I think carnivals are the most perfectly +bewitching things in the world. How glad I am that this lasts a week, +and that we can come every day. Won't Amy be delighted with these +bonbons! I do hope my lady will be here tomorrow." + +How little she dreamed that she was never to enter that balcony again! +How little can any of us see what lies before us till it comes so near +that we cannot help seeing it, or shut our eyes, or turn away! + +The next morning, almost as soon as it was light, Mrs. Ashe tapped at +Katy's door. She was in her dressing-gown, and her eyes looked large and +frightened. + +"Amy is ill," she cried. "She has been hot and feverish all night, and +she says that her head aches dreadfully. What shall I do, Katy? We +ought to have a doctor at once, and I don't know the name even of any +doctor here." + +Katy sat up in bed, and for one bewildered moment did not speak. Her +brain felt in a whirl of confusion; but presently it cleared, and she +saw what to do. + +"I will write a note to Mrs. Sands," she said. Mrs. Sands was the wife +of the American Minister, and one of the few acquaintances they had +made since they came to Rome. "You remember how nice she was the other +day, and how we liked her; and she has lived here so long that of +course she must know all about the doctors. Don't you think that is the +best thing to do!" + +"The very best," said Mrs. Ashe, looking relieved. "I wonder I did not +think of it myself, but I am so confused that I can't think. Write the +note at once, please, dear Katy. I will ring your bell for you, and then +I must hurry back to Amy." + +Katy made haste with the note. The answer came promptly in half an hour, +and by ten o'clock the physician recommended appeared. Dr. Hilary was a +dark little Italian to all appearance; but his mother had been a +Scotch-woman, and he spoke English very well,--a great comfort to poor +Mrs. Ashe, who knew not a word of Italian and not a great deal of +French. He felt Amy's pulse for a long time, and tested her temperature; +but he gave no positive opinion, only left a prescription, and said that +he would call later in the day and should then be able to judge more +clearly what the attack was likely to prove. + +Katy augured ill from this reserve. There was no talk of going to the +Carnival that afternoon; no one had any heart for it. Instead, Katy +spent the time in trying to recollect all she had ever heard about the +care of sick people,--what was to be done first and what next,--and in +searching the shops for a feather pillow, which luxury Amy was +imperiously demanding. The pillows of Roman hotels are, as a general +thing, stuffed with wool, and very hard. + +"I won't have this horrid pillow any longer," poor Amy was screaming. +"It's got bricks in it. It hurts the back of my neck. Take it away, +mamma, and give me a nice soft American pillow. I won't have this a +minute longer. Don't you hear me, mamma! Take it away!" + +So, while Mrs. Ashe pacified Amy to the best of her ability, Katy +hurried out in quest of the desired pillow. It proved almost an +unattainable luxury; but at last, after a long search, she secured an +air-cushion, a down cushion about twelve inches square, and one old +feather pillow which had come from some auction, and had apparently lain +for years in the corner of the shop. When this was encased in a fresh +cover of Canton flannel, it did very well, and stilled Amy's complaints +a little; but all night she grew worse, and when Dr. Hilary came next +day, he was forced to utter plainly the dreaded words "Roman fever." Amy +was in for an attack,--a light one he hoped it might be,--but they had +better know the truth and make ready for it. + +Mrs. Ashe was utterly overwhelmed by this verdict, and for the first +bewildered moments did not know which way to turn. Katy, happily, kept +a steadier head. She had the advantage of a little preparation of +thought, and had decided beforehand what it would be necessary to do +"in case." Oh, that fateful "in case"! The doctor and she consulted +together, and the result was that Katy sought out the padrona of the +establishment, and without hinting at the nature of Amy's attack, +secured some rooms just vacated, which were at the end of a corridor, +and a little removed from the rooms of other people. There was a large +room with corner windows, a smaller one opening from it, and another, +still smaller, close by, which would serve as a storeroom or might do +for the use of a nurse. + +These rooms, without much consultation with Mrs. Ashe,--who seemed +stunned and sat with her eyes fixed on Amy, just answering, "Certainly, +dear, anything you say," when applied to,--Katy had arranged according +to her own ideas of comfort and hygienic necessity, as learned from Miss +Nightingale's excellent little book on nursing. From the larger room she +had the carpet, curtains, and nearly all the furniture taken away, the +floor scrubbed with hot soapsuds, and the bed pulled out from the wall +to allow of a free circulation of air all round it. The smaller one she +made as comfortable as possible for the use of Mrs. Ashe, choosing for +it the softest sofa and the best mattresses that were obtainable; for +she knew that her friend's strength was likely to be severely tried if +Amy's illness proved serious. When all was ready, Amy, well wrapped in +her coverings, was carried down the entry and laid in the fresh bed with +the soft pillows about her; and Katy, as she went to and fro, conveying +clothes and books and filling drawers, felt that they were perhaps +making arrangements for a long, hard trial of faith and spirits. + +By the next day the necessity of a nurse became apparent, and in the +afternoon Katy started out in a little hired carriage in search of one. +She had a list of names, and went first to the English nurses; but +finding them all engaged, she ordered the coachman to drive to a convent +where there was hope that a nursing sister might be procured. + +Their route lay across the Corso. So utterly had the Carnival with all +its gay follies vanished from her mind, that she was for a moment +astonished at finding herself entangled in a motley crowd, so dense +that the coachman was obliged to rein in his horses and stand still for +some time. + +There were the same masks and dominos, the same picturesque peasant +costumes which had struck her as so gay and pretty only three days +before. The same jests and merry laughter filled the air, but somehow +it all seemed out of tune. The sense of cold, lonely fear that had +taken possession of her killed all capacity for merriment; the +apprehension and solicitude of which her heart was full made the gay +chattering and squeaking of the crowd sound harsh and unfeeling. The +bright colors affronted her dejection; she did not want to see them. +She lay back in the carriage, trying to be patient under the detention, +and half shut her eyes. + +A shower of lime dust aroused her. It came from a party of burly figures +in white cotton dominos, whose carriage had been stayed by the crowd +close to her own. She signified by gestures that she had no _confetti_ +and no protection, that she "was not playing," in fact; but her appeal +made no difference. The maskers kept on shovelling lime all over her +hair and person and the carriage, and never tired of the sport till an +opportune break in the procession enabled their vehicle to move on. + +Katy was shaking their largesse from her dress and parasol as well as +she could, when an odd gibbering sound close to her ear, and the +laughter of the crowd attracted her attention to the back of the +carriage. A masker attired as a scarlet devil had climbed into the hood, +and was now perched close behind her. She shook her head at him; but he +only shook his in return, and chattered and grimaced, and bent over till +his fiery mask almost grazed her shoulder. There was no hope but in good +humor, as she speedily realized; and recollecting that in her +shopping-bag one or two of the Carnival bonbons still remained, she took +these out and offered them in the hope of propitiating him. The fiend +bit one to insure that it was made of sugar and not lime, while the +crowd laughed more than ever; then, seeming satisfied, he made Katy a +little speech in rapid Italian, of which she did not comprehend a word, +kissed her hand, jumped down from the carriage and disappeared in the +crowd to her great relief. + +Presently after that the driver spied an opening, of which he took +advantage. They were across the Corso now, the roar and rush of the +Carnival dying into silence as they drove rapidly on; and Katy, as she +finished wiping away the last of the lime dust, wiped some tears from +her cheeks as well. + +"How hateful it all was!" she said to herself. Then she remembered a +sentence read somewhere, "How heavily roll the wheels of other people's +joys when your heart is sorrowful!" and she realized that it is true. + +The convent was propitious, and promised to send a sister next morning, +with the proviso that every second day she was to come back to sleep and +rest. Katy was too thankful for any aid to make objections, and drove +home with visions of saintly nuns with pure pale faces full of peace and +resignation, such as she had read of in books, floating before her eyes. + +Sister Ambrogia, when she appeared next day, did not exactly realize +these imaginations. She was a plump little person, with rosy cheeks, a +pair of demure black eyes, and a very obstinate mouth and chin. It soon +appeared that natural inclination combined with the rules of her convent +made her theory of a nurse's duties a very limited one. + +If Mrs. Ashe wished her to go down to the office with an order, she was +told: "We sisters care for the sick; we are not allowed to converse with +porters and hotel people." + +If Katy suggested that on the way home she should leave a prescription +at the chemist's, it was: "We sisters are for nursing only; we do not +visit shops." And when she was asked if she could make beef tea, she +replied calmly but decisively, "We sisters are not cooks." + +In fact, all that Sister Ambrogia seemed able or willing to do, beyond +the bathing of Amy's face and brushing her hair, which she accomplished +handily, was to sit by the bedside telling her rosary, or plying a +little ebony shuttle in the manufacture of a long strip of tatting. Even +this amount of usefulness was interfered with by the fact that Amy, who +by this time was in a semi-delirious condition, had taken an aversion to +her at the first glance, and was not willing to be left with her for a +single moment. + +"I won't stay here alone with Sister Embroidery," she would cry, if her +mother and Katy went into the next room for a moment's rest or a private +consultation; "I hate Sister Embroidery! Come back, mamma, come back +this moment! She's making faces at me, and chattering just like an old +parrot, and I don't understand a word she says. Take Sister Embroidery +away, mamma, I tell you! Don't you hear me? Come back, I say!" + +The little voice would be raised to a shrill scream; and Mrs. Ashe and +Katy, hurrying back, would find Amy sitting up on her pillow with wet, +scarlet-flushed cheeks and eyes bright with fever, ready to throw +herself out of bed; while, calm as Mabel, whose curly head lay on the +pillow beside her little mistress, Sister Ambrogia, unaware of the +intricacies of the English language, was placidly telling her beads and +muttering prayers to herself. Some of these prayers, I do not doubt, +related to Amy's recovery if not to her conversion, and were well meant; +but they were rather irritating under the circumstances! + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN. + + +When the first shock is over and the inevitable realized and accepted, +those who tend a long illness are apt to fall into a routine of life +which helps to make the days seem short. The apparatus of nursing is got +together. Every day the same things need to be done at the same hours +and in the same way. Each little appliance is kept at hand; and sad and +tired as the watchers may be, the very monotony and regularity of their +proceedings give a certain stay for their thoughts to rest upon. + +But there was little of this monotony to help Mrs. Ashe and Katy through +with Amy's illness. Small chance was there for regularity or exact +system; for something unexpected was always turning up, and needful +things were often lacking. The most ordinary comforts of the sick-room, +or what are considered so in America, were hard to come by, and much of +Katy's time was spent in devising substitutes to take their places. + +Was ice needed? A pailful of dirty snow would be brought in, full of +straws, sticks, and other refuse, which had apparently been scraped from +the surface of the street after a frosty night. Not a particle of it +could be put into milk or water; all that could be done was to make the +pail serve the purpose of a refrigerator, and set bowls and tumblers in +it to chill. + +Was a feeding-cup wanted? It came of a cumbrous and antiquated pattern, +which the infant Hercules may have enjoyed, but which the modern Amy +abominated and rejected. Such a thing as a glass tube could not be found +in all Rome. Bed-rests were unknown. Katy searched in vain for an +India-rubber hot-water bag. + +But the greatest trial of all was the beef tea. It was Amy's sole food, +and almost her only medicine; for Dr. Hilary believed in leaving Nature +pretty much to herself in cases of fever. The kitchen of the hotel sent +up, under that name, a mixture of grease and hot water, which could not +be given to Amy at all. In vain Katy remonstrated and explained the +process. In vain did she go to the kitchen herself to translate a +carefully written recipe to the cook, and to slip a shining five-franc +piece in his hand, which it was hoped would quicken his energies and +soften his heart. In vain did she order private supplies of the best of +beef from a separate market. The cooks stole the beef and ignored the +recipe; and day after day the same bottle-full of greasy liquid came +upstairs, which Amy would not touch, and which would have done her no +good had she swallowed it all. At last, driven to desperation, Katy +procured a couple of stout bottles, and every morning slowly and +carefully cut up two pounds of meat into small pieces, sealed the bottle +with her own seal ring, and sent it down to be boiled for a specified +time. This answered better, for the thieving cook dared not tamper with +her seal; but it was a long and toilsome process, and consumed more time +than she well knew how to spare,--for there were continual errands to be +done which no one could attend to but herself, and the interminable +flights of stairs taxed her strength painfully, and seemed to grow +longer and harder every day. + +At last a good Samaritan turned up in the shape of an American lady with +a house of her own, who, hearing of their plight from Mrs. Sands, +undertook to send each day a supply of strong, perfectly made beef tea, +from her own kitchen, for Amy's use. It was an inexpressible relief, and +the lightening of this one particular care made all the rest seem easier +of endurance. + +Another great relief came, when, after some delay, Dr. Hilary succeeded +in getting an English nurse to take the places of the unsatisfactory +Sister Ambrogia and her substitute, Sister Agatha, whom Amy in her +half-comprehending condition persisted in calling "Sister Nutmeg +Grater." Mrs. Swift was a tall, wiry, angular person, who seemed made of +equal parts of iron and whalebone. She was never tired; she could lift +anybody, do anything; and for sleep she seemed to have a sort of +antipathy, preferring to sit in an easy-chair and drop off into little +dozes, whenever it was convenient, to going regularly to bed for a +night's rest. + +Amy took to her from the first, and the new nurse managed her +beautifully. No one else could soothe her half so well during the +delirious period, when the little shrill voice seemed never to be still, +and went on all day and all night in alternate raving or screaming or, +what was saddest of all to hear, low pitiful moans. There was no +shutting in these sounds. People moved out of the rooms below and on +either side, because they could get no sleep; and till the arrival of +Nurse Swift, there was no rest for poor Mrs. Ashe, who could not keep +away from her darling for a moment while that mournful wailing sounded +in her ears. + +Somehow the long, dry Englishwoman seemed to have a mesmeric effect on +Amy, who was never quite so violent after she arrived. Katy was more +thankful for this than can well be told; for her great underlying +dread--a dread she dared not whisper plainly even to herself--was that +"Polly dear" might break down before Amy was better, and then what +_should_ they do? + +She took every care that was possible of her friend. She made her eat; +she made her lie down. She forced daily doses of quinine and port-wine +down her throat, and saved her every possible step. But no one, however +affectionate and willing, could do much to lift the crushing burden of +care, which was changing Mrs. Ashe's rosy fairness to wan pallor and +laying such dark shadows under the pretty gray eyes. She had taken small +thought of looks since Amy's illness. All the little touches which had +made her toilette becoming, all the crimps and fluffs, had disappeared; +yet somehow never had she seemed to Katy half so lovely as now in the +plain black gown which she wore all day long, with her hair tucked into +a knot behind her ears. Her real beauty of feature and outline seemed +only enhanced by the rigid plainness of her attire, and the charm of +true expression grew in her face. Never had Katy admired and loved her +friend so well as during those days of fatigue and wearing suspense, or +realized so strongly the worth of her sweetness of temper, her +unselfishness and power of devoting herself to other people. + +"Polly bears it wonderfully," she wrote her father; "she was all broken +down for the first day or two, but now her courage and patience are +surprising. When I think how precious Amy is to her and how lonely her +life would be if she were to die, I can hardly keep the tears out of my +eyes. But Polly does not cry. She is quiet and brave and almost cheerful +all the time, keeping herself busy with what needs to be done; she never +complains, and she looks--oh, so pretty! I think I never knew how much +she had in her before." + +All this time no word had come from Lieutenant Worthington. His sister +had written him as soon as Amy was taken ill, and had twice telegraphed +since, but no answer had been received, and this strange silence added +to the sense of lonely isolation and distance from home and help which +those who encounter illness in a foreign land have to bear. + +So first one week and then another wore themselves away somehow. The +fever did not break on the fourteenth day, as had been hoped, and must +run for another period, the doctor said; but its force was lessened, and +he considered that a favorable sign. Amy was quieter now and did not +rave so constantly, but she was very weak. All her pretty hair had been +shorn away, which made her little face look tiny and sharp. Mabel's +golden wig was sacrificed at the same time. Amy had insisted upon it, +and they dared not cross her. + +"She has got a fever, too, and it's a great deal badder than mine is," +she protested. "Her cheeks are as hot as fire. She ought to have ice on +her head, and how can she when her bang is so thick? Cut it all off, +every bit, and then I will let you cut mine." + +"You had better give ze child her way," said Dr. Hilary. "She's in no +state to be fretted with triffles [trifles, the doctor meant], and in ze +end it will be well; for ze fever infection might harbor in zat doll's +head as well as elsewhere, and I should have to disinfect it, which +would be bad for ze skin of her." + +"She isn't a doll," cried Amy, overhearing him; "she's my child, and you +sha'n't call her names." She hugged Mabel tight in her arms, and glared +at Dr. Hilary defiantly. + +So Katy with pitiful fingers slashed away at Mabel's blond wig till her +head was as bare as a billiard-ball; and Amy, quite content, patted her +child while her own locks were being cut, and murmured, "Perhaps your +hair will all come out in little round curls, darling, as Johnnie Carr's +did;" then she fell into one of the quietest sleeps she had yet had. + +It was the day after this that Katy, coming in from a round of errands, +found Mrs. Ashe standing erect and pale, with a frightened look in her +eyes, and her back against Amy's door, as if defending it from somebody. +Confronting her was Madame Frulini, the _padrona_ of the hotel. Madame's +cheeks were red, and her eyes bright and fierce; she was evidently in a +rage about something, and was pouring out a torrent of excited Italian, +with now and then a French or English word slipped in by way of +punctuation, and all so rapidly that only a trained ear could have +followed or grasped her meaning. + +"What is the matter?" asked Katy, in amazement. + +"Oh, Katy, I am so glad you have come," cried poor Mrs. Ashe. "I can +hardly understand a word that this horrible woman says, but I think she +wants to turn us out of the hotel, and that we shall take Amy to some +other place. It would be the death of her,--I know it would. I never, +never will go, unless the doctor says it is safe. I oughtn't to,--I +couldn't; she can't make me, can she, Katy?" + +"Madame," said Katy,--and there was a flash in her eyes before which the +landlady rather shrank,--"what is all this? Why do you come to trouble +madame while her child is so ill?" + +Then came another torrent of explanation which didn't explain; but Katy +gathered enough of the meaning to make out that Mrs. Ashe was quite +correct in her guess, and that Madame Frulini was requesting, nay, +insisting, that they should remove Amy from the hotel at once. There +were plenty of apartments to be had now that the Carnival was over, she +said,--her own cousin had rooms close by,--it could easily be arranged, +and people were going away from the Del Mondo every day because there +was fever in the house. Such a thing could not be, it should not +be,--the landlady's voice rose to a shriek, "the child must go!" + +"You are a cruel woman," said Katy, indignantly, when she had grasped +the meaning of the outburst. "It is wicked, it is cowardly, to come thus +and attack a poor lady under your roof who has so much already to bear. +It is her only child who is lying in there,--her only one, do you +understand, madame?--and she is a widow. What you ask might kill the +child. I shall not permit you or any of your people to enter that door +till the doctor comes, and then I shall tell him how you have behaved, +and we shall see what he will say." As she spoke she turned the key of +Amy's door, took it out and put it in her pocket, then faced the +_padrona_ steadily, looking her straight in the eyes. + +"Mademoiselle," stormed the landlady, "I give you my word, four people +have left this house already because of the noises made by little miss. +More will go. I shall lose my winter's profit,--all of it,--all; it will +be said there is fever at the Del Mondo,--no one will hereafter come to +me. There are lodgings plenty, comfortable,--oh, so comfortable! I will +not have my season ruined by a sickness; no, I will not!" + +Madame Frulini's voice was again rising to a scream. + +"Be silent!" said Katy, sternly; "you will frighten the child. I am +sorry that you should lose any customers, madame, but the fever is here +and we are here, and here we must stay till it is safe to go. The child +shall not be moved till the doctor gives permission. Money is not the +only thing in the world! Mrs. Ashe will pay anything that is fair to +make up your losses to you, but you must leave this room now, and not +return till Dr. Hilary is here." + +Where Katy found French for all these long coherent speeches, she could +never afterward imagine. She tried to explain it by saying that +excitement inspired her for the moment, but that as soon as the moment +was over the inspiration died away and left her as speechless and +confused as ever. Clover said it made her think of the miracle of +Balaam; and Katy merrily rejoined that it might be so, and that no +donkey in any age of the world could possibly have been more grateful +than was she for the sudden gift of speech. + +"But it is not the money,--it is my prestige," declared the landlady. + +"Thank Heaven! here is the doctor now," cried Mrs. Ashe. + +The doctor had in fact been standing in the doorway for several moments +before they noticed him, and had overheard part of the colloquy with +Madame Frulini. With him was some one else, at the sight of whom Mrs. +Ashe gave a great sob of relief. It was her brother, at last. + +When Italian meets Italian, then comes the tug of expletive. It did not +seem to take one second for Dr. Hilary to whirl the _padrona_ out into +the entry, where they could be heard going at each other like two +furious cats. Hiss, roll, sputter, recrimination, objurgation! In five +minutes Madame Frulini was, metaphorically speaking, on her knees, and +the doctor standing over her with drawn sword, making her take back +every word she had said and every threat she had uttered. + +"Prestige of thy miserable hotel!" he thundered; "where will that be +when I go and tell the English and Americans--all of whom I know, every +one!--how thou hast served a countrywoman of theirs in thy house? Dost +thou think thy prestige will help thee much when Dr. Hilary has fixed a +black mark on thy door! I tell thee no; not a stranger shalt thou have +next year to eat so much as a plate of macaroni under thy base roof! I +will advertise thy behavior in all the foreign papers,--in Figaro, in +Galignani, in the Swiss Times, and the English one which is read by all +the nobility, and the Heraldo of New York, which all Americans peruse--" + +"Oh, doctor--pardon me--I regret what I said--I am afflicted--" + +"I will post thee in the railroad stations," continued the doctor, +implacably; "I will bid my patients to write letters to all their +friends, warning them against thy flea-ridden Del Mondo; I will apprise +the steamboat companies at Genoa and Naples. Thou shalt see what comes +of it,--truly, thou shalt see." + +Having thus reduced Madame Frulini to powder, the doctor now +condescended to take breath and listen to her appeals for mercy; and +presently he brought her in with her mouth full of protestations and +apologies, and assurances that the ladies had mistaken her meaning, she +had only spoken for the good of all; nothing was further from her +intention than that they should be disturbed or offended in any way, and +she and all her household were at the service of "the little sick angel +of God." After which the doctor dismissed her with an air of +contemptuous tolerance, and laid his hand on the door of Amy's room. +Behold, it was locked! + +"Oh, I forgot," cried Katy, laughing; and she pulled the key out of +her pocket. + +"You are a hee-roine, mademoiselle," said Dr. Hilary. "I watched you as +you faced that tigress, and your eyes were like a swordsman's as he +regards his enemy's rapier." + +"Oh, she was so brave, and such a help!" said Mrs. Ashe, kissing her +impulsively. "You can't think how she has stood by me all through, Ned, +or what a comfort she has been." + +"Yes, I can," said Ned Worthington, with a warm, grateful look at Katy. +"I can believe anything good of Miss Carr." + +"But where have _you_ been all this time?" said Katy, who felt this +flood of compliment to be embarrassing; "we have so wondered at not +hearing from you." + +"I have been off on a ten-days' leave to Corsica for moufflon-shooting," +replied Mr. Worthington. "I only got Polly's telegrams and letters day +before yesterday, and I came away as soon as I could get my leave +extended. It was a most unlucky absence. I shall always regret it." + +"Oh, it is all right now that you have come," his sister said, leaning +her head on his arm with a look of relief and rest which was good to +see. "Everything will go better now, I am sure." + +"Katy Carr has behaved like a perfect angel," she told her brother when +they were alone. + +"She is a trump of a girl. I came in time for part of that scene with +the landlady, and upon my word she was glorious! I didn't suppose she +could look so handsome." + +"Have the Pages left Nice yet?" asked his sister, rather irrelevantly. + +"No,--at least they were there on Thursday, but I think that they were +to start to-day." + +Mr. Worthington answered carelessly, but his face darkened as he spoke. +There had been a little scene in Nice which he could not forget. He was +sitting in the English garden with Lilly and her mother when his +sister's telegrams were brought to him; and he had read them aloud, +partly as an explanation for the immediate departure which they made +necessary and which broke up an excursion just arranged with the ladies +for the afternoon. It is not pleasant to have plans interfered with; and +as neither Mrs. Page nor her daughter cared personally for little Amy, +it is not strange that disappointment at the interruption of their +pleasure should have been the first impulse with them. Still, this did +not excuse Lilly's unstudied exclamation of "Oh, bother!" and though she +speedily repented it as an indiscretion, and was properly sympathetic, +and "hoped the poor little thing would soon be better," Amy's uncle +could not forget the jarring impression. It completed a process of +disenchantment which had long been going on; and as hearts are sometimes +caught at the rebound, Mrs. Ashe was not so far astray when she built +certain little dim sisterly hopes on his evident admiration for Katy's +courage and this sudden awakening to a sense of her good looks. + +But no space was left for sentiment or match-making while still Amy's +fate hung in the balance, and all three of them found plenty to do +during the next fortnight. The fever did not turn on the twenty-first +day, and another weary week of suspense set in, each day bringing a +decrease of the dangerous symptoms, but each day as well marking a +lessening in the childish strength which had been so long and severely +tested. Amy was quite conscious now, and lay quietly, sleeping a great +deal and speaking seldom. There was not much to do but to wait and hope; +but the flame of hope burned low at times, as the little life flickered +in its socket, and seemed likely to go out like a wind-blown torch. + +Now and then Lieutenant Worthington would persuade his sister to go +with him for a few minutes' drive or walk in the fresh air, from which +she had so long been debarred, and once or twice he prevailed on Katy +to do the same; but neither of them could bear to be away long from +Amy's bedside. + +Intimacy grows fast when people are thus united by a common anxiety, +sharing the same hopes and fears day after day, speaking and thinking of +the same thing. The gay young officer at Nice, who had counted so little +in Katy's world, seemed to have disappeared, and the gentle, +considerate, tender-hearted fellow who now filled his place was quite a +different person in her eyes. Katy began to count on Ned Worthington as +a friend who could be trusted for help and sympathy and comprehension, +and appealed to and relied upon in all emergencies. She was quite at +ease with him now, and asked him to do this and that, to come and help +her, or to absent himself, as freely as if he had been Dorry or Phil. + +He, on his part, found this easy intimacy charming. In the reaction of +his temporary glamour for the pretty Lilly, Katy's very difference from +her was an added attraction. This difference consisted, as much as +anything else, in the fact that she was so truly in earnest in what she +said and did. Had Lilly been in Katy's place, she would probably have +been helpful to Mrs. Ashe and kind to Amy so far as in her lay; but the +thought of self would have tinctured all that she did and said, and the +need of keeping to what was tasteful and becoming would have influenced +her in every emergency, and never have been absent from her mind. + +Katy, on the contrary, absorbed in the needs of the moment, gave little +heed to how she looked or what any one was thinking about her. Her habit +of neatness made her take time for the one thorough daily dressing,--the +brushing of hair and freshening of clothes, which were customary with +her; but, this tax paid to personal comfort, she gave little further +heed to appearances. She wore an old gray gown, day in and day out, +which Lilly would not have put on for half an hour without a large +bribe, so unbecoming was it; but somehow Lieutenant Worthington grew to +like the gray gown as a part of Katy herself. And if by chance he +brought a rose in to cheer the dim stillness of the sick-room, and she +tucked it into her buttonhole, immediately it was as though she were +decked for conquest. Pretty dresses are very pretty on pretty +people,--they certainly play an important part in this queer little +world of ours; but depend upon it, dear girls, no woman ever has +established so distinct and clear a claim on the regard of her lover as +when he has ceased to notice or analyze what she wears, and just accepts +it unquestioningly, whatever it is, as a bit of the dear human life +which has grown or is growing to be the best and most delightful thing +in the world to him. + +The gray gown played its part during the long anxious night when they +all sat watching breathlessly to see which way the tide would turn with +dear little Amy. The doctor came at midnight, and went away to come +again at dawn. Mrs. Swift sat grim and watchful beside the pillow of her +charge, rising now and then to feel pulse and skin, or to put a spoonful +of something between Amy's lips. The doors and windows stood open to +admit the air. In the outer room all was hushed. A dim Roman lamp, fed +with olive oil, burned in one corner behind a screen. Mrs. Ashe lay on +the sofa with her eyes closed, bearing the strain of suspense in +absolute silence. Her brother sat beside her, holding in his one of the +hot hands whose nervous twitches alone told of the surgings of hope and +fear within. Katy was resting in a big chair near by, her wistful eyes +fixed on Amy's little figure seen in the dim distance, her ears alert +for every sound from the sick-room. + +So they watched and waited. Now and then Ned Worthington or Katy would +rise softly, steal on tiptoe to the bedside, and come back to whisper to +Mrs. Ashe that Amy had stirred or that she seemed to be asleep. It was +one of the nights which do not come often in a lifetime, and which +people never forget. The darkness seems full of meaning; the hush, of +sound. God is beyond, holding the sunrise in his right hand, holding the +sun of our earthly hopes as well,--will it dawn in sorrow or in joy? We +dare not ask, we can only wait. + +A faint stir of wind and a little broadening of the light roused Katy +from a trance of half-understood thoughts. She crept once more into +Amy's room. Mrs. Swift laid a warning finger on her lips; Amy was +sleeping, she said with a gesture. Katy whispered the news to the still +figure on the sofa, then she went noiselessly out of the room. The great +hotel was fast asleep; not a sound stirred the profound silence of the +dark halls. A longing for fresh air led her to the roof. + +There was the dawn just tingeing the east. The sky, even thus early, +wore the deep mysterious blue of Italy. A fresh _tramontana_ was +blowing, and made Katy glad to draw her shawl about her. + +Far away in the distance rose the Alban Hills above the dim Campagna, +with the more lofty Sabines beyond, and Soracte, clear cut against the +sky like a wave frozen in the moment of breaking. Below lay the ancient +city, with its strange mingling of the old and the new, of past things +embedded in the present; or is it the present thinly veiling the rich +and mighty past,--who shall say? + +Faint rumblings of wheels and here and there a curl of smoke showed that +Rome was waking up. The light insensibly grew upon the darkness. A pink +flush lit up the horizon. Florio stirred in his lair, stretched his +dappled limbs, and as the first sun-ray glinted on the roof, raised +himself, crossed the gravelled tiles with soundless feet, and ran his +soft nose into Katy's hand. She fondled him for Amy's sake as she stood +bent over the flower-boxes, inhaling the scent of the mignonette and +gilly-flowers, with her eyes fixed on the distance; but her heart was at +home with the sleepers there, and a rush of strong desire stirred her. +Would this dreary time come to an end presently, and should they be set +at liberty to go their ways with no heavy sorrow to press them down, to +be care-free and happy again in their own land? + +A footstep startled her. Ned Worthington was coming over the roof on +tiptoe as if fearful of disturbing somebody. His face looked resolute +and excited. + +"I wanted to tell you," he said in a hushed voice, "that the doctor is +here, and he says Amy has no fever, and with care may be considered out +of danger." + +"Thank God!" cried Katy, bursting into tears. The long fatigue, the +fears kept in check so resolutely, the sleepless night just passed, had +their revenge now, and she cried and cried as if she could never stop, +but with all the time such joy and gratitude in her heart! She was +conscious that Ned had his arm round her and was holding both her hands +tight; but they were so one in the emotion of the moment that it did not +seem strange. + +"How sweet the sun looks!" she said presently, releasing herself, with a +happy smile flashing through her tears; "it hasn't seemed really bright +for ever so long. How silly I was to cry! Where is dear Polly? I must go +down to her at once. Oh, what does she say?" + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +NEXT. + + +Lieut. Worthington's leave had nearly expired. He must rejoin his +ship; but he waited till the last possible moment in order to help his +sister through the move to Albano, where it had been decided that Amy +should go for a few days of hill air before undertaking the longer +journey to Florence. + +It was a perfect morning in late March when the pale little invalid was +carried in her uncle's strong arms, and placed in the carriage which was +to take them to the old town on the mountain slopes which they had seen +shining from far away for so many weeks past. Spring had come in her +fairest shape to Italy. The Campagna had lost its brown and tawny hues +and taken on a tinge of fresher color. The olive orchards were budding +thickly. Almond boughs extended their dazzling shapes across the blue +sky. Arums and acanthus and ivy filled every hollow, roses nodded from +over every gate, while a carpet of violets and cyclamen and primroses +stretched over the fields and freighted every wandering wind with +fragrance. + +When once the Campagna with its long line of aqueducts, arches, and +hoary tombs was left behind, and the carriage slowly began to mount the +gradual rises of the hill, Amy revived. With every breath of the fresher +air her eyes seemed to brighten and her voice to grow stronger. She held +Mabel up to look at the view; and the sound of her laugh, faint and +feeble as it was, was like music to her mother's ears. + +Amy wore a droll little silk-lined cap on her head, over which a downy +growth of pale-brown fuzz was gradually thickening. Already it showed a +tendency to form into tiny rings, which to Amy, who had always hankered +for curls, was an extreme satisfaction. Strange to say, the same thing +exactly had happened to Mabel; her hair had grown out into soft little +round curls also! Uncle Ned and Katy had ransacked Rome for this +baby-wig, which filled and realized all Amy's hopes for her child. On +the same excursion they had bought the materials for the pretty spring +suit which Mabel wore, for it had been deemed necessary to sacrifice +most of her wardrobe as a concession to possible fever-germs. Amy +admired the pearl-colored dress and hat, the fringed jacket and little +lace-trimmed parasol so much, that she was quite consoled for the loss +of the blue velvet costume and ermine muff which had been the pride of +her heart ever since they left Paris, and whose destruction they had +scarcely dared to confess to her. + +So up, up, up, they climbed till the gateway of the old town was passed, +and the carriage stopped before a quaint building once the residence of +the Bishop of Albano, but now known as the Hotel de la Poste. Here they +alighted, and were shown up a wide and lofty staircase to their rooms, +which were on the sunny side of the house, and looked across a walled +garden, where roses and lemon trees grew beside old fountains guarded by +sculptured lions and heathen divinities with broken noses and a scant +supply of fingers and toes, to the Campagna, purple with distance and +stretching miles and miles away to where Rome sat on her seven hills, +lifting high the Dome of St. Peter's into the illumined air. + +Nurse Swift said that Amy must go to bed at once, and have a long rest. +But Amy nearly wept at the proposal, and declared that she was not a bit +tired and couldn't sleep if she went to bed ever so much. The change of +air had done her good already, and she looked more like herself than for +many weeks past. They compromised their dispute on a sofa, where Amy, +well wrapped up, was laid, and where, in spite of her protestations, she +presently fell asleep, leaving the others free to examine and arrange +their new quarters. + +Such enormous rooms as they were! It was quite a journey to go from one +side of them to another. The floors were of stone, with squares of +carpet laid down over them, which looked absurdly small for the great +spaces they were supposed to cover. The beds and tables were of the +usual size, but they seemed almost like doll furniture because the +chambers were so big. A quaint old paper, with an enormous pattern of +banyan trees and pagodas, covered the walls, and every now and then +betrayed by an oblong of regular cracks the existence of a hidden door, +papered to look exactly like the rest of the wall. + +These mysterious doors made Katy nervous, and she never rested till she +had opened every one of them and explored the places they led to. One +gave access to a queer little bathroom. Another led, through a narrow +dark passage, to a sort of balcony or loggia overhanging the garden. A +third ended in a dusty closet with an artful chink in it from which you +could peep into what had been the Bishop's drawing-room but which was +now turned into the dining-room of the hotel. It seemed made for +purposes of espial; and Katy had visions of a long line of reverend +prelates with their ears glued to the chink, overhearing what was being +said about them in the apartment beyond. + +The most surprising of all she did not discover till she was going to +bed on the second night after their arrival, when she thought she knew +all about the mysterious doors and what they led to. A little +unexplained draught of wind made her candle flicker, and betrayed the +existence of still another door so cunningly hid in the wall pattern +that she had failed to notice it. She had quite a creepy feeling as she +drew her dressing-gown about her, took a light, and entered the narrow +passage into which it opened. It was not a long passage, and ended +presently in a tiny oratory. There was a little marble altar, with a +kneeling-step and candlesticks and a great crucifix above. Ends of wax +candles still remained in the candlesticks, and bunches of dusty paper +flowers filled the vases which stood on either side of them. A faded +silk cushion lay on the step. Doubtless the Bishop had often knelt +there. Katy felt as if she were the first person to enter the place +since he went away. Her common-sense told her that in a hotel bedroom +constantly occupied by strangers for years past, some one _must_ have +discovered the door and found the little oratory before her; but +common-sense is sometimes less satisfactory than romance. Katy liked to +think that she was the first, and to "make believe" that no one else +knew about it; so she did so, and invented legends about the place which +Amy considered better than any fairy story. + +Before he left them Lieutenant Worthington had a talk with his sister +in the garden. She rather forced this talk upon him, for various +things were lying at her heart about which she longed for explanation; +but he yielded so easily to her wiles that it was evident he was not +averse to the idea. + +"Come, Polly, don't beat about the bush any longer," he said at last, +amused and a little irritated at her half-hints and little feminine +_finesses_. "I know what you want to ask; and as there's no use +making a secret of it, I will take my turn in asking. Have I any chance, +do you think?" + +"Any chance?--about Katy, do you mean? Oh, Ned, you make me so happy." + +"Yes; about her, of course." + +"I don't see why you should say 'of course,'" remarked his sister, with +the perversity of her sex, "when it's only five or six weeks ago that I +was lying awake at night for fear you were being gobbled up by that +Lilly Page." + +"There was a little risk of it," replied her brother, seriously. "She's +awfully pretty and she dances beautifully, and the other fellows were +all wild about her, and--well, you know yourself how such things go. I +can't see now what it was that I fancied so much about her, I don't +suppose I could have told exactly at the time; but I can tell without +the smallest trouble what it is in--the other." + +"In Katy? I should think so," cried Mrs. Ashe, emphatically; "the two +are no more to be compared than--than--well, bread and syllabub! You can +live on one, and you can't live on the other." + +"Come, now, Miss Page isn't so bad as that. She is a nice girl enough, +and a pretty girl too,--prettier than Katy; I'm not so far gone that I +can't see that. But we won't talk about her, she's not in the present +question at all; very likely she'd have had nothing to say to me in any +case. I was only one out of a dozen, and she never gave me reason to +suppose that she cared more for me than the rest. Let us talk about this +friend of yours; have I any chance at all, do you think, Polly?" + +"Ned, you are the dearest boy! I would rather have Katy for a sister +than any one else I know. She's so nice all through,--so true and sweet +and satisfactory." + +"She is all that and more; she's a woman to tie to for life, to be +perfectly sure of always. She would make a splendid wife for any man. +I'm not half good enough for her; but the question is,--and you haven't +answered it yet, Polly,--what's my chance?" + +"I don't know," said his sister, slowly. + +"Then I must ask herself, and I shall do so to-day." + +"I don't know," repeated Mrs. Ashe. "'She is a woman, therefore to be +won:' and I don't think there is any one ahead of you; that is the best +hope I have to offer, Ned. Katy never talks of such things; and though +she's so frank, I can't guess whether or not she ever thinks about them. +She likes you, however, I am sure of that. But, Ned, it will not be wise +to say anything to her yet." + +"Not say anything? Why not?" + +"No. Recollect that it is only a little while since she looked upon you +as the admirer of another girl, and a girl she doesn't like very much, +though they are cousins. You must give her time to get over that +impression. Wait awhile; that's my advice, Ned." + +"I'll wait any time if only she will say yes in the end. But it's hard +to go away without a word of hope, and it's more like a man to speak +out, it seems to me." + +"It's too soon," persisted his sister. "You don't want her to think +you a fickle fellow, falling in love with a fresh girl every time you +go into port, and falling out again when the ship sails. Sailors have +a bad reputation for that sort of thing. No woman cares to win a man +like that." + +"Great Scott! I should think not! Do you mean to say that is the way my +conduct appears to her, Polly ?" + +"No, I don't mean just that; but wait, dear Ned, I am sure it is +better." + +Fortified by this sage counsel, Lieutenant Worthington went away next +morning, without saying anything to Katy in words, though perhaps eyes +and tones may have been less discreet. He made them promise that some +one should send a letter every day about Amy; and as Mrs. Ashe +frequently devolved the writing of these bulletins upon Katy, and the +replies came in the shape of long letters, she found herself conducting +a pretty regular correspondence without quite intending it. Ned +Worthington wrote particularly nice letters. He had the knack, more +often found in women than men, of giving a picture with a few graphic +touches, and indicating what was droll or what was characteristic with +a single happy phrase. His letters grew to be one of Katy's pleasures; +and sometimes, as Mrs. Ashe watched the color deepen in her cheeks +while she read, her heart would bound hopefully within her. But she was +a wise woman in her way, and she wanted Katy for a sister very much; so +she never said a word or looked a look to startle or surprise her, but +left the thing to work itself out, which is the best course always in +love affairs. + +Little Amy's improvement at Albano was something remarkable. Mrs. Swift +watched over her like a lynx. Her vigilance never relaxed. Amy was made +to eat and sleep and walk and rest with the regularity of a machine; and +this exact system, combined with the good air, worked like a charm. The +little one gained hour by hour. They could absolutely see her growing +fat, her mother declared. Fevers, when they do not kill, operate +sometimes as spring bonfires do in gardens, burning up all the refuse +and leaving the soil free for the growth of fairer things; and Amy +promised in time to be only the better and stronger for her hard +experience. + +She had gained so much before the time came to start for Florence, that +they scarcely dreaded the journey; but it proved worse than their +expectations. They had not been able to secure a carriage to themselves, +and were obliged to share their compartment with two English ladies, and +three Roman Catholic priests, one old, the others young. The older +priest seemed to be a person of some consequence; for quite a number of +people came to see him off, and knelt for his blessing devoutly as the +train moved away. The younger ones Katy guessed to be seminary students +under his charge. Her chief amusement through the long dusty journey was +in watching the terrible time that one of these young men was having +with his own hat. It was a large three-cornered black affair, with sharp +angles and excessively stiff; and a perpetual struggle seemed to be +going on between it and its owner, who was evidently unhappy when it was +on his head and still more unhappy when it was anywhere else. If he +perched it on his knees it was sure to slide away from him and fall with +a thump on the floor, whereupon he would pick it up, blushing furiously +as he did so. Then he would lay it on the seat when the train stopped at +a station, and jump out with an air of relief; but he invariably forgot, +and sat down upon it when he returned, and sprang up with a look of +horror at the loud crackle it made; after which he would tuck it into +the baggage-rack overhead, from which it would presently descend, +generally into the lap of one of the staid English ladies, who would +hand it back to him with an air of deep offence, remarking to her +companion,-- + +"I never knew anything like it. Fancy! that makes four times that hat +has fallen on me. The young man is a feedgit! He's the most feegitty +creature I ever saw in my life." + +The young _seminariat_ did not understand a word she said; but the +tone needed no interpreter, and set him to blushing more painfully than +ever. Altogether, the hat was never off his mind for a moment. Katy +could see that he was thinking about it, even when he was thumbing his +Breviary and making believe to read. + +At last the train, steaming down the valley of the Arno, revealed fair +Florence sitting among olive-clad hills, with Giotto's beautiful +Bell-tower, and the great, many-colored, soft-hued Cathedral, and the +square tower of the old Palace, and the quaint bridges over the river, +looking exactly as they do in the photographs; and Katy would have felt +delighted, in spite of dust and fatigue, had not Amy looked so worn out +and exhausted. They were seriously troubled about her, and for the +moment could think of nothing else. Happily the fatigue did no permanent +harm, and a day or two of rest made her all right again. By good +fortune, a nice little apartment in the modern quarter of the city had +been vacated by its winter occupants the very day of their arrival, and +Mrs. Ashe secured it for a month, with all its conveniences and +advantages, including a maid named Maria, who had been servant to the +just departed tenants. + +Maria was a very tall woman, at least six feet two, and had a splendid +contralto voice, which she occasionally exercised while busy over her +pots and pans. It was so remarkable to hear these grand arias and +recitatives proceeding from a kitchen some eight feet square, that Katy +was at great pains to satisfy her curiosity about it. By aid of the +dictionary and much persistent questioning, she made out that Maria in +her youth had received a partial training for the opera; but in the end +it was decided that she was too big and heavy for the stage, and the +poor "giantess," as Amy named her, had been forced to abandon her +career, and gradually had sunk to the position of a maid-of-all-work. +Katy suspected that heaviness of mind as well as of body must have stood +in her way; for Maria, though a good-natured giantess, was by no means +quick of intelligence. + +"I do think that the manner in which people over here can make homes for +themselves at five minutes' notice is perfectly delightful," cried Katy, +at the end of their first day's housekeeping. "I wish we could do the +same in America. How cosy it looks here already!" + +It was indeed cosy. Their new domain consisted of a parlor in a corner, +furnished in bright yellow brocade, with windows to south and west; a +nice little dining-room; three bedrooms, with dimity-curtained beds; a +square entrance hall, lighted at night by a tall slender brass lamp +whose double wicks were fed with olive oil; and the aforesaid tiny +kitchen, behind which was a sleeping cubby, quite too small to be a good +fit for the giantess. The rooms were full of conveniences,--easy-chairs, +sofas, plenty of bureaus and dressing-tables, and corner fireplaces like +Franklin stoves, in which odd little fires burned on cool days, made of +pine cones, cakes of pressed sawdust exactly like Boston brown bread cut +into slices, and a few sticks of wood thriftily adjusted, for fuel is +worth its weight in gold in Florence. Katy's was the smallest of the +bedrooms, but she liked it best of all for the reason that its one big +window opened on an iron balcony over which grew a Banksia rose-vine +with a stem as thick as her wrist. It was covered just now with masses +of tiny white blossoms, whose fragrance was inexpressibly delicious and +made every breath drawn in their neighborhood a delight. The sun +streamed in on all sides of the little apartment, which filled a +narrowing angle at the union of three streets; and from one window and +another, glimpses could be caught of the distant heights about the +city,--San Miniato in one direction, Bellosguardo in another, and for +the third the long olive-hung ascent of Fiesole, crowned by its gray +cathedral towers. + +It was astonishing how easily everything fell into train about the +little establishment. Every morning at six the English baker left two +small sweet brown loaves and a dozen rolls at the door. Then followed +the dairyman with a supply of tiny leaf-shaped pats of freshly churned +butter, a big flask of milk, and two small bottles of thick cream, with +a twist of vine leaf in each by way of a cork. Next came a _contadino_ +with a flask of red Chianti wine, a film of oil floating on top to keep +it sweet. People in Florence must drink wine, whether they like it or +not, because the lime-impregnated water is unsafe for use without some +admixture. + +Dinner came from a _trattoria_, in a tin box, with a pan of coals inside +to keep it warm, which box was carried on a man's head. It was furnished +at a fixed price per day,--a soup, two dishes of meat, two vegetables, +and a sweet dish; and the supply was so generous as always to leave +something toward next day's luncheon. Salad, fruit, and fresh eggs Maria +bought for them in the old market. From the confectioners came loaves of +_pane santo_, a sort of light cake made with arrowroot instead of flour; +and sometimes, by way of treat, a square of _pan forte da Siena_, +compounded of honey, almonds, and chocolate,--a mixture as pernicious +as it is delicious, and which might take a medal anywhere for the sure +production of nightmares. + +Amy soon learned to know the shops from which these delicacies came. +She had her favorites, too, among the strolling merchants who sold +oranges and those little sweet native figs, dried in the sun without +sugar, which are among the specialties of Florence. They, in their +turn, learned to know her and to watch for the appearance of her little +capped head and Mabel's blond wig at the window, lingering about till +she came, and advertising their wares with musical modulations, so +appealing that Amy was always running to Katy, who acted as +housekeeper, to beg her to please buy this or that, "because it is my +old man, and he wants me to so much." + +"But, chicken, we have plenty of figs for to-day." + +"No matter; get some more, please do. I'll eat them all; really, I +will." + +And Amy was as good as her word. Her convalescent appetite was something +prodigious. + +There was another branch of shopping in which they all took equal +delight. The beauty and the cheapness of the Florence flowers are a +continual surprise to a stranger. Every morning after breakfast an old +man came creaking up the two long flights of stairs which led to Mrs. +Ashe's apartment, tapped at the door, and as soon as it opened, inserted +a shabby elbow and a large flat basket full of flowers. Such flowers! +Great masses of scarlet and cream-colored tulips, and white and gold +narcissus, knots of roses of all shades, carnations, heavy-headed trails +of wistaria, wild hyacinths, violets, deep crimson and orange +ranunculus, _giglios_, or wild irises,--the Florence emblem, so deeply +purple as to be almost black,--anemones, spring-beauties, faintly tinted +wood-blooms tied in large loose nosegays, ivy, fruit +blossoms,--everything that can be thought of that is fair and sweet. +These enticing wares the old man would tip out on the table. Mrs. Ashe +and Katy would select what they wanted, and then the process of +bargaining would begin, without which no sale is complete in Italy. The +old man would name an enormous price, five times as much as he hoped to +get. Katy would offer a very small one, considerably less than she +expected to give. The old man would dance with dismay, wring his hands, +assure them that he should die of hunger and all his family with him if +he took less than the price named; he would then come down half a franc +in his demand. So it would go on for five minutes, ten, sometimes for a +quarter of an hour, the old man's price gradually descending, and Katy's +terms very slowly going up, a cent or two at a time. Next the giantess +would mingle with the fray. She would bounce out of her kitchen, berate +the flower-vender, snatch up his flowers, declare that they smelt badly, +fling them down again, pouring out all the while a voluble tirade of +reproaches and revilings, and looking so enormous in her excitement that +Katy wondered that the old man dared to answer her at all. Finally, +there would be a sudden lull. The old man would shrug his shoulders, and +remarking that he and his wife and his aged grandmother must go without +bread that day since it was the Signora's will, take the money offered +and depart, leaving such a mass of flowers behind him that Katy would +begin to think that they had paid an unfair price for them and to feel a +little rueful, till she observed that the old man was absolutely dancing +downstairs with rapture over the good bargain he had made, and that +Maria was black with indignation over the extravagance of her ladies! + +"The Americani are a nation of spend-thrifts," she would mutter to +herself, as she quickened the charcoal in her droll little range by +fanning it with a palm-leaf fan; "they squander money like water. Well, +all the better for us Italians!" with a shrug of her shoulders. + +"But, Maria, it was only sixteen cents that we paid, and look at those +flowers! There are at least half a bushel of them." + +"Sixteen cents for garbage like that! The Signorina would better let me +make her bargains for her. _Gia! Gia!_ No Italian lady would have paid +more than eleven sous for such useless _roba_. It is evident that the +Signorina's countrymen eat gold when at home, they think so little of +casting it away!" + +Altogether, what with the comfort and quiet of this little home, the +numberless delightful things that there were to do and to see, and +Viessieux's great library, from which they could draw books at will +to make the doing and seeing more intelligible, the month at +Florence passed only too quickly, and was one of the times to which +they afterward looked back with most pleasure. Amy grew steadily +stronger, and the freedom from anxiety about her after their long +strain of apprehension was restful and healing beyond expression to +both mind and body. + +Their very last excursion of all, and one of the pleasantest, was to the +old amphitheatre at Fiesole; and it was while they sat there in the soft +glow of the late afternoon, tying into bunches the violets which they +had gathered from under walls whose foundations antedate Rome itself, +that a cheery call sounded from above, and an unexpected surprise +descended upon them in the shape of Lieutenant Worthington, who having +secured another fifteen days' furlough, had come to take his sister on +to Venice. + +"I didn't write you that I had applied for leave," he explained, +"because there seemed so little chance of my getting off again so soon; +but as luck had it, Carruthers, whose turn it was, sprained his ankle +and was laid up, and the Commodore let us exchange. I made all the +capital I could out of Amy's fever; but upon my word, I felt like a +humbug when I came upon her and Mrs. Swift in the Cascine just now, as I +was hunting for you. How she has picked up! I should never have known +her for the same child." + +"Yes, she seems perfectly well again, and as strong as before she had +the fever, though that dear old Goody Swift is just as careful of her as +ever. She would not let us bring her here this afternoon, for fear we +should stay out till the dew fell. Ned, it is perfectly delightful that +you were able to come. It makes going to Venice seem quite a different +thing, doesn't it, Katy?" + +"I don't want it to seem quite different, because going to Venice was +always one of my dreams," replied Katy, with a little laugh. + +"I hope at least it doesn't make it seem less pleasant," said Mr. +Worthington, as his sister stopped to pick a violet. + +"No, indeed, I am glad," said Katy; "we shall all be seeing it for +the first time, too, shall we not? I think you said you had never +been there." She spoke simply and frankly, but she was conscious of +an odd shyness. + +"I simply couldn't stand it any longer," Ned Worthington confided to his +sister when they were alone. "My head is so full of her that I can't +attend to my work, and it came to me all of a sudden that this might be +my last chance. You'll be getting north before long, you know, to +Switzerland and so on, where I cannot follow you. So I made a clean +breast of it to the Commodore; and the good old fellow, who has a soft +spot in his heart for a love-story, behaved like a brick, and made it +all straight for me to come away." + +Mrs. Ashe did not join in these commendations of the Commodore; her +attention was fixed on another part of her brother's discourse. + +"Then you won't be able to come to me again? I sha'n't see you again +after this!" she exclaimed. "Dear me! I never realized that before. What +shall I do without you?" + +"You will have Miss Carr. She is a host in herself," suggested Ned +Worthington. His sister shook her head. + +"Katy is a jewel," she remarked presently; "but somehow one wants a man +to call upon. I shall feel lost without you, Ned." + +The month's housekeeping wound up that night with a "thick tea" in honor +of Lieutenant Worthington's arrival, which taxed all the resources of +the little establishment. Maria was sent out hastily to buy _pan forte +da Siena_ and _vino d'Asti_, and fresh eggs for an omelette, and +chickens' breasts smothered in cream from the restaurant, and artichokes +for a salad, and flowers to garnish all; and the guest ate and praised +and admired; and Amy and Mabel sat on his knee and explained everything +to him, and they were all very happy together. Their merriment was so +infectious that it extended to the poor giantess, who had been very +pensive all day at the prospect of losing her good place, and who now +raised her voice in the grand aria from "Orfeo," and made the kitchen +ring with the passionate demand "Che faro senza Eurydice?" The splendid +notes, full of fire and lamentation, rang out across the saucepans as +effectively as if they had been footlights; and Katy, rising softly, +opened the kitchen door a little way that they might not lose a sound. + +The next day brought them to Venice. It was a "moment," indeed, as Katy +seated herself for the first time in a gondola, and looked from beneath +its black hood at the palace walls on the Grand Canal, past which they +were gliding. Some were creamy white and black, some orange-tawny, +others of a dull delicious ruddy color, half pink, half red; but all, in +build and ornament, were unlike palaces elsewhere. High on the prow +before her stood the gondolier, his form defined in dark outline against +the sky, as he swayed and bent to his long oar, raising his head now and +again to give a wild musical cry, as warning to other approaching +gondolas. It was all like a dream. Ned Worthington sat beside her, +looking more at the changes in her expressive face than at the palaces. +Venice was as new to him as to Katy; but she was a new feature in his +life also, and even more interesting than Venice. They seemed to float +on pleasures for the next ten days. Their arrival had been happily timed +to coincide with a great popular festival which for nearly a week kept +Venice in a state of continual brilliant gala. All the days were spent +on the water, only landing now and then to look at some famous building +or picture, or to eat ices in the Piazza with the lovely facade of St. +Mark's before them. Dining or sleeping seemed a sheer waste of time! The +evenings were spent on the water too; for every night, immediately after +sunset, a beautiful drifting pageant started from the front of the +Doge's Palace to make the tour of the Grand Canal, and our friends +always took a part in it. In its centre went a barge hung with +embroideries and filled with orange trees and musicians. This was +surrounded by a great convoy of skiffs and gondolas bearing colored +lanterns and pennons and gay awnings, and managed by gondoliers in +picturesque uniforms. All these floated and shifted and swept on +together with a sort of rhythmic undulation as if keeping time to the +music, while across their path dazzling showers and arches of colored +fire poured from the palace fronts and the hotels. Every movement of the +fairy flotilla was repeated in the illuminated water, every torch-tip +and scarlet lantern and flake of green or rosy fire; above all the +bright full moon looked down as if surprised. It was magically beautiful +in effect. Katy felt as if her previous sober ideas about life and +things had melted away. For the moment the world was turned topsy-turvy. +There was nothing hard or real or sordid left in it; it was just a fairy +tale, and she was in the middle of it as she had longed to be in her +childhood. She was the Princess, encircled by delights, as when she and +Clover and Elsie played in "Paradise,"--only, this was better; and, dear +me! who was this Prince who seemed to belong to the story and to grow +more important to it every day? + +Fairy tales must come to ending. Katy's last chapter closed with a +sudden turn-over of the leaf when, toward the end of this happy +fortnight, Mrs. Ashe came into her room with the face of one who has +unpleasant news to communicate. + +"Katy," she began, "should you be _awfully_ disappointed, should +you consider me a perfect wretch, if I went home now instead of in +the autumn?" + +Katy was too much astonished to reply. + +"I am grown such a coward, I am so knocked up and weakened by what I +suffered in Rome, that I find I cannot face the idea of going on to +Germany and Switzerland alone, without Ned to take care of me. You are a +perfect angel, dear, and I know that you would do all you could to make +it easy for me, but I am such a fool that I do not dare. I think my +nerves must have given way," she continued half tearfully; "but the very +idea of shifting for myself for five months longer makes me so miserably +homesick that I cannot endure it. I dare say I shall repent afterward, +and I tell myself now how silly it is; but it's no use,--I shall never +know another easy moment till I have Amy safe again in America and under +your father's care." + +"I find," she continued after another little pause, "that we can go down +with Ned to Genoa and take a steamer there which will carry us straight +to New York without any stops. I hate to disappoint you dreadfully, +Katy, but I have almost decided to do it. Shall you mind very much? Can +you ever forgive me?" She was fairly crying now. + +Katy had to swallow hard before she could answer, the sense of +disappointment was so sharp; and with all her efforts there was almost a +sob in her voice as she said,-- + +"Why yes, indeed, dear Polly, there is nothing to forgive. You are +perfectly right to go home if you feel so." Then with another swallow +she added: "You have given me the loveliest six months' treat that ever +was, and I should be a greedy girl indeed if I found fault because it is +cut off a little sooner than we expected." + +"You are so dear and good not to be vexed," said her friend, embracing +her. "It makes me feel doubly sorry about disappointing you. Indeed I +wouldn't if I could help it, but I simply can't. I _must_ go home. +Perhaps we'll come back some day when Amy is grown up, or safely married +to somebody who will take good care of her!" + +This distant prospect was but a poor consolation for the immediate +disappointment. The more Katy thought about it the sorrier did she feel. +It was not only losing the chance--very likely the only one she would +ever have--of seeing Switzerland and Germany; it was all sorts of other +little things besides. They must go home in a strange ship with a +captain they did not know, instead of in the "Spartacus," as they had +planned; and they should land in New York, where no one would be waiting +for them, and not have the fun of sailing into Boston Bay and seeing +Rose on the wharf, where she had promised to be. Furthermore, they must +pass the hot summer in Burnet instead of in the cool Alpine valleys; and +Polly's house was let till October. She and Amy would have to shift for +themselves elsewhere. Perhaps they would not be in Burnet at all. Oh +dear, what a pity it was! what a dreadful pity! + +Then, the first shock of surprise and discomfiture over, other ideas +asserted themselves; and as she realized that in three weeks more, or +four at the longest, she was to see papa and Clover and all her dear +people at home, she began to feel so very glad that she could hardly +wait for the time to come. After all, there was nothing in Europe quite +so good as that. + +"No, I'm not sorry," she told herself; "I am glad. Poor Polly! it's no +wonder she feels nervous after all she has gone through. I hope I wasn't +cross to her! And it will be _very_ nice to have Lieutenant Worthington +to take care of us as far as Genoa." + +The next three days were full of work. There was no more floating in +gondolas, except in the way of business. All the shopping which they had +put off must be done, and the trunks packed for the voyage. Every one +recollected last errands and commissions; there was continual coming and +going and confusion, and Amy, wild with excitement, popping up every +other moment in the midst of it all, to demand of everybody if they were +not glad that they were going back to America. + +Katy had never yet bought her gift from old Mrs. Redding. She had +waited, thinking continually that she should see something more tempting +still in the next place they went to; but now, with the sense that there +were to be no more "next places," she resolved to wait no longer, and +with a hundred francs in her pocket, set forth to choose something from +among the many tempting things for sale in the Piazza. A bracelet of old +Roman coins had caught her fancy one day in a bric-a-brac shop, and she +walked straight toward it, only pausing by the way to buy a pale blue +iridescent pitcher at Salviate's for Cecy Slack, and see it carefully +rolled in seaweed and soft paper. + +The price of the bracelet was a little more than she expected, and quite +a long process of bargaining was necessary to reduce it to the sum she +had to spend. She had just succeeded and was counting out the money when +Mrs. Ashe and her brother appeared, having spied her from the opposite +side of the Piazza, where they were choosing last photographs at Naga's. +Katy showed her purchase and explained that it was a present; "for of +course I should never walk out in cold blood and buy a bracelet for +myself," she said with a laugh. + +"This is a fascinating little shop," said Mrs. Ashe. "I wonder +what is the price of that queer old chatelaine with the bottles +hanging from it." + +The price was high; but Mrs. Ashe was now tolerably conversant with +shopping Italian, which consists chiefly of a few words repeated many +times over, and it lowered rapidly under the influence of her _troppo's_ +and _e molto caro's_, accompanied with telling little shrugs and looks +of surprise. In the end she bought it for less than two thirds of what +had been originally asked for it. As she put the parcel in her pocket, +her brother said,-- + +"If you have done your shopping now, Polly, can't you come out for a +last row?" + +"Katy may, but I can't," replied Mrs. Ashe. "The man promised to bring +me gloves at six o'clock, and I must be there to pay for them. Take +her down to the Lido, Ned. It's an exquisite evening for the water, +and the sunset promises to be delicious. You can take the time, can't +you, Katy?" + +Katy could. + +Mrs. Ashe turned to leave them, but suddenly stopped short. + +"Katy, look! Isn't that a picture!" + +The "picture" was Amy, who had come to the Piazza with Mrs. Swift, to +feed the doves of St. Mark's, which was one of her favorite amusements. +These pretty birds are the pets of all Venice, and so accustomed to +being fondled and made much of by strangers, that they are perfectly +tame. Amy, when her mother caught sight of her, was sitting on the +marble pavement, with one on her shoulder, two perched on the edge of +her lap, which was full of crumbs, and a flight of others circling round +her head. She was looking up and calling them in soft tones. The +sunlight caught the little downy curls on her head and made them +glitter. The flying doves lit on the pavement, and crowded round her, +their pearl and gray and rose-tinted and white feathers, their scarlet +feet and gold-ringed eyes, making a shifting confusion of colors, as +they hopped and fluttered and cooed about the little maid, unstartled +even by her clear laughter. Close by stood Nurse Swift, observant and +grimly pleased. + +The mother looked on with happy tears in her eyes. "Oh, Katy, think +what she was a few weeks ago and look at her now! Can I ever be +thankful enough?" + +She squeezed Katy's hand convulsively and walked away, turning her head +now and then for another glance at Amy and the doves; while Ned and Katy +silently crossed to the landing and got into a gondola. It was the +perfection of a Venice evening, with silver waves lapsing and lulling +under a rose and opal sky; and the sense that it was their last row on +those enchanted waters made every moment seem doubly precious. + +I cannot tell you exactly what it was that Ned Worthington said to Katy +during that row, or why it took so long to say it that they did not get +in till after the sun was set, and the stars had come out to peep at +their bright, glinting faces, reflected in the Grand Canal. In fact, no +one can tell; for no one overheard, except Giacomo, the brown +yellow-jacketed gondolier, and as he did not understand a word of +English he could not repeat the conversation. Venetian boatmen, however, +know pretty well what it means when a gentleman and lady, both young, +find so much to say in low tones to each other under the gondola hood, +and are so long about giving the order to return; and Giacomo, deeply +sympathetic, rowed as softly and made himself as imperceptible as he +could,--a display of tact which merited the big silver piece with which +Lieutenant Worthington "crossed his palm" on landing. + +Mrs. Ashe had begun to look for them long before they appeared, but I +think she was neither surprised nor sorry that they were so late. Katy +kissed her hastily and went away at once,--"to pack," she said,--and +Ned was equally undemonstrative; but they looked so happy, both of them, +that "Polly dear" was quite satisfied and asked no questions. + +Five days later the parting came, when the "Florio" steamer put into the +port of Genoa for passengers. It was not an easy good-by to say. Mrs. +Ashe and Amy both cried, and Mabel was said to be in deep affliction +also. But there were alleviations. The squadron was coming home in the +autumn, and the officers would have leave to see their friends, and of +course Lieutenant Worthington must come to Burnet--to visit his sister. +Five months would soon go, he declared; but for all the cheerful +assurance, his face was rueful enough as he held Katy's hand in a long +tight clasp while the little boat waited to take him ashore. + +After that it was just a waiting to be got through with till they +sighted Sandy Hook and the Neversinks,--a waiting varied with peeps at +Marseilles and Gibraltar and the sight of a whale or two and one distant +iceberg. The weather was fair all the way, and the ocean smooth. Amy was +never weary of lamenting her own stupidity in not having taken Maria +Matilda out of confinement before they left Venice. + +"That child has hardly been out of the trunk since we started," she +said. "She hasn't seen anything except a little bit of Nice. I shall +really be ashamed when the other children ask her about it. I think I +shall play that she was left at boarding-school and didn't come to +Europe at all! Don't you think that would be the best way, mamma?" + +"You might play that she was left in the States-prison for having done +something naughty," suggested Katy; but Amy scouted this idea. + +"She never does naughty things," she said, "because she never does +anything at all. She's just stupid, poor child! It's not her fault." + +The thirty-six hours between New York and Burnet seemed longer than all +the rest of the journey put together, Katy thought. But they ended at +last, as the "Lake Queen" swung to her moorings at the familiar wharf, +where Dr. Carr stood surrounded with all his boys and girls just as they +had stood the previous October, only that now there were no clouds on +anybody's face, and Johnnie was skipping up and down for joy instead of +grief. It was a long moment while the plank was being lowered from the +gangway; but the moment it was in place, Katy darted across, first +ashore of all the passengers, and was in her father's arms. + +Mrs. Ashe and Amy spent two or three days with them, while looking up +temporary quarters elsewhere; and so long as they stayed all seemed a +happy confusion of talking and embracing and exclaiming, and +distributing of gifts. After they went away things fell into their +customary train, and a certain flatness became apparent. Everything had +happened that could happen. The long-talked-of European journey was +over. Here was Katy at home again, months sooner than they expected; yet +she looked remarkably cheerful and content! Clover could not understand +it; she was likewise puzzled to account for one or two private +conversations between Katy and papa in which she had not been invited to +take part, and the occasional arrival of a letter from "foreign parts" +about whose contents nothing was said. + +"It seems a dreadful pity that you had to come so soon," she said one +day when they were alone in their bedroom. "It's delightful to have you, +of course; but we had braced ourselves to do without you till October, +and there are such lots of delightful things that you could have been +doing and seeing at this moment." + +"Oh, yes, indeed," replied Katy, but not at all as if she were +particularly disappointed. + +"Katy Carr, I don't understand you," persisted Clover. "Why don't you +feel worse about it? Here you have lost five months of the most +splendid time you ever had, and you don't seem to mind it a bit! Why, +if I were in your place my heart would be perfectly broken. And you +needn't have come, either; that's the worst of it. It was just a whim +of Polly's. Papa says Amy might have stayed as well as not. Why aren't +you sorrier, Katy?" + +"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because I had so much as it was,--enough to +last all my life, I think, though I _should_ like to go again. You can't +imagine what beautiful pictures are put away in my memory." + +"I don't see that you had so awfully much," said the aggravated Clover; +"you were there only a little more than six months,--for I don't count +the sea,--and ever so much of that time was taken up with nursing Amy. +You can't have any pleasant pictures of _that_ part of it." + +"Yes, I have, some." + +"Well, I should really like to know what. There you were in a dark room, +frightened to death and tired to death, with only Mrs. Ashe and the old +nurse to keep you company--Oh, yes, that brother was there part of the +time; I forgot him--" + +Clover stopped short in sudden amazement. Katy was standing with her +back toward her, smoothing her hair, but her face was reflected in the +glass. At Clover's words a sudden deep flush had mounted in Katy's +cheeks. Deeper and deeper it burned as she became conscious of Clover's +astonished gaze, till even the back of her neck was pink. Then, as if +she could not bear it any longer, she put the brush down, turned, and +fled out of the room; while Clover, looking after her, exclaimed in a +tone of sudden comical dismay,-- + +"What does it mean? Oh, dear me! is that what Katy is going to do next?" + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What Katy Did Next, by Susan Coolidge + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT KATY DID NEXT *** + +This file should be named 7kty210.txt or 7kty210.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7kty211.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7kty210a.txt + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Suzanne L. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: What Katy Did Next + +Author: Susan Coolidge + +Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8995] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on August 31, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT KATY DID NEXT *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + +[Illustration: She paid a visit to the little garden. +FRONTISPIECE.] + + +WHAT KATY DID NEXT + +BY + +SUSAN COOLIDGE + + + +This Story is Dedicated + +TO + +THE MANY LITTLE GIRLS + +(SOME OF THEM GROWN TO BE GREAT GIRLS NOW), + +_Who, during the last twelve years, have begged that something +more might be told them about KATY CARR, and what she did after +leaving school._ + + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + +I. AN UNEXPECTED GUEST + +II. AN INVITATION + +III. ROSE AND ROSEBUD + +IV. ON THE "SPARTACUS" + +V. STORY-BOOK ENGLAND + +VI. ACROSS THE CHANNEL + +VII. THE PENSION SUISSE + +VIII. ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES + +IX. A ROMAN HOLIDAY + +X. CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN + +XI. NEXT + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +SHE PAID A VISIT TO THE LITTLE GARDEN + +"SHE WAS HAVING THE MEASLES ON THE +BACK SHELF OF THE CLOSET, YOU KNOW" + +KATY WAS FEEDING GRETCHEN OUT OF A BIG +BOWL FULL OF BREAD AND MILK + +AMY WAS LEFT IN PEACE WITH HER FAWN + + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +AN UNEXPECTED GUEST. + + +The September sun was glinting cheerfully into a pretty bedroom +furnished with blue. It danced on the glossy hair and bright eyes of two +girls, who sat together hemming ruffles for a white muslin dress. The +half-finished skirt of the dress lay on the bed; and as each crisp +ruffle was completed, the girls added it to the snowy heap, which looked +like a drift of transparent clouds or a pile of foamy white-of-egg +beaten stiff enough to stand alone. + +These girls were Clover and Elsie Carr, and it was Clover's first +evening dress for which they were hemming ruffles. It was nearly two +years since a certain visit made by Johnnie to Inches Mills, of which +some of you have read in "Nine Little Goslings;" and more than three +since Clover and Katy had returned home from the boarding-school at +Hillsover. + +Clover was now eighteen. She was a very small Clover still, but it would +have been hard to find anywhere a prettier little maiden than she had +grown to be. Her skin was so exquisitely fair that her arms and wrists +and shoulders, which were round and dimpled like a baby's, seemed cut +out of daisies or white rose leaves. Her thick, brown hair waved and +coiled gracefully about her head. Her smile was peculiarly sweet; and +the eyes, always Clover's chief beauty, had still that pathetic look +which made them irresistible to tender-hearted people. + +Elsie, who adored Clover, considered her as beautiful as girls in +books, and was proud to be permitted to hem ruffles for the dress in +which she was to burst upon the world. Though, as for that, not much +"bursting" was possible in Burnet, where tea-parties of a middle-aged +description, and now and then a mild little dance, represented "gayety" +and "society." Girls "came out" very much, as the sun comes out in the +morning,--by slow degrees and gradual approaches, with no particular +one moment which could be fixed upon as having been the crisis of the +joyful event. + +"There," said Elsie, adding another ruffle to the pile on the +bed,--"there's the fifth done. It's going to be ever so pretty, I think. +I'm glad you had it all white; it's a great deal nicer." + +"Cecy wanted me to have a blue bodice and sash," said Clover, "but I +wouldn't. Then she tried to persuade me to get a long spray of pink +roses for the skirt." + +"I'm so glad you didn't! Cecy was always crazy about pink roses. I only +wonder she didn't wear them when she was married!" + +Yes; the excellent Cecy, who at thirteen had announced her intention to +devote her whole life to teaching Sunday School, visiting the poor, and +setting a good example to her more worldly contemporaries, had actually +forgotten these fine resolutions, and before she was twenty had become +the wife of Sylvester Slack, a young lawyer in a neighboring town! +Cecy's wedding and wedding-clothes, and Cecy's house-furnishing had been +the great excitement of the preceding year in Burnet; and a fresh +excitement had come since in the shape of Cecy's baby, now about two +months old, and named "Katherine Clover," after her two friends. This +made it natural that Cecy and her affairs should still be of interest in +the Carr household; and Johnnie, at the time we write of, was making her +a week's visit. + +"She _was_ rather wedded to them," went on Clover, pursuing the subject +of the pink roses. "She was almost vexed when I wouldn't buy the spray. +But it cost lots, and I didn't want it in the least, so I stood firm. +Besides, I always said that my first party dress should be plain white. +Girls in novels always wear white to their first balls; and fresh +flowers are a great deal prettier, any way, than artificial. Katy says +she'll give me some violets to wear." + +"Oh, will she? That will be lovely!" cried the adoring Elsie. "Violets +look just like you, somehow. Oh, Clover, what sort of a dress do you +think I shall have when I grow up and go to parties and things? Won't it +be awfully interesting when you and I go out to choose it?" + +Just then the noise of some one running upstairs quickly made the +sisters look up from their work. Footsteps are very significant at +times, and these footsteps suggested haste and excitement. + +Another moment, the door opened, and Katy dashed in, calling out, +"Papa!--Elsie, Clover, where's papa?" + +"He went over the river to see that son of Mr. White's who broke his +leg. Why, what's the matter?" asked Clover. + +"Is somebody hurt?" inquired Elsie, startled at Katy's agitated looks. + +"No, not hurt, but poor Mrs. Ashe is in such trouble." + +Mrs. Ashe, it should be explained, was a widow who had come to Burnet +some months previously, and had taken a pleasant house not far from the +Carrs'. She was a pretty, lady-like woman, with a particularly graceful, +appealing manner, and very fond of her one child, a little girl. Katy +and papa both took a fancy to her at once; and the families had grown +neighborly and intimate in a short time, as people occasionally do when +circumstances are favorable. + +"I'll tell you all about it in a minute," went on Katy. "But first I +must find Alexander, and send him off to meet papa and beg him to hurry +home." She went to the head of the stairs as she spoke, and called +"Debby! Debby!" Debby answered. Katy gave her direction, and then came +back again to the room where the other two were sitting. + +"Now," she said, speaking more collectedly, "I must explain as fast as I +can, for I have got to go back. You know that Mrs. Ashe's little nephew +is here for a visit, don't you?" + +"Yes, he came on Saturday." + +"Well, he was ailing all day yesterday, and to-day he is worse, and she +is afraid it is scarlet-fever. Luckily, Amy was spending the day with +the Uphams yesterday, so she scarcely saw the boy at all; and as soon +as her mother became alarmed, she sent her out into the garden to play, +and hasn't let her come indoors since, so she can't have been exposed +to any particular danger yet. I went by the house on my way down +street, and there sat the poor little thing all alone in the arbor, +with her dolly in her lap, looking so disconsolate. I spoke to her over +the fence, and Mrs. Ashe heard my voice, and opened the upstairs window +and called to me. She said Amy had never had the fever, and that the +very idea of her having it frightened her to death. She is such a +delicate child, you know." + +"Oh, poor Mrs. Ashe!" cried Clover; "I am so sorry for her! Well, Katy, +what did you do?" + +"I hope I didn't do wrong, but I offered to bring Amy here. Papa won't +object, I am almost sure." + +"Why, of course he won't. Well?" + +"I am going back now to fetch Amy. Mrs. Ashe is to let Ellen, who hasn't +been in the room with the little boy, pack a bagful of clothes and put +it out on the steps, and I shall send Alexander for it by and by. You +can't think how troubled poor Mrs. Ashe was. She couldn't help crying +when she said that Amy was all she had left in the world. And I nearly +cried too, I was so sorry for her. She was so relieved when I said that +we would take Amy. You know she has a great deal of confidence in papa." + +"Yes, and in you too. Where will you put Amy to sleep, Katy?" + +"What do you think would be best? In Dorry's room?" + +"I think she'd better come in here with you, and I'll go into Dorry's +room. She is used to sleeping with her mother, you know, and she would +be lonely if she were left to herself." + +"Perhaps that will be better, only it is a great bother for you, +Clovy dear." + +"I don't mind," responded Clover, cheerfully. "I rather like to change +about and try a new room once in a while. It's as good as going on a +journey--almost." + +She pushed aside the half-finished dress as she spoke, opened a drawer, +took out its contents, and began to carry them across the entry to +Dorry's room, doing everything with the orderly deliberation that was +characteristic of whatever Clover did. Her preparations were almost +complete before Katy returned, bringing with her little Amy Ashe. + +Amy was a tall child of eight, with a frank, happy face, and long light +hair hanging down her back. She looked like the pictures of "Alice in +Wonderland;" but just at that moment it was a very woful little Alice +indeed that she resembled, for her cheeks were stained with tears and +her eyes swollen with recent crying. + +"Why, what is the matter?" cried kind little Clover, taking Amy in her +arms, and giving her a great hug. "Aren't you glad that you are coming +to make us a visit? We are." + +"Mamma didn't kiss me for good-by," sobbed the little girl. "She didn't +come downstairs at all. She just put her head out of the window and +said, 'Good-by; Amy, be very good, and don't make Miss Carr any +trouble,' and then she went away. I never went anywhere before without +kissing mamma for good-by." + +"Mamma was afraid to kiss you for fear she might give you the fever," +explained Katy, taking her turn as a comforter. "It wasn't because she +forgot. She felt worse about it than you did, I imagine. You know the +thing she cares most for is that you shall not be ill as your cousin +Walter is. She would rather do anything than have that happen. As soon +as he gets well she will kiss you dozens of times, see if she doesn't. +Meanwhile, she says in this note that you must write her a little letter +every day, and she will hang a basket by a string out of the window, and +you and I will go and drop the letters into the basket, and stand by the +gate and see her pull it up. That will be funny, won't it? We will play +that you are my little girl, and that you have a real mamma and a +make-believe mamma." + +"Shall I sleep with you?" demanded Amy, + +"Yes, in that bed over there." + +"It's a pretty bed," pronounced Amy after examining it gravely for a +moment. "Will you tell me a story every morning?" + +[Illustration: "She was having the measles on the back shelf of the +closet, you know."] + +"If you don't wake me up too early. My stories are always sleepy +till seven o'clock. Let us see what Ellen has packed in that bag, +and then I'll give you some drawers of your own, and we will put the +things away." + +The bag was full of neat little frocks and underclothes stuffed hastily +in all together. Katy took them out, smoothing the folds, and crimping +the tumbled ruffles with her fingers. As she lifted the last skirt, Amy, +with a cry of joy, pounced on something that lay beneath it. + +"It is Maria Matilda," she said, "I'm glad of that. I thought Ellen +would forget her, and the poor child wouldn't know what to do with me +and her little sister not coming to see her for so long. She was having +the measles on the back shelf of the closet, you know, and nobody would +have heard her if she had cried ever so loud." + +"What a pretty face she has!" said Katy, taking the doll out of +Amy's hands. + +"Yes, but not so pretty as Mabel. Miss Upham says that Mabel is the +prettiest child she ever saw. Look, Miss Clover," lifting the other doll +from the table where she had laid it; "hasn't she got _sweet_ eyes? +She's older than Maria Matilda, and she knows a great deal more. She's +begun on French verbs!" + +"Not really! Which ones?" + +"Oh, only 'J'aime, tu aimes, il aime,' you know,--the same that our +class is learning at school. She hasn't tried any but that. Sometimes +she says it quite nicely, but sometimes she's very stupid, and I have to +scold her." Amy had quite recovered her spirits by this time. + +"Are these the only dolls you have?" + +"Oh, please don't call them _that!_" urged Amy. "It hurts their feelings +dreadfully. I never let them know that they are dolls. They think that +they are real children, only sometimes when they are very bad I use the +word for a punishment. I've got several other children. There's old +Ragazza. My uncle named her, and she's made of rag, but she has such bad +rheumatism that I don't play with her any longer; I just give her +medicine. Then there's Effie Deans, she's only got one leg; and Mopsa +the Fairy, she's a tiny one made out of china; and Peg of +Linkinvaddy,--but she don't count, for she's all come to pieces." + +"What very queer names your children have!" said Elsie, who had come in +during the enumeration. + +"Yes; Uncle Ned named them. He's a very funny uncle, but he's nice. He's +always so much interested in my children." + +"There's papa now!" cried Katy; and she ran downstairs to meet him. + +"Did I do right?" she asked anxiously after she had told her story. + +"Yes, my dear, perfectly right," replied Dr. Carr. "I only hope Amy was +taken away in time. I will go round at once to see Mrs. Ashe and the +boy; and, Katy, keep away from me when I come back, and keep the others +away, till I have changed my coat." + +It is odd how soon and how easily human beings accustom themselves to a +new condition of things. When sudden illness comes, or sudden sorrow, or +a house is burned up, or blown down by a tornado, there are a few hours +or days of confusion and bewilderment, and then people gather up their +wits and their courage and set to work to repair damages. They clear +away ruins, plant, rebuild, very much as ants whose hill has been +trodden upon, after running wildly about for a little while, begin all +together to reconstruct the tiny cone of sand which is so important in +their eyes. In a very short time the changes which at first seem so sad +and strange become accustomed and matter-of-course things which no +longer surprise us. + +It seemed to the Carrs after a few days as if they had always had Amy in +the house with them. Papa's daily visit to the sick-room, their +avoidance of him till after he had "changed his coat," Amy's lessons and +games of play, her dressing and undressing, the walks with the +make-believe mamma, the dropping of notes into the little basket, seemed +part of a system of things which had been going on for a long, long +time, and which everybody would miss should they suddenly stop. + +But they by no means suddenly stopped. Little Walter Ashe's case proved +to be rather a severe one; and after he had begun to mend, he caught +cold somehow and was taken worse again. There were some serious +symptoms, and for a few days Dr. Carr did not feel sure how things would +turn. He did not speak of his anxiety at home, but kept silence and a +cheerful face, as doctors know how to do. Only Katy, who was more +intimate with her father than the rest, guessed that things were going +gravely at the other house, and she was too well trained to ask +questions. The threatening symptoms passed off, however, and little +Walter slowly got better; but it was a long convalescence, and Mrs. Ashe +grew thin and pale before he began to look rosy. There was no one on +whom she could devolve the charge of the child. His mother was dead; his +father, an overworked business man, had barely time to run up once a +week to see about him; there was no one at his home but a housekeeper, +in whom Mrs. Ashe had not full confidence. So the good aunt denied +herself the sight of her own child, and devoted her strength and time to +Walter; and nearly two months passed, and still little Amy remained at +Dr. Carr's. + +She was entirely happy there. She had grown very fond of Katy, and was +perfectly at home with the others. Phil and Johnnie, who had returned +from her visit to Cecy, were by no means too old or too proud to be +play-fellows to a child of eight; and with all the older members of the +family Amy was a chosen pet. Debby baked turnovers, and twisted cinnamon +cakes into all sorts of fantastic shapes to please her; Alexander would +let her drive if she happened to sit on the front seat of the carryall; +Dr. Carr was seldom so tired that he could not tell her a story,--and +nobody told such nice stories as Dr. Carr, Amy thought; Elsie invented +all manner of charming games for the hour before bedtime; Clover made +wonderful capes and bonnets for Mabel and Maria Matilda; and Katy--Katy +did all sorts of things. + +Katy had a peculiar gift with children which is not easy to define. Some +people possess it, and some do not; it cannot be learned, it comes by +nature. She was bright and firm and equable all at once. She both amused +and influenced them. There was something about her which excited the +childish imagination, and always they felt her sympathy. Amy was a +tractable child, and intelligent beyond her age, but she was never quite +so good with any one as with Katy. She followed her about like a little +lover; she lavished upon her certain special words and caresses which +she gave to no one else; and would kneel on her lap, patting Katy's +shoulders with her soft hand, and cooing up into her face like a happy +dove, for a half-hour together. Katy laughed at these demonstrations, +but they pleased her very much. She loved to be loved, as all +affectionate people do, but most of all to be loved by a child. + +At last, the long convalescence ended, Walter was carried away to his +father, with every possible precaution against fatigue and exposure, and +an army of workpeople was turned into Mrs. Ashe's house. Plaster was +scraped and painted, wall-papers torn down, mattresses made over, and +clothing burned. At last Dr. Carr pronounced the premises in a sanitary +condition, and Mrs. Ashe sent for her little girl to come home again. + +Amy was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing her mother; but at the last +moment she clung to Katy and cried as if her heart would break. + +"I want you too," she said. "Oh, if Dr. Carr would only let you come and +live with me and mamma, I should be so happy! I shall be so lone-ly!" + +"Nonsense!" cried Clover. "Lonely with mamma, and those poor children of +yours who have been wondering all these weeks what has become of you! +They'll want a great deal of attention at first, I am sure; medicine and +new clothes and whippings,--all manner of things. You remember I +promised to make a dress for Effie Deans out of that blue and brown +plaid like Johnnie's balmoral. I mean to begin it to-morrow." + +"Oh, will you?"--forgetting her grief--"that will be lovely. The skirt +needn't be _very_ full, you know. Effie doesn't walk much, because of +only having one leg. She will be _so_ pleased, for she hasn't had a new +dress I don't know when." + +Consoled by the prospect of Effie's satisfaction, Amy departed quite +cheerfully, and Mrs. Ashe was spared the pain of seeing her only child +in tears on the first evening of their reunion. But Amy talked so +constantly of Katy, and seemed to love her so much, that it put a plan +into her mother's head which led to important results, as the next +chapter will show. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +AN INVITATION. + + +It is a curious fact, and makes life very interesting, that, generally +speaking, none of us have any expectation that things are going to +happen till the very moment when they do happen. We wake up some morning +with no idea that a great happiness is at hand, and before night it has +come, and all the world is changed for us; or we wake bright and +cheerful, with never a guess that clouds of sorrow are lowering in our +sky, to put all the sunshine out for a while, and before noon all is +dark. Nothing whispers of either the joy or the grief. No instinct bids +us to delay or to hasten the opening of the letter or telegram, or the +lifting of the latch of the door at which stands the messenger of good +or ill. And because it may be, and often is, happy tidings that come, +and joyful things which happen, each fresh day as it dawns upon us is +like an unread story, full of possible interest and adventure, to be +made ours as soon as we have cut the pages and begun to read. + +Nothing whispered to Katy Carr, as she sat at the window mending a long +rent in Johnnie's school coat, and saw Mrs. Ashe come in at the side +gate and ring the office bell, that the visit had any special +significance for her. Mrs. Ashe often did come to the office to consult +Dr. Carr. Amy might not be quite well, Katy thought, or there might be a +letter with something about Walter in it, or perhaps matters had gone +wrong at the house, where paperers and painters were still at work. So +she went calmly on with her darning, drawing the "ravelling," with which +her needle was threaded, carefully in and out, and taking nice even +stitches without one prophetic thrill or tremor; while, if only she +could have looked through the two walls and two doors which separated +the room in which she sat from the office, and have heard what Mrs. Ashe +was saying, the school coat would have been thrown to the winds, and for +all her tall stature and propriety, she would have been skipping with +delight and astonishment. For Mrs. Ashe was asking papa to let her do +the very thing of all others that she most longed to do; she was asking +him to let Katy go with her to Europe! + +"I am not very well," she told the Doctor. "I got tired and run down +while Walter was ill, and I don't seem to throw it off as I hoped I +should. I feel as if a change would do me good. Don't you think so +yourself?" + +"Yes, I do," Dr. Carr admitted. + +"This idea of Europe is not altogether a new one," continued Mrs. Ashe. +"I have always meant to go some time, and have put it off, partly +because I dreaded going alone, and didn't know anybody whom I exactly +wanted to take with me. But if you will let me have Katy, Dr. Carr, it +will settle all my difficulties. Amy loves her dearly, and so do I; she +is just the companion I need; if I have her with me, I sha'n't be afraid +of anything. I do hope you will consent." + +"How long do you mean to be away?" asked Dr. Carr, divided between +pleasure at these compliments to Katy and dismay at the idea of +losing her. + +"About a year, I think. My plans are rather vague as yet; but my idea +was to spend a few weeks in Scotland and England first,--I have some +cousins in London who will be good to us; and an old friend of mine +married a gentleman who lives on the Isle of Wight; perhaps we might go +there. Then we could cross over to France and visit Paris and a few +other places; and before it gets cold go down to Nice, and from there to +Italy. Katy would like to see Italy. Don't you think so?" + +"I dare say she would," said Dr. Carr, with a smile. "She would be a +queer girl if she didn't." + +"There is one reason why I thought Italy would be particularly pleasant +this winter for me and for her too," went on Mrs. Ashe; "and that is, +because my brother will be there. He is a lieutenant in the navy, you +know, and his ship, the 'Natchitoches,' is one of the Mediterranean +squadron. They will be in Naples by and by, and if we were there at the +same time we should have Ned to go about with; and he would take us to +the receptions on the frigate, and all that, which would be a nice +chance for Katy. Then toward spring I should like to go to Florence and +Venice, and visit the Italian lakes and Switzerland in the early summer. +But all this depends on your letting Katy go. If you decide against it, +I shall give the whole thing up. But you won't decide against +it,"--coaxingly,--"you will be kinder than that. I will take the best +possible care of her, and do all I can to make her happy, if only you +will consent to lend her to me; and I shall consider it _such_ a favor. +And it is to cost you nothing. You understand, Doctor, she is to be my +guest all through. That is a point I want to make clear in the outset; +for she goes for my sake, and I cannot take her on any other conditions. +Now, Dr. Carr, please, please! I am sure you won't deny me, when I have +so set my heart upon having her." + +Mrs. Ashe was very pretty and persuasive, but still Dr. Carr hesitated. +To send Katy for a year's pleasuring in Europe was a thing that had +never occurred to his mind as possible. The cost alone would have +prevented; for country doctors with six children are not apt to be rich +men, even in the limited and old-fashioned construction of the word +"wealth." It seemed equally impossible to let her go at Mrs. Ashe's +expense; at the same time, the chance was such a good one, and Mrs. Ashe +so much in earnest and so urgent, that it was difficult to refuse point +blank. He finally consented to take time for consideration before making +his decision. + +"I will talk it over with Katy," he said. "The child ought to have a say +in the matter; and whatever we decide, you must let me thank you in her +name as well as my own for your great kindness in proposing it." + +"Doctor, I'm not kind at all, and I don't want to be thanked. My desire +to take Katy with me to Europe is purely selfish. I am a lonely person," +she went on; "I have no mother or sister, and no cousins of my own age. +My brother's profession keeps him at sea; I scarcely ever see him. I +have no one but a couple of old aunts, too feeble in health to travel +with me or to be counted on in case of any emergency. You see, I am a +real case for pity." + +Mrs. Ashe spoke gayly, but her brown eyes were dim with tears as she +ended her little appeal. Dr. Carr, who was soft-hearted where women were +concerned, was touched. Perhaps his face showed it, for Mrs. Ashe added +in a more hopeful tone,-- + +"But I won't tease any more. I know you will not refuse me unless you +think it right and necessary; and," she continued mischievously, "I have +great faith in Katy as an ally. I am pretty sure that she will say that +she wants to go." + +And indeed Katy's cry of delight when the plan was proposed to her said +that sufficiently, without need of further explanation. To go to Europe +for a year with Mrs. Ashe and Amy seemed simply too delightful to be +true. All the things she had heard about and read about--cathedrals, +pictures, Alpine peaks, famous places, famous people--came rushing into +her mind in a sort of bewildering tide as dazzling as it was +overwhelming. Dr. Carr's objections, his reluctance to part with her, +melted before the radiance of her satisfaction. He had no idea that +Katy would care so much about it. After all, it was a great +chance,--perhaps the only one of the sort that she would ever have. +Mrs. Ashe could well afford to give Katy this treat, he knew; and it +was quite true what she said, that it was a favor to her as well as to +Katy. This train of reasoning led to its natural results. Dr. Carr +began to waver in his mind. + +But, the first excitement over, Katy's second thoughts were more sober +ones. How could papa manage without her for a whole year, she asked +herself. He would miss her, she well knew, and might not the charge of +the house be too much for Clover? The preserves were almost all made, +that was one comfort; but there were the winter clothes to be seen to; +Dorry needed new flannels, Elsie's dresses must be altered over for +Johnnie,--there were cucumbers to pickle, the coal to order! A host of +housewifely cares began to troop through Katy's mind, and a little +pucker came into her forehead, and a worried look across the face which +had been so bright a few minutes before. Strange to say, it was that +little pucker and the look of worry which decided Dr. Carr. + +"She is only twenty-one," he reflected; "hardly out of childhood. I +don't want her to settle into an anxious, drudging state and lose her +youth with caring for us all. She shall go; though how we are to manage +without her I don't see. Little Clover will have to come to the fore, +and show what sort of stuff there is in her." + +"Little Clover" came gallantly "to the fore" when the first shock of +surprise was over, and she had relieved her mind with one long private +cry over having to do without Katy for a year. Then she wiped her eyes, +and began to revel unselfishly in the idea of her sister's having so +great a treat. Anything and everything seemed possible to secure it for +her; and she made light of all Katy's many anxieties and apprehensions. + +"My dear child, I know a flannel undershirt when I see one, just as well +as you do," she declared. "Tucks in Johnnie's dress, forsooth! why, of +course. Ripping out a tuck doesn't require any superhuman ingenuity! +Give me your scissors, and I'll show you at once. Quince marmalade? +Debby can make that. Hers is about as good as yours; and if it wasn't, +what should we care, as long as you are ascending Mont Blanc, and +hob-nobbing with Michael Angelo and the crowned heads of Europe? I'll +make the spiced peaches! I'll order the kindling! And if there ever +comes a time when I feel lost and can't manage without advice, I'll go +across to Mrs. Hall. Don't worry about us. We shall get on happily and +easily; in fact, I shouldn't be surprised if I developed such a turn for +housekeeping, that when you come back the family refused to change, and +you had just to sit for the rest of your life and twirl your thumbs and +watch me do it! Wouldn't that be fine?" and Clover laughed merrily. "So, +Katy darling, cast that shadow from your brow, and look as a girl ought +to look who's going to Europe. Why, if it were I who were going, I +should simply stand on my head every moment of the time!" + +"Not a very convenient position for packing," said Katy, smiling. + +"Yes, it is, if you just turn your trunk upside down! When I think of +all the delightful things you are going to do, I can hardly sit still. I +_love_ Mrs. Ashe for inviting you." + +"So do I," said Katy, soberly. "It was the kindest thing! I can't think +why she did it." + +"Well, I can," replied Clover, always ready to defend Katy even against +herself. "She did it because she wanted you, and she wanted you because +you are the dearest old thing in the world, and the nicest to have +about. You needn't say you're not, for you are! Now, Katy, don't waste +another thought on such miserable things as pickles and undershirts. We +shall get along perfectly well, I do assure you. Just fix your mind +instead on the dome of St. Peter's, or try to fancy how you'll feel the +first time you step into a gondola or see the Mediterranean. There will +be a moment! I feel a forty-horse power of housekeeping developing +within me; and what fun it will be to get your letters! We shall fetch +out the Encyclopaedia and the big Atlas and the 'History of Modern +Europe,' and read all about everything you see and all the places you +go to; and it will be as good as a lesson in geography and history and +political economy all combined, only a great deal more interesting! We +shall stick out all over with knowledge before you come back; and this +makes it a plain duty to go, if it were only for our sakes." With these +zealous promises, Katy was forced to be content. Indeed, contentment +was not difficult with such a prospect of delight before her. When once +her little anxieties had been laid aside, the idea of the coming +journey grew in pleasantness every moment. Night after night she and +papa and the children pored over maps and made out schemes for travel +and sight-seeing, every one of which was likely to be discarded as soon +as the real journey began. But they didn't know that, and it made no +real difference. Such schemes are the preliminary joys of travel, and +it doesn't signify that they come to nothing after they have served +their purpose. + +Katy learned a great deal while thus talking over what she was to see +and do. She read every scrap she could lay her hand on which related to +Rome or Florence or Venice or London. The driest details had a charm for +her now that she was likely to see the real places. She went about with +scraps of paper in her pocket, on which were written such things as +these: "Forum. When built? By whom built? More than one?" "What does +_Cenacola_ mean?" "Cecilia Metella. Who was she?" "Find out about Saint +Catherine of Siena." "Who was Beatrice Cenci?" How she wished that she +had studied harder and more carefully before this wonderful chance came +to her. People always wish this when they are starting for Europe; and +they wish it more and more after they get there, and realize of what +value exact ideas and information and a fuller knowledge of the foreign +languages are to all travellers; how they add to the charm of everything +seen, and enhance the ease of everything done. + +All Burnet took an interest in Katy's plans, and almost everybody had +some sort of advice or help, or some little gift to offer. Old Mrs. +Worrett, who, though fatter than ever, still retained the power of +locomotion, drove in from Conic Section in her roomy carryall with the +present of a rather obsolete copy of "Murray's Guide," in faded red +covers, which her father had used in his youth, and which she was sure +Katy would find convenient; also a bottle of Brown's Jamaica Ginger, in +case of sea-sickness. Debby's sister-in-law brought a bundle of dried +chamomile for the same purpose. Some one had told her it was the +"handiest thing in the world to take along with you on them steamboats." +Cecy sent a wonderful old-gold and scarlet contrivance to hang on the +wall of the stateroom. There were pockets for watches, and pockets for +medicines, and pockets for handkerchief and hairpins,--in short, there +were pockets for everything; besides a pincushion with "Bon Voyage" in +rows of shining pins, a bottle of eau-de-cologne, a cake of soap, and a +hammer and tacks to nail the whole up with. Mrs. Hall's gift was a warm +and very pretty woollen wrapper of dark blue flannel, with a pair of +soft knitted slippers to match. Old Mr. Worrett sent a note of advice, +recommending Katy to take a quinine pill every day that she was away, +never to stay out late, because the dews "over there" were said to be +unwholesome, and on no account to drink a drop of water which had not +been boiled. + +From Cousin Helen came a delightful travelling-bag, light and strong at +once, and fitted up with all manner of nice little conveniences. Miss +Inches sent a "History of Europe" in five fat volumes, which was so +heavy that it had to be left at home. In fact, a good many of Katy's +presents had to be left at home, including a bronze paper-weight in the +shape of a griffin, a large pair of brass screw candlesticks, and an +ormolu inkstand with a pen-rest attached, which weighed at least a pound +and a half. These Katy laid aside to enjoy after her return. Mrs. Ashe +and Cousin Helen had both warned her of the inconvenient consequences of +weight in baggage; and by their advice she had limited herself to a +single trunk of moderate size, besides a little flat valise for use in +her stateroom. + +Clover's gift was a set of blank books for notes, journals, etc. In one +of these, Katy made out a list of "Things I must see," "Things I must +do," "Things I would like to see," "Things I would like to do." Another +she devoted to various good shopping addresses which had been given her; +for though she did not expect to do any shopping herself, she thought +Mrs. Ashe might find them useful. Katy's ideas were still so simple and +unworldly, and her experience of life so small, that it had not occurred +to her how very tantalizing it might be to stand in front of shop +windows full of delightful things and not be able to buy any of them. +She was accordingly overpowered with surprise, gratitude, and the sense +of sudden wealth, when about a week before the start her father gave her +three little thin strips of paper, which he told her were circular +notes, and worth a hundred dollars apiece. He also gave her five English +sovereigns. + +"Those are for immediate use," he said. "Put the notes away carefully, +and don't lose them. You had better have them cashed one at a time as +you require them. Mrs. Ashe will explain how. You will need a gown or so +before you come back, and you'll want to buy some photographs and so on, +and there will be fees--" + +"But, papa," protested Katy, opening wide her candid eyes, "I didn't +expect you to give me any money, and I'm afraid you are giving me too +much. Do you think you can afford it? Really and truly, I don't want to +buy things. I shall see everything, you know, and that's enough." + +Her father only laughed. + +"You'll be wiser and greedier before the year is out, my dear," he +replied. "Three hundred dollars won't go far, as you'll find. But it's +all I can spare, and I trust you to keep within it, and not come home +with any long bills for me to pay." + +"Papa! I should think not!" cried Katy, with unsophisticated horror. + +One very interesting thing was to happen before they sailed, the thought +of which helped both Katy and Clover through the last hard days, when +the preparations were nearly complete, and the family had leisure to +feel dull and out of spirits. Katy was to make Rose Red a visit. + +Rose had by no means been idle during the three years and a half which +had elapsed since they all parted at Hillsover, and during which the +girls had not seen her. In fact, she had made more out of the time than +any of the rest of them, for she had been engaged for eighteen months, +had been married, and was now keeping house near Boston with a little +Rose of her own, who, she wrote to Clover, was a perfect angel, and more +delicious than words could say! Mrs. Ashe had taken passage in the +"Spartacus," sailing from Boston; and it was arranged that Katy should +spend the last two days before sailing, with Rose, while Mrs. Ashe and +Amy visited an old aunt in Hingham. To see Rose in her own home, and +Rose's husband, and Rose's baby, was only next in interest to seeing +Europe. None of the changes in her lot seemed to have changed her +particularly, to judge by the letter she sent in reply to Katy's +announcing her plans, which letter ran as follows:-- + +"LONGWOOD, September 20. + +"My dearest child,--Your note made me dance with delight. I stood on my +head waving my heels wildly to the breeze till Deniston thought I must +be taken suddenly mad; but when I explained he did the same. It is too +enchanting, the whole of it. I put it at the head of all the nice things +that ever happened, except my baby. Write the moment you get this by +what train you expect to reach Boston, and when you roll into the +station you will behold two forms, one tall and stalwart, the other +short and fatsome, waiting for you. They will be those of Deniston and +myself. Deniston is not beautiful, but he is good, and he is prepared to +_adore_ you. The baby is both good and beautiful, and you will adore +her. I am neither; but you know all about me, and I always did adore you +and always shall. I am going out this moment to the butcher's to order a +calf fatted for your special behoof; and he shall be slain and made into +cutlets the moment I hear from you. My funny little house, which is +quite a dear little house too, assumes a new interest in my eyes from +the fact that you so soon are to see it. It is somewhat queer, as you +might know my house would be; but I think you will like it. + +"I saw Silvery Mary the other day and told her you were coming. She is +the same mouse as ever. I shall ask her and some of the other girls to +come out to lunch on one of your days. Good-by, with a hundred and fifty +kisses to Clovy and the rest. + +"Your loving + +"ROSE RED." + +"She never signs herself Browne, I observe," said Clover, as she +finished the letter. + +"Oh, Rose Red Browne would sound too funny. Rose Red she must stay till +the end of the chapter; no other name could suit her half so well, and I +can't imagine her being called anything else. What fun it will be to see +her and little Rose!" + +"And Deniston Browne," put in Clover. + +"Somehow I find it rather hard to take in the fact that there is a +Deniston Browne," observed Katy. + +"It will be easier after you have seen him, perhaps." + +The last day came, as last days will. Katy's trunk, most carefully +and exactly packed by the united efforts of the family, stood in the +hall, locked and strapped, not to be opened again till the party +reached London. This fact gave it a certain awful interest in the +eyes of Phil and Johnnie, and even Elsie gazed upon it with respect. +The little valise was also ready; and Dorry, the neat-handed, had +painted a red star on both ends of both it and the trunk, that they +might be easily picked from among a heap of luggage. He now proceeded +to prepare and paste on two square cards, labelled respectively, +"Hold" and "State-room." Mrs. Hall had told them that this was the +correct thing to do. + +Mrs. Ashe had been full of business likewise in putting her house to +rights for a family who had rented it for the time of her absence, and +Katy and Clover had taken a good many hours from their own preparations +to help her. All was done at last; and one bright morning in October, +Katy stood on the wharf with her family about her, and a lump in her +throat which made it difficult to speak to any of them. She stood so +very still and said so very little, that a bystander not acquainted with +the circumstances might have dubbed her "unfeeling;" while the fact was +that she was feeling too much! + +The first bell rang. Katy kissed everybody quietly and went on board +with her father. Her parting from him, hardest of all, took place in the +midst of a crowd of people; then he had to leave her, and as the wheels +began to revolve she went out on the side deck to have a last glimpse of +the home faces. There they were: Elsie crying tumultuously, with her +head on papa's coat-sleeve; John laughing, or trying to laugh, with big +tears running down her cheeks the while; and brave little Clover waving +her handkerchief encouragingly, but with a very sober look on her face. +Katy's heart went out to the little group with a sudden passion of +regret and yearning. Why had she said she would go? What was all Europe +in comparison with what she was leaving? Life was so short, how could +she take a whole year out of it to spend away from the people she loved +best? If it had been left to her to choose, I think she would have flown +back to the shore then and there, and given up the journey, I also think +she would have been heartily sorry a little later, had she done so. + +But it was not left for her to choose. Already the throb of the engines +was growing more regular and the distance widening between the great +boat and the wharf. Gradually the dear faces faded into distance; and +after watching till the flutter of Clover's handkerchief became an +undistinguishable speck, Katy went to the cabin with a heavy heart. But +there were Mrs. Ashe and Amy, inclined to be homesick also, and in need +of cheering; and Katy, as she tried to brighten them, gradually grew +bright herself, and recovered her hopeful spirits. Burnet pulled less +strongly as it got farther away, and Europe beckoned more brilliantly +now that they were fairly embarked on their journey. The sun shone, the +lake was a beautiful, dazzling blue, and Katy said to herself, "After +all, a year is not very long, and how happy I am going to be!" + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +ROSE AND ROSEBUD. + + +Thirty-six hours later the Albany train, running smoothly across the +green levels beyond the Mill Dam, brought the travellers to Boston. + +Katy looked eagerly from the window for her first glimpse of the city of +which she had heard so much. "Dear little Boston! How nice it is to see +it again!" she heard a lady behind her say; but why it should be called +"little Boston" she could not imagine. Seen from the train, it looked +large, imposing, and very picturesque, after flat Burnet with its one +bank down to the edge of the lake. She studied the towers, steeples, and +red roofs crowding each other up the slopes of the Tri-Mountain, and the +big State House dome crowning all, and made up her mind that she liked +the looks of it better than any other city she had ever seen. + +The train slackened its speed, ran for a few moments between rows of +tall, shabby brick walls, and with a long, final screech of its whistle +came to halt in the station-house. Every one made a simultaneous rush +for the door; and Katy and Mrs. Ashe, waiting to collect their books and +bags, found themselves wedged into their seats and unable to get out. It +was a confusing moment, and not comfortable; such moments never are. + +But the discomfort brightened into a sense of relief as, looking out of +the window, Katy caught sight of a face exactly opposite, which had +evidently caught sight of her,--a fresh, pretty face, with light, waving +hair, pink cheeks all a-dimple, and eyes which shone with laughter and +welcome. It was Rose herself, not a bit changed during the years since +they parted. A tall young man stood beside her, who must, of course, be +her husband, Deniston Browne. + +"There is Rose Red," cried Katy to Mrs. Ashe. "Oh, doesn't she look dear +and natural? Do wait and let me introduce you. I want you to know her." + +But the train had come in a little behind time, and Mrs. Ashe was +afraid of missing the Hingham boat; so she only took a hasty peep +from the window at Rose, pronounced her to be charming-looking, +kissed Katy hurriedly, reminded her that they must be on the steamer +punctually at twelve o'clock the following Saturday, and was gone, +with Amy beside her; so that Katy, following last of all the +slow-moving line of passengers, stepped all alone down from the +platform into the arms of Rose Red. + +"You darling!" was Rose's first greeting. "I began to think you meant +to spend the night in the car, you were so long in getting out. Well, +how perfectly lovely this is! Deniston, here is Katy; Katy, this is +my husband." + +Rose looked about fifteen as she spoke, and so absurdly young to have a +"husband," that Katy could not help laughing as she shook hands with +"Deniston;" and his own eyes twinkled with fun and evident recognition +of the same joke. He was a tall young man, with a pleasant, "steady" +face, and seemed to be infinitely amused, in a quiet way, with +everything which his wife said and did. + +"Let us make haste and get out of this hole," went on Rose. "I can +scarcely see for the smoke. Deniston, dear, please find the cab, and +have Katy's luggage put on it. I am wild to get her home, and exhibit +baby before she chews up her new sash or does something else that is +dreadful, to spoil her looks. I left her sitting in state, Katy, with +all her best clothes on, waiting to be made known to you." + +"My large trunk is to go straight to the steamer," explained Katy, as +she gave her checks to Mr. Browne. "I only want the little one taken out +to Longwood, please." + +"Now, this is cosey," remarked Rose, when they were seated in the cab +with Katy's bag at their feet. "Deniston, my love, I wish you were going +out with us. There's a nice little bench here all ready and vacant, +which is just suited to a man of your inches. You won't? Well, come in +the early train, then. Don't forget.--Now, isn't he just as nice as I +told you he was?" she demanded, the moment the cab began to move. + +"He looks very nice indeed, as far as I can judge in three minutes and +a quarter." + +"My dear, it ought not to take anybody of ordinary discernment a minute +and a quarter to perceive that he is simply the dearest fellow that ever +lived," said Rose. "I discovered it three seconds after I first beheld +him, and was desperately in love with him before he had fairly finished +his first bow after introduction." + +"And was he equally prompt?" asked Katy. + +"He says so," replied Rose, with a pretty blush. "But then, you know, he +could hardly say less after such a frank confession on my part. It is no +more than decent of him to make believe, even if it is not true. Now, +Katy, look at Boston, and see if you don't _love_ it!" + +The cab had now turned into Boylston Street; and on the right hand lay +the Common, green as summer after the autumn rains, with the elm arches +leafy still. Long, slant beams of afternoon sun were filtering through +the boughs and falling across the turf and the paths, where people were +walking and sitting, and children and babies playing together. It was a +delightful scene; and Katy received an impression of space and cheer and +air and freshness, which ever after was associated with her recollection +of Boston. + +Rose was quite satisfied with her raptures as they drove through Charles +Street, between the Common and the Public Garden, all ablaze with autumn +flowers, and down the length of Beacon Street with the blue bay shining +between the handsome houses on the water side. Every vestibule and +bay-window was gay with potted plants and flower-boxes; and a concourse +of happy-looking people, on foot, on horseback, and in carriages, was +surging to and fro like an equal, prosperous tide, while the sunlight +glorified all. + +"'Boston shows a soft Venetian side,'" quoted Katy, after a while. "I +know now what Mr. Lowell meant when he wrote that. I don't believe there +is a more beautiful place in the world." + +"Why, of course there isn't," retorted Rose, who was a most devoted +little Bostonian, in spite of the fact that she had lived in Washington +nearly all her life. "I've not seen much beside, to be sure, but that is +no matter; I know it is true. It is the dream of my life to come into +the city to live. I don't care what part I live in,--West End, South +End, North End; it's all one to me, so long as it is Boston!" + +"But don't you like Longwood?" asked Katy, looking out admiringly at the +pretty places set amid vines and shrubberies, which they were now +passing. "It looks so very pretty and pleasant." + +"Yes, it's well enough for any one who has a taste for natural +beauties," replied Rose. "I haven't; I never had. There is nothing I +hate so much as Nature! I'm a born cockney. I'd rather live in one room +over Jordan and Marsh's, and see the world wag past, than be the owner +of the most romantic villa that ever was built, I don't care where it +may be situated." + +The cab now turned in at a gate and followed a curving drive bordered +with trees to a pretty stone house with a porch embowered with Virginia +creepers, before which it stopped. + +"Here we are!" cried Rose, springing out. "Now, Katy, you mustn't even +take time to sit down before I show you the dearest baby that ever was +sent to this sinful earth. Here, let me take your bag; come straight +upstairs, and I will exhibit her to you." + +They ran up accordingly, and Rose took Katy into a large sunny nursery, +where, tied with pink ribbon into a little basket-chair and watched over +by a pretty young nurse, sat a dear, fat, fair baby, so exactly like +Rose in miniature that no one could possibly have mistaken the +relationship. The baby began to laugh and coo as soon as it caught sight +of its gay little mother, and exhibited just such another dimple as +hers, in the middle of a pink cheek. Katy was enchanted. + +"Oh, you darling!" she said. "Would she come to me, do you think, Rose?" + +"Why, of course she shall," replied Rose, picking up the baby as if she +had been a pillow, and stuffing her into Katy's arms head first. "Now, +just look at her, and tell me if ever you saw anything so enchanting in +the whole course of your life before? Isn't she big? Isn't she +beautiful? Isn't she good? Just see her little hands and her hair! She +never cries except when it is clearly her duty to cry. See her turn her +head to look at me! Oh, you angel!" And seizing the long-suffering baby, +she smothered it with kisses. "I never, never, never did see anything so +sweet. Smell her, Katy! Doesn't she smell like heaven?" + +Little Rose was indeed a delicious baby, all dimples and good-humor and +violet-powder, with a skin as soft as a lily's leaf, and a happy +capacity for allowing herself to be petted and cuddled without +remonstrance. Katy wanted to hold her all the time; but this Rose would +by no means permit; in fact, I may as well say at once that the two +girls spent a great part of their time during the visit in fighting for +the possession of the baby, who looked on at the struggle, and smiled on +the victor, whichever it happened to be, with all the philosophic +composure of Helen of Troy. She was so soft and sunny and equable, that +it was no more trouble to care for and amuse her than if she had been a +bird or a kitten; and, as Rose remarked, it was "ten times better fun." + +"I was never allowed as much doll as I wanted in my infancy," she said. +"I suppose I tore them to pieces too soon; and they couldn't give me tin +ones to play with, as they did wash-bowls when I broke the china ones." + +"Were you such a very bad child?" asked Katy. + +"Oh, utterly depraved, I believe. You wouldn't think so now, would you? +I recollect some dreadful occasions at school. Once I had my head pinned +up in my apron because I _would_ make faces at the other scholars, and +they laughed; but I promptly bit a bay-window through the apron, and ran +my tongue out of it till they laughed worse than ever. The teacher used +to send me home with notes fastened to my pinafore with things like this +written in them: 'Little Frisk has been more troublesome than usual +to-day. She has pinched all the younger children, and bent the bonnets +of all the older ones. We hope to see an amendment soon, or we do not +know what we shall do.'" + +"Why did they call you Little Frisk?" inquired Katy, after she had +recovered from the laugh which Rose's reminiscences called forth. + +"It was a term of endearment, I suppose; but somehow my family never +seemed to enjoy it as they ought. I cannot understand," she went on +reflectively, "why I had not sense enough to suppress those awful +little notes. It would have been so easy to lose them on the way home, +but somehow it never occurred to me. Little Rose will be wiser than +that; won't you, my angel? She will tear up the horrid notes--mammy +will show her how!" + +All the time that Katy was washing her face and brushing the dust of the +railway from her dress, Rose sat by with the little Rose in her lap, +entertaining her thus. When she was ready, the droll little mamma tucked +her baby under her arm and led the way downstairs to a large square +parlor with a bay-window, through which the westering sun was shining. +It was a pretty room, and had a flavor about it "just like Rose," Katy +declared. No one else would have hung the pictures or looped back the +curtains in exactly that way, or have hit upon the happy device of +filling the grate with a great bunch of marigolds, pale brown, golden, +and orange, to simulate the fire, which would have been quite too warm +on so mild an evening. Morris papers and chintzes and "artistic" shades +of color were in their infancy at that date; but Rose's taste was in +advance of her time, and with a foreshadowing of the coming "reaction," +she had chosen a "greenery, yallery" paper for her walls, against which +hung various articles which looked a great deal queerer then than they +would to-day. There was a mandolin, picked up at some Eastern sale, a +warming-pan in shining brass from her mother's attic, two old samplers +worked in faded silks, and a quantity of gayly tinted Japanese fans and +embroideries. She had also begged from an old aunt at Beverly Farms a +couple of droll little armchairs in white painted wood, with covers of +antique needle-work. One had "Chit" embroidered on the middle of its +cushion; the other, "Chat." These stood suggestively at the corners of +the hearth. + +"Now, Katy," said Rose, seating herself in "Chit," "pull up 'Chat' and +let us begin." + +So they did begin, and went on, interrupted only by Baby Rose's coos and +splutters, till the dusk fell, till appetizing smells floated through +from the rear of the house, and the click of a latch-key announced Mr. +Browne, come home just in time for dinner. + +The two days' visit went only too quickly. There is nothing more +fascinating to a girl than the menage of a young couple of her own age. +It is a sort of playing at real life without the cares and the sense of +responsibility that real life is sure to bring. Rose was an adventurous +housekeeper. She was still new to the position, she found it very +entertaining, and she delighted in experiments of all sorts. If they +turned out well, it was good fun; if not, that was funnier still! Her +husband, for all his serious manner, had a real boy's love of a lark, +and he aided and abetted her in all sorts of whimsical devices. They +owned a dog who was only less dear than the baby, a cat only less dear +than the dog, a parrot whose education required constant supervision, +and a hutch of ring-doves whose melancholy little "whuddering" coos were +the delight of Rose the less. The house seemed astir with young life all +over. The only elderly thing in it was the cook, who had the reputation +of a dreadful temper; only, unfortunately, Rose made her laugh so much +that she never found time to be cross. + +Katy felt quite an old, experienced person amid all this movement and +liveliness and cheer. It seemed to her that nobody in the world could +possibly be having such a good time as Rose; but Rose did not take the +same view of the situation. + +"It's all very well now," she said, "while the warm weather lasts; but +in winter Longwood is simply grewsome. The wind never stops blowing day +nor night. It howls and it roars and it screams, till I feel as if every +nerve in my body were on the point of snapping in two. And the snow, +ugh! And the wind, ugh! And burglars! Every night of our lives they +come,--or I think they come,--and I lie awake and hear them sharpening +their tools and forcing the locks and murdering the cook and kidnapping +Baby, till I long to die, and have done with them forever! Oh, Nature is +the most unpleasant thing!" + +"Burglars are not Nature," objected Katy. + +"What are they, then? Art? High Art? Well, whatever they are, I do not +like them. Oh, if ever the happy day comes when Deniston consents to +move into town, I never wish to set my eyes on the country again as long +as I live, unless--well, yes, I should like to come out just once more +in the horse-cars and _kick_ that elm-tree by the fence! The number of +times that I have lain awake at night listening to its creaking!" + +"You might kick it without waiting to have a house in town." + +"Oh, I shouldn't dare as long as we are living here! You never know what +Nature may do. She has ways of her own of getting even with people," +remarked her friend, solemnly. + +No time must be lost in showing Boston to Katy, Rose said. So the +morning after her arrival she was taken in bright and early to see the +sights. There were not quite so many sights to be seen then as there are +today. The Art Museum had not got much above its foundations; the new +Trinity Church was still in the future; but the big organ and the bronze +statue of Beethoven were in their glory, and every day at high noon a +small straggling audience wandered into Music Hall to hear the +instrument played. To this extempore concert Katy was taken, and to +Faneuil Hall and the Athenaeum, to Doll and Richards's, where was an +exhibition of pictures, to the Granary Graveyard, and the Old South. +Then the girls did a little shopping; and by that time they were quite +tired enough to make the idea of luncheon agreeable, so they took the +path across the Common to the Joy Street Mall. + +Katy was charmed by all she had seen. The delightful nearness of so many +interesting things surprised her. She perceived what is one of Boston's +chief charms,--that the Common and its surrounding streets make a +natural centre and rallying-point for the whole city; as the heart is +the centre of the body and keeps up a quick correspondence and regulates +the life of all its extremities. The stately old houses on Beacon +Street, with their rounded fronts, deep window-casements, and here and +there a mauve or a lilac pane set in the sashes, took her fancy greatly; +and so did the State House, whose situation made it sufficiently +imposing, even before the gilding of the dome. + +Up the steep steps of the Joy Street Mall they went, to the house on Mt. +Vernon Street which the Reddings had taken on their return from +Washington nearly three years before. Rose had previously shown Katy the +site of the old family house on Summer Street, where she was born, now +given over wholly to warehouses and shops. Their present residence was +one of those wide old-fashioned brick houses on the crest of the hill, +whose upper windows command the view across to the Boston Highlands; in +the rear was a spacious yard, almost large enough to be called a garden, +walled in with ivies and grapevines, under which were long beds full of +roses and chrysanthemums and marigolds and mignonette. + +Rose carried a latch-key in her pocket, which she said had been one of +her wedding-gifts; with this she unlocked the front door and let Katy +into a roomy white-painted hall. + +"We will go straight through to the back steps," she said. "Mamma is +sure to be sitting there; she always sits there till the first frost; +she says it makes her think of the country. How different people are! I +don't want to think of the country, but I'm never allowed to forget it +for a moment. Mamma is so fond of those steps and the garden." + +There, to be sure, Mrs. Redding was found sitting in a wicker-work +chair under the shade of the grapevines, with a big basket of mending +at her side. It looked so homely and country-like to find a person +thus occupied in the middle of a busy city, that Katy's heart warmed +to her at once. + +Mrs. Redding was a fair little woman, scarcely taller than Rose and very +much like her. She gave Katy a kind welcome. + +"You do not seem like a stranger," she said, "Rose has told us so much +about you and your sister. Sylvia will be very disappointed not to see +you. She went off to make some visits when we broke up in the country, +and is not to be home for three weeks yet." + +Katy was disappointed, too, for she had heard a great deal about Sylvia +and had wished very much to meet her. She was shown her picture, from +which she gathered that she did not look in the least like Rose; for +though equally fair, her fairness was of the tall aquiline type, quite +different from Rose's dimpled prettiness. In fact, Rose resembled her +mother, and Sylvia her father; they were only alike in little +peculiarities of voice and manner, of which a portrait did not enable +Katy to judge. + +The two girls had a cosey little luncheon with Mrs. Redding, after which +Rose carried Katy off to see the house and everything in it which was in +any way connected with her own personal history,--the room where she +used to sleep, the high-chair in which she sat as a baby and which was +presently to be made over to little Rose, the sofa where Deniston +offered himself, and the exact spot on the carpet on which she had stood +while they were being married! Last of all,-- + +"Now you shall see the best and dearest thing in the whole house," +she said, opening the door of a room in the second story.-- +"Grandmamma, here is my friend Katy Carr, whom you have so often +heard me tell about." + +It was a large pleasant room, with a little wood-fire blazing in a +grate, by which, in an arm-chair full of cushions, with a +Solitaire-board on a little table beside her, sat a sweet old lady. +This was Rose's father's mother. She was nearly eighty; but she was +beautiful still, and her manner had a gracious old-fashioned courtesy +which was full of charm. She had been thrown from a carriage the year +before, and had never since been able to come downstairs or to mingle +in the family life. + +"They come to me instead," she told Katy. "There is no lack of pleasant +company," she added; "every one is very good to me. I have a reader for +two hours a day, and I read to myself a little, and play Patience and +Solitaire, and never lack entertainment." + +There was something restful in the sight of such a lovely specimen of +old age. Katy realized, as she looked at her, what a loss it had been +to her own life that she had never known either of her grandparents. +She sat and gazed at old Mrs. Redding with a mixture of regret and +fascination. She longed to hold her hand, and kiss her, and play with +her beautiful silvery hair, as Rose did. Rose was evidently the old +lady's peculiar darling. They were on the most intimate terms; and +Rose dimpled and twinkled, and made saucy speeches, and told all her +little adventures and the baby's achievements, and made jests, and +talked nonsense as freely as to a person of her own age. It was a +delightful relation. + +"Grandmamma has taken a fancy to you, I can see," she told Katy, as they +drove back to Longwood. "She always wants to know my friends; and she +has her own opinions about them, I can tell you." + +"Do you really think she liked me?" said Katy, warmly. "I am so glad +if she did, for I _loved_ her. I never saw a really beautiful old +person before." + +"Oh, there's nobody like her," rejoined Rose. "I can't imagine what it +would be not to have her." Her merry little face was quite sad and +serious as she spoke. "I wish she were not so old," she added with a +sigh. "If we could only put her back twenty years! Then, perhaps, she +would live as long as I do." + +But, alas! there is no putting back the hands on the dial of time, no +matter how much we may desire it. + +The second day of Katy's visit was devoted to the luncheon-party of +which Rose had written in her letter, and which was meant to be a +reunion or "side chapter" of the S.S.U.C. Rose had asked every old +Hillsover girl who was within reach. There was Mary Silver, of course, +and Esther Dearborn, both of whom lived in Boston; and by good luck +Alice Gibbons happened to be making Esther a visit, and Ellen Gray came +in from Waltham, where her father had recently been settled over a +parish, so that all together they made six of the original nine of the +society; and Quaker Row itself never heard a merrier confusion of +tongues than resounded through Rose's pretty parlor for the first hour +after the arrival of the guests. + +There was everybody to ask after, and everything to tell. The girls all +seemed wonderfully unchanged to Katy, but they professed to find her +very grown up and dignified. + +"I wonder if I am," she said. "Clover never told me so. But perhaps she +has grown dignified too." + +"Nonsense!" cried Rose; "Clover could no more be dignified than my baby +could. Mary Silver, give me that child this moment! I never saw such a +greedy thing as you are; you have kept her to yourself at least a +quarter of an hour, and it isn't fair." + +"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Mary, laughing and covering her mouth with +her hand exactly in her old, shy, half-frightened way. + +"We only need Mrs. Nipson to make our little party complete," went on +Rose, "or dear Miss Jane! What has become of Miss Jane, by the way? Do +any of you know?" + +"Oh, she is still teaching at Hillsover and waiting for her missionary. +He has never come back. Berry Searles says that when he goes out to walk +he always walks away from the United States, for fear of diminishing the +distance between them." + +"What a shame!" said Katy, though she could not help laughing. "Miss +Jane was really quite nice,--no, not nice exactly, but she had good +things about her." + +"Had she!" remarked Rose, satirically. "I never observed them. It +required eyes like yours, real 'double million magnifying-glasses of +h'extra power,' to find them out. She was all teeth and talons as far +as I was concerned; but I think she really did have a softish spot in +her old heart for you, Katy, and it's the only good thing I ever knew +about her." + +"What has become of Lilly Page?" asked Ellen. + +"She's in Europe with her mother. I dare say you'll meet, Katy, and what +a pleasure that will be! And have you heard about Bella? she's teaching +school in the Indian Territory. Just fancy that scrap teaching school!" + +"Isn't it dangerous?" asked Mary Silver. + +"Dangerous? How? To her scholars, do you mean? Oh, the Indians! Well, +her scalp will be easy to identify if she has adhered to her favorite +pomatum; that's one comfort," put in naughty Rose. + +It was a merry luncheon indeed, as little Rose seemed to think, for she +laughed and cooed incessantly. The girls were enchanted with her, and +voted her by acclamation an honorary member of the S.S.U.C. Her health +was drunk in Apollinaris water with all the honors, and Rose returned +thanks in a droll speech. The friends told each other their histories +for the past three years; but it was curious how little, on the whole, +most of them had to tell. Though, perhaps, that was because they did not +tell all; for Alice Gibbons confided to Katy in a whisper that she +strongly suspected Esther of being engaged, and at the same moment Ellen +Gray was convulsing Rose by the intelligence that a theological student +from Andover was "very attentive" to Mary Silver. + +"My dear, I don't believe it," Rose said, "not even a theological +student would dare! and if he did, I am quite sure Mary would consider +it most improper. You must be mistaken, Ellen." + +"No, I'm not mistaken; for the theological student is my second cousin, +and his sister told me all about it. They are not engaged exactly, but +she hasn't said no; so he hopes she will say yes." + +"Oh, she'll never say no; but then she will never say yes, either. He +would better take silence as consent! Well, I never did think I should +live to see Silvery Mary married. I should as soon have expected to find +the Thirty-nine Articles engaged in a flirtation. She's a dear old +thing, though, and as good as gold; and I shall consider your second +cousin a lucky man if he persuades her." + +"I wonder where we shall all be when you come back, Katy," said Esther +Dearborn as they parted at the gate. "A year is a long time; all sorts +of things may happen in a year." + +These words rang in Katy's ears as she fell asleep that night. "All +sorts of things may happen in a year," she thought, "and they may not be +all happy things, either." Almost she wished that the journey to Europe +had never been thought of! + +But when she waked the next morning to the brightest of October suns +shining out of a clear blue sky, her misgivings fled. There could not +have been a more beautiful day for their start. + +She and Rose went early into town, for old Mrs. Bedding had made Katy +promise to come for a few minutes to say good-by. They found her sitting +by the fire as usual, though her windows were open to admit the +sun-warmed air. A little basket of grapes stood on the table beside her, +with a nosegay of tea-roses on top. These were from Rose's mother, for +Katy to take on board the steamer; and there was something else, a small +parcel twisted up in thin white paper. + +"It is my good-by gift," said the dear old lady. "Don't open it now. +Keep it till you are well out at sea, and get some little thing with it +as a keepsake from me." + +Grateful and wondering, Katy put the little parcel in her pocket. With +kisses and good wishes she parted from these new made friends, and she +and Rose drove to the steamer, stopping for Mr. Browne by the way. They +were a little late, so there was not much time for farewells after they +arrived; but Rose snatched a moment for a private interview with the +stewardess, unnoticed by Katy, who was busy with Mrs. Ashe and Amy. + +The bell rang, and the great steam-vessel slowly backed into the stream. +Then her head was turned to sea, and down the bay she went, leaving Rose +and her husband still waving their handkerchiefs on the pier. Katy +watched them to the last, and when she could no longer distinguish them, +felt that her final link with home was broken. + +It was not till she had settled her things in the little cabin which +was to be her home for the next ten days, had put her bonnet and dress +for safe keeping in the upper berth, nailed up her red and yellow bag, +and donned the woollen gown, ulster, and soft felt hat which were to do +service during the voyage, that she found time to examine the +mysterious parcel. + +Behold, it was a large, beautiful gold-piece, twenty dollars! + +"What a darling old lady!" said Katy; and she gave the gold-piece a +kiss. "How did she come to think of such a thing? I wonder if there is +anything in Europe good enough to buy with it?" + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +ON THE "SPARTACUS." + + +The ulster and the felt hat soon came off again, for a head wind lay +waiting in the offing, and the "Spartacus" began to pitch and toss in a +manner which made all her unseasoned passengers glad to betake +themselves to their berths. Mrs. Ashe and Amy were among the earliest +victims of sea-sickness; and Katy, after helping them to settle in their +staterooms, found herself too dizzy and ill to sit up a moment longer, +and thankfully resorted to her own. + +As the night came on, the wind grew stronger and the motion worse. The +"Spartacus" had the reputation of being a dreadful "roller," and seemed +bound to justify it on this particular voyage. Down, down, down the +great hull would slide till Katy would hold her breath with fear lest it +might never right itself again; then slowly, slowly the turn would be +made, and up, up, up it would go, till the cant on the other side was +equally alarming. On the whole, Katy preferred to have her own side of +the ship, the downward one; for it was less difficult to keep herself in +the berth, from which she was in continual danger of being thrown. The +night seemed endless, for she was too frightened to sleep except in +broken snatches; and when day dawned, and she looked through the little +round pane of glass in the port-hole, only gray sky and gray weltering +waves and flying spray and rain met her view. + +"Oh, dear, why do people ever go to sea, unless they must?" she thought +feebly to herself. She wanted to get up and see how Mrs. Ashe had lived +through the night, but the attempt to move made her so miserably ill +that she was glad to sink again on her pillows. + +The stewardess looked in with offers of tea and toast, the very idea +of which was simply dreadful, and pronounced the other lady "'orridly +ill, worse than you are, Miss," and the little girl "takin' on +dreadful in the h'upper berth." Of this fact Katy soon had audible +proof; for as her dizzy senses rallied a little, she could hear Amy in +the opposite stateroom crying and sobbing pitifully. She seemed to be +angry as well as sick, for she was scolding her poor mother in the +most vehement fashion. + +"I hate being at sea," Katy heard her say. "I won't stay in this nasty +old ship. Mamma! Mamma! do you hear me? I won't stay in this ship! It +wasn't a bit kind of you to bring me to such a horrid place. It was very +unkind; it was cru-el. I want to go back, mamma. Tell the captain to +take me back to the land. Mamma, why don't you speak to me? Oh, I am so +sick and so very un-happy. Don't you wish you were dead? I do!" + +And then came another storm of sobs, but never a sound from Mrs. Ashe, +who, Katy suspected, was too ill to speak. She felt very sorry for poor +little Amy, raging there in her high berth like some imprisoned +creature, but she was powerless to help her. She could only resign +herself to her own discomforts, and try to believe that somehow, +sometime, this state of things must mend,--either they should all get to +land or all go to the bottom and be drowned, and at that moment she +didn't care very much which it turned out to be. + +The gale increased as the day wore on, and the vessel pitched +dreadfully. Twice Katy was thrown out of her berth on the floor; then +the stewardess came and fixed a sort of movable side to the berth, which +held her in, but made her feel like a child fastened into a railed crib. +At intervals she could still hear Amy crying and scolding her mother, +and conjectured that they were having a dreadful time of it in the other +stateroom. It was all like a bad dream. "And they call this travelling +for pleasure!" thought poor Katy. + +One droll thing happened in the course of the second night,--at least it +seemed droll afterward; at the time Katy was too uncomfortable to enjoy +it. Amid the rush of the wind, the creaking of the ship's timbers, and +the shrill buzz of the screw, she heard a sound of queer little +footsteps in the entry outside of her open door, hopping and leaping +together in an odd irregular way, like a regiment of mice or toy +soldiers. Nearer and nearer they came; and Katy opening her eyes saw a +procession of boots and shoes of all sizes and shapes, which had +evidently been left on the floors or at the doors of various staterooms, +and which in obedience to the lurchings of the vessel had collected in +the cabin. They now seemed to be acting in concert with one another, and +really looked alive as they bumped and trotted side by side, and two by +two, in at the door and up close to her bedside. There they remained for +several moments executing what looked like a dance; then the leading +shoe turned on its heel as if giving a signal to the others, and they +all hopped slowly again into the passage-way and disappeared. It was +exactly like one of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tales, Katy wrote to +Clover afterward. She heard them going down the cabin; but how it ended, +or whether the owners of the boots and shoes ever got their own +particular pairs again, she never knew. + +Toward morning the gale abated, the sea became smoother, and she dropped +asleep. When she woke the sun was struggling through the clouds, and she +felt better. + +The stewardess opened the port-hole to freshen the air, and helped her +to wash her face and smooth her tangled hair; then she produced a little +basin of gruel and a triangular bit of toast, and Katy found that her +appetite was come again and she could eat. + +"And 'ere's a letter, ma'am, which has come for you by post this +morning," said the nice old stewardess, producing an envelope from her +pocket, and eying her patient with great satisfaction. + +"By post!" cried Katy, in amazement; "why, how can that be?" Then +catching sight of Rose's handwriting on the envelope, she understood, +and smiled at her own simplicity. + +The stewardess beamed at her as she opened it, then saying again, "Yes, +'m, by post, m'm," withdrew, and left Katy to enjoy the little surprise. + +The letter was not long, but it was very like its writer. Rose drew a +picture of what Katy would probably be doing at the time it reached +her,--a picture so near the truth that Katy felt as if Rose must have +the spirit of prophecy, especially as she kindly illustrated the +situation with a series of pen-and-ink drawings, in which Katy was +depicted as prone in her berth, refusing with horror to go to dinner, +looking longingly backward toward the quarter where the United States +was supposed to be, and fishing out of her port-hole with a crooked pin +in hopes of grappling the submarine cable and sending a message to her +family to come out at once and take her home. It ended with this short +"poem," over which Katy laughed till Mrs. Ashe called feebly across the +entry to ask what _was_ the matter? + + "Break, break, break + And mis-behave, O sea, + And I wish that my tongue could utter + The hatred I feel for thee! + + "Oh, well for the fisherman's child + On the sandy beach at his play; + Oh, well for all sensible folk + Who are safe at home to-day! + + "But this horrible ship keeps on, + And is never a moment still, + And I yearn for the touch of the nice dry land, + Where I needn't feel so ill! + + "Break! break! break! + There is no good left in me; + For the dinner I ate on the shore so late + Has vanished into the sea!" + +Laughter is very restorative after the forlornity of sea-sickness; and +Katy was so stimulated by her letter that she managed to struggle into +her dressing-gown and slippers and across the entry to Mrs. Ashe's +stateroom. Amy had fallen asleep at last and must not be waked up, so +their interview was conducted in whispers. Mrs. Ashe had by no means got +to the tea-and-toast stage yet, and was feeling miserable enough. + +"I have had the most dreadful time with Amy," she said. "All day +yesterday, when she wasn't sick she was raging at me from the upper +berth, and I too ill to say a word in reply. I never knew her so +naughty! And it seemed very neglectful not to come to see after you, +poor dear child! but really I couldn't raise my head." + +"Neither could I, and I felt just as guilty not to be taking care of +you," said Katy. "Well, the worst is over with all of us, I hope. The +vessel doesn't pitch half so much now, and the stewardess says we shall +feel a great deal better as soon as we get on deck. She is coming +presently to help me up; and when Amy wakes, won't you let her be +dressed, and I will take care of her while Mrs. Barrett attends to you." + +"I don't think I can be dressed," sighed poor Mrs. Ashe. "I feel as if I +should just lie here till we get to Liverpool." + +"Oh no, h'indeed, mum,--no, you won't," put in Mrs. Barrett, who at that +moment appeared, gruel-cup in hand. "I don't never let my ladies lie in +their berths a moment longer than there is need of. I h'always gets them +on deck as soon as possible to get the h'air. It's the best medicine you +can 'ave, ma'am, the fresh h'air; h'indeed it h'is." + +Stewardesses are all-powerful on board ship, and Mrs. Barrett was so +persuasive as well as positive that it was not possible to resist her. +She got Katy into her dress and wraps, and seated her on deck in a chair +with a great rug wrapped about her feet, with very little effort on +Katy's part. Then she dived down the companion-way again, and in the +course of an hour appeared escorting a big burly steward, who carried +poor little pale Amy in his arms as easily as though she had been a +kitten. Amy gave a scream of joy at the sight of Katy, and cuddled down +in her lap under the warm rug with a sigh of relief and satisfaction. + +"I thought I was never going to see you again," she said, with a little +squeeze. "Oh, Miss Katy, it has been so horrid! I never thought that +going to Europe meant such dreadful things as this!" + +"This is only the beginning; we shall get across the sea in a few days, +and then we shall find out what going to Europe really means. But what +made you behave so, Amy, and cry and scold poor mamma when she was sick? +I could hear you all the way across the entry." + +"Could you? Then why didn't you come to me?" + +"I wanted to; but I was sick too, so sick that I couldn't move. But why +were you so naughty?--you didn't tell me." + +"I didn't mean to be naughty, but I couldn't help crying. You would have +cried too, and so would Johnnie, if you had been cooped up in a dreadful +old berth at the top of the wall that you couldn't get out of, and +hadn't had anything to eat, and nobody to bring you any water when you +wanted some. And mamma wouldn't answer when I called to her." + +"She couldn't answer; she was too ill," explained Katy. "Well, my pet, +it _was_ pretty hard for you. I hope we sha'n't have any more such days. +The sea is a great deal smoother now." + +"Mabel looks quite pale; she was sick, too," said Amy, regarding the +doll in her arms with an anxious air. "I hope the fresh h'air will do +her good." + +"Is she going to have any fresh hair?" asked Katy, wilfully +misunderstanding. + +"That was what that woman called it,--the fat one who made me come up +here. But I'm glad she did, for I feel heaps better already; only I keep +thinking of poor little Maria Matilda shut up in the trunk in that dark +place, and wondering if she's sick. There's nobody to explain to her +down there." + +"They say that you don't feel the motion half so much in the bottom of +the ship," said Katy. "Perhaps she hasn't noticed it at all. Dear me, +how good something smells! I wish they would bring us something to eat." + +A good many passengers had come up by this time; and Robert, the deck +steward, was going about, tray in hand, taking orders for lunch. Amy and +Katy both felt suddenly ravenous; and when Mrs. Ashe awhile later was +helped up the stairs, she was amazed to find them eating cold beef and +roasted potatoes, with the finest appetites in the world. "They had +served out their apprenticeships," the kindly old captain told them, +"and were made free of the nautical guild from that time on." So it +proved; for after these two bad days none of the party were sick again +during the voyage. + +Amy had a clamorous appetite for stories as well as for cold beef; and +to appease this craving, Katy started a sort of ocean serial, called +"The History of Violet and Emma," which she meant to make last till they +got to Liverpool, but which in reality lasted much longer. It might with +equal propriety have been called "The Adventures of two little Girls who +didn't have any Adventures," for nothing in particular happened to +either Violet or Emma during the whole course of their long-drawn-out +history. Amy, however, found them perfectly enchanting, and was never +weary of hearing how they went to school and came home again, how they +got into scrapes and got out of them, how they made good resolutions and +broke them, about their Christmas presents and birthday treats, and what +they said and how they felt. The first instalment of this un-exciting +romance was given that first afternoon on deck; and after that, Amy +claimed a new chapter daily, and it was a chief ingredient of her +pleasure during the voyage. + +On the third morning Katy woke and dressed so early, that she gained the +deck before the sailors had finished their scrubbing and holystoning. +She took refuge within the companion-way, and sat down on the top step +of the ladder, to wait till the deck was dry enough to venture upon it. +There the Captain found her and drew near for a talk. + +Captain Bryce was exactly the kind of sea-captain that is found in +story-books, but not always in real life. He was stout and grizzled and +brown and kind. He had a bluff weather-beaten face, lit up with a pair +of shrewd blue eyes which twinkled when he was pleased; and his manner, +though it was full of the habit of command, was quiet and pleasant. He +was a Martinet on board his ship. Not a sailor under him would have +dared dispute his orders for a moment; but he was very popular with +them, notwithstanding; they liked him as much as they feared him, for +they knew him to be their best friend if it came to sickness or trouble +with any of them. + +Katy and he grew quite intimate during their long morning talk. The +Captain liked girls. He had one of his own, about Katy's age, and was +fond of talking about her. Lucy was his mainstay at home, he told Katy. +Her mother had been "weakly" now this long time back, and Bess and Nanny +were but children yet, so Lucy had to take command and keep things +ship-shape when he was away. + +"She'll be on the lookout when the steamer comes in," said the Captain. +"There's a signal we've arranged which means 'All's well,' and when we +get up the river a little way I always look to see if it's flying. It's +a bit of a towel hung from a particular window; and when I see it I say +to myself, 'Thank God! another voyage safely done and no harm come of +it.' It's a sad kind of work for a man to go off for a twenty-four days' +cruise leaving a sick wife on shore behind him. If it wasn't that I have +Lucy to look after things, I should have thrown up my command long ago." + +"Indeed, I am glad you have Lucy; she must he a great comfort to you," +said Katy, sympathetically; for the Captain's hearty voice trembled a +little as he spoke. She made him tell her the color of Lucy's hair and +eyes, and exactly how tall she was, and what she had studied, and what +sort of books she liked. She seemed such a very nice girl, and Katy +thought she should like to know her. + +The deck had dried fast in the fresh sea-wind, and the Captain had just +arranged Katy in her chair, and was wrapping the rug about her feet in a +fatherly way, when Mrs. Barrett, all smiles, appeared from below. + +"Oh, 'ere you h'are, Miss. I couldn't think what 'ad come to you so +early; and you're looking ever so well again, I'm pleased to see; and +'ere's a bundle just arrived, Miss, by the Parcels Delivery." + +"What!" cried simple Katy. Then she laughed at her own foolishness, and +took the "bundle," which was directed in Rose's unmistakable hand. + +It contained a pretty little green-bound copy of Emerson's Poems, with +Katy's name and "To be read at sea," written on the flyleaf. Somehow the +little gift seemed to bridge the long misty distance which stretched +between the vessel's stern and Boston Bay, and to bring home and friends +a great deal nearer. With a half-happy, half-tearful pleasure Katy +recognized the fact that distance counts for little if people love one +another, and that hearts have a telegraph of their own whose messages +are as sure and swift as any of those sent over the material lines which +link continent to continent and shore with shore. + +Later in the morning, Katy, going down to her stateroom for something, +came across a pallid, exhausted-looking lady, who lay stretched on one +of the long sofas in the cabin, with a baby in her arms and a little +girl sitting at her feet, quite still, with a pair of small hands folded +in her lap. The little girl did not seem to be more than four years old. +She had two pig-tails of thick flaxen hair hanging over her shoulders, +and at Katy's approach raised a pair of solemn blue eyes, which had so +much appeal in them, though she said nothing, that Katy stopped at once. + +"Can I do anything for you?" she asked. "I am afraid you have been +very ill." + +At the sound of her voice the lady on the sofa opened her eyes. She +tried to speak, but to Katy's dismay began to cry instead; and when the +words came they were strangled with sobs. + +"You are so kin-d to ask," she said. "If you would give my little girl +something to eat! She has had nothing since yesterday, and I have been +so ill; and no-nobody has c-ome near us!" + +"Oh!" cried Katy, with horror, "nothing to eat since yesterday! How did +it happen?" + +"Everybody has been sick on our side the ship," explained the poor lady, +"and I suppose the stewardess thought, as I had a maid with me, that I +needed her less than the others. But my maid has been sick, too; and oh, +so selfish! She wouldn't even take the baby into the berth with her; and +I have had all I could do to manage with him, when I couldn't lift up my +head. Little Gretchen has had to go without anything; and she has been +so good and patient!" + +Katy lost no time, but ran for Mrs. Barrett, whose indignation knew no +bounds when she heard how the helpless party had been neglected. + +"It's a new person that stewardess h'is, ma'am," she explained, "and +most h'inefficient! I told the Captain when she come aboard that I +didn't 'ave much opinion of her, and now he'll see how it h'is. I'm +h'ashamed that such a thing should 'appen on the 'Spartacus,' ma'am,--I +h'am, h'indeed. H'it never would 'ave ben so h'under h'Eliza, +ma'am,--she's the one that went h'off and got herself married the trip +before last, when this person came to take her place." + +All the time that she talked Mrs. Barrett was busy in making Mrs. +Ware--for that, it seemed, was the sick lady's name--more comfortable; +and Katy was feeding Gretchen out of a big bowl full of bread and milk +which one of the stewards had brought. The little uncomplaining thing +was evidently half starved, but with the mouthfuls the pink began to +steal back into her cheeks and lips, and the dark circles lessened under +the blue eyes. By the time the bottom of the bowl was reached she could +smile, but still she said not a word except a whispered _Danke schon_. +Her mother explained that she had been born in Germany, and always till +now had been cared for by a German nurse, so that she knew that language +better than English. + +[Illustration: Katy was feeding Gretchen out of a big bowl full of bread +and milk.] + +Gretchen was a great amusement to Katy and Amy during the rest of the +voyage. They kept her on deck with them a great deal, and she was +perfectly content with them and very good, though always solemn and +quiet. Pleasant people turned up among the passengers, as always happens +on an ocean steamship, and others not so pleasant, perhaps, who were +rather curious and interesting to watch. + +Katy grew to feel as if she knew a great deal about her fellow +travellers as time went on. There was the young girl going out to join +her parents under the care of a severe governess, whom everybody on +board rather pitied. There was the other girl on her way to study art, +who was travelling quite alone, and seemed to have nobody to meet her or +to go to except a fellow student of her own age, already in Paris, but +who seemed quite unconscious of her lonely position and competent to +grapple with anything or anybody. There was the queer old gentleman who +had "crossed" eleven times before, and had advice and experience to +spare for any one who would listen to them; and the other gentleman, not +so old but even more queer, who had "frozen his stomach," eight years +before, by indulging, on a hot summer's day, in sixteen successive +ice-creams, alternated with ten glasses of equally cold soda-water, and +who related this exciting experience in turn to everybody on board. +There was the bad little boy, whose parents were powerless to oppose +him, and who carried terror to the hearts of all beholders whenever he +appeared; and the pretty widow who filled the role of reigning belle; +and the other widow, not quite so pretty or so much a belle, who had a +good deal to say, in a voice made discreetly low, about what a pity it +was that dear Mrs. So-and-so should do this or that, and "Doesn't it +strike you as very unfortunate that she should not consider" the other +thing? A great sea-going steamer is a little world in itself, and gives +one a glimpse of all sorts and conditions of people and characters. + +On the whole, there was no one on the "Spartacus" whom Katy liked so +well as sedate little Gretchen except the dear old Captain, with whom +she was a prime favorite. He gave Mrs. Ashe and herself the seats next +to him at table, looked after their comfort in every possible way, and +each night at dinner sent Katy one of the apple-dumplings made specially +for him by the cook, who had gone many voyages with the Captain and knew +his fancies. Katy did not care particularly for the dumpling, but she +valued it as a mark of regard, and always ate it when she could. + +Meanwhile, every morning brought a fresh surprise from that dear, +painstaking Rose, who had evidently worked hard and thought harder in +contriving pleasures for Katy's first voyage at sea. Mrs. Barrett was +enlisted in the plot, there could be no doubt of that, and enjoyed the +joke as much as any one, as she presented herself each day with the +invariable formula, "A letter for you, ma'am," or "A bundle, Miss, come +by the Parcels Delivery." On the fourth morning it was a photograph of +Baby Rose, in a little flat morocco case. The fifth brought a wonderful +epistle, full of startling pieces of news, none of them true. On the +sixth appeared a long narrow box containing a fountain pen. Then came +Mr. Howells's "A Foregone Conclusion," which Katy had never seen; then a +box of quinine pills; then a sachet for her trunk; then another +burlesque poem; last of all, a cake of delicious violet soap, "to wash +the sea-smell from her hands," the label said. It grew to be one of the +little excitements of ship life to watch for the arrival of these daily +gifts; and "What did the mail bring for you this time, Miss Carr?" was a +question frequently asked. Each arrival Katy thought must be the final +one; but Rose's forethought had gone so far even as to provide an extra +parcel in case the voyage was a day longer than usual, and "Miss Carr's +mail" continued to come in till the very last morning. + +Katy never forgot the thrill that went through her when, after so many +days of sea, her eyes first caught sight of the dim line of the Irish +coast. An exciting and interesting day followed as, after stopping at +Queenstown to leave the mails, they sped northeastward between shores +which grew more distinct and beautiful with every hour,--on one side +Ireland, on the other the bold mountain lines of the Welsh coast. It was +late afternoon when they entered the Mersey, and dusk had fallen before +the Captain got out his glass to look for the white fluttering speck in +his own window which meant so much to him. Long he studied before he +made quite sure that it was there. At last he shut the glass with a +satisfied air. + +"It's all right," he said to Katy, who stood near, almost as much +interested as he. "Lucy never forgets, bless her! Well, there's another +voyage over and done with, thank God, and my Mary is where she was. It's +a load taken from my mind." + +The moon had risen and was shining softly on the river as the +crowded tender landed the passengers from the "Spartacus" at the +Liverpool docks. + +"We shall meet again in London or in Paris," said one to another, and +cards and addresses were exchanged. Then after a brief delay at the +Custom House they separated, each to his own particular destination; +and, as a general thing, none of them ever saw any of the others again. +It is often thus with those who have been fellow voyagers at sea; and it +is always a surprise and perplexity to inexperienced travellers that it +can be so, and that those who have been so much to each other for ten +days can melt away into space and disappear as though the brief intimacy +had never existed. + +"Four-wheeler or hansom, ma'am?" said a porter to Mrs. Ashe. + +"Which, Katy?" + +"Oh, let us have a hansom! I never saw one, and they look so nice +in 'Punch.'" + +So a hansom cab was called, the two ladies got in, Amy cuddled down +between them, the folding-doors were shut over their knees like a +lap-robe, and away they drove up the solidly paved streets to the hotel +where they were to pass the night. It was too late to see or do anything +but enjoy the sense of being on firm land once more. + +"How lovely it will be to sleep in a bed that doesn't tip or roll from +side to side!" said Mrs. Ashe. + +"Yes, and that is wide enough and long enough and soft enough to be +comfortable!" replied Katy. "I feel as if I could sleep for a fortnight +to make up for the bad nights at sea." + +Everything seemed delightful to her,--the space for undressing, the +great tub of fresh water which stood beside the English-looking +washstand with its ample basin and ewer, the chintz-curtained bed, the +coolness, the silence,--and she closed her eyes with the pleasant +thought in her mind, "It is really England and we are really here!" + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +STORYBOOK ENGLAND. + + +"Oh, is it raining?" was Katy's first question next morning, when the +maid came to call her. The pretty room, with its gayly flowered chintz, +and china, and its brass bedstead, did not look half so bright as when +lit with gas the night before; and a dim gray light struggled in at the +window, which in America would certainly have meant bad weather coming +or already come. + +"Oh no, h'indeed, ma'am, it's a very fine day,--not bright, ma'am, but +very dry," was the answer. + +Katy couldn't imagine what the maid meant, when she peeped between the +curtains and saw a thick dull mist lying over everything, and the +pavements opposite her window shining with wet. Afterwards, when she +understood better the peculiarities of the English climate, she too +learned to call days not absolutely rainy "fine," and to be grateful for +them; but on that first morning her sensations were of bewildered +surprise, almost vexation. + +Mrs. Ashe and Amy were waiting in the coffee-room when she went in +search of them. + +"What shall we have for breakfast," asked Mrs. Ashe,--"our first meal in +England? Katy, you order it." + +"Let's have all the things we have read about in books and don't have at +home," said Katy, eagerly. But when she came to look over the bill of +fare there didn't seem to be many such things. Soles and muffins she +finally decided upon, and, as an after-thought, gooseberry jam. + +"Muffins sound so very good in Dickens, you know," she explained to Mrs. +Ashe; "and I never saw a sole." + +The soles when they came proved to be nice little pan-fish, not unlike +what in New England are called "scup." All the party took kindly to +them; but the muffins were a great disappointment, tough and tasteless, +with a flavor about them as of scorched flannel. + +"How queer and disagreeable they are!" said Katy. "I feel as if I were +eating rounds cut from an old ironing-blanket and buttered! Dear me! +what did Dickens mean by making such a fuss about them, I wonder? And I +don't care for gooseberry jam, either; it isn't half as good as the jams +we have at home. Books are very deceptive." + +"I am afraid they are. We must make up our minds to find a great many +things not quite so nice as they sound when we read about them," replied +Mrs. Ashe. + +Mabel was breakfasting with them, of course, and was heard to remark at +this juncture that she didn't like muffins, either, and would a great +deal rather have waffles; whereupon Amy reproved her, and explained that +nobody in England knew what waffles were, they were such a stupid +nation, and that Mabel must learn to eat whatever was given her and not +find fault with it! + +After this moral lesson it was found to be dangerously near train-time; +and they all hurried to the railroad station, which, fortunately, was +close by. There was rather a scramble and confusion for a few moments; +for Katy, who had undertaken to buy the tickets, was puzzled by the +unaccustomed coinage; and Mrs. Ashe, whose part was to see after the +luggage, found herself perplexed and worried by the absence of checks, +and by no means disposed to accept the porter's statement, that if she'd +only bear in mind that the trunks were in the second van from the +engine, and get out to see that they were safe once or twice during the +journey, and call for them as soon as they reached London, she'd have no +trouble,--"please remember the porter, ma'am!" However all was happily +settled at last; and without any serious inconveniences they found +themselves established in a first-class carriage, and presently after +running smoothly at full speed across the rich English midlands toward +London and the eastern coast. + +The extreme greenness of the October landscape was what struck them +first, and the wonderfully orderly and trim aspect of the country, with +no ragged, stump-dotted fields or reaches of wild untended woods. Late +in October as it was, the hedgerows and meadows were still almost +summer-like in color, though the trees were leafless. The +delightful-looking old manor-houses and farm-houses, of which they had +glimpses now and again, were a constant pleasure to Katy, with their +mullioned windows, twisted chimney-stacks, porches of quaint build, and +thick-growing ivy. She contrasted them with the uncompromising ugliness +of farm-houses which she remembered at home, and wondered whether it +could be that at the end of another thousand years or so, America would +have picturesque buildings like these to show in addition to her +picturesque scenery. + +Suddenly into the midst of these reflections there glanced a picture so +vivid that it almost took away her breath, as the train steamed past a +pack of hounds in full cry, followed by a galloping throng of +scarlet-coated huntsmen. One horse and rider were in the air, going over +a wall. Another was just rising to the leap. A string of others, headed +by a lady, were tearing across a meadow bounded by a little brook, and +beyond that streamed the hounds following the invisible fox. It was like +one of Muybridge's instantaneous photographs of "The Horse in Motion," +for the moment that it lasted; and Katy put it away in her memory, +distinct and brilliant, as she might a real picture. + +Their destination in London was Batt's Hotel in Dover Street. The old +gentleman on the "Spartacus," who had "crossed" so many times, had +furnished Mrs. Ashe with a number of addresses of hotels and +lodging-houses, from among which Katy had chosen Batt's for the reason +that it was mentioned in Miss Edgeworth's "Patronage." "It was the +place," she explained, "where Godfrey Percy didn't stay when Lord +Oldborough sent him the letter." It seemed an odd enough reason for +going anywhere that a person in a novel didn't stay there. But Mrs. Ashe +knew nothing of London, and had no preference of her own; so she was +perfectly willing to give Katy hers, and Batt's was decided upon. + +"It is just like a dream or a story," said Katy, as they drove away from +the London station in a four-wheeler. "It is really ourselves, and this +is really London! Can you imagine it?" + +She looked out. Nothing met her eyes but dingy weather, muddy streets, +long rows of ordinary brick or stone houses. It might very well have +been New York or Boston on a foggy day, yet to her eyes all things had a +subtle difference which made them unlike similar objects at home. + +"Wimpole Street!" she cried suddenly, as she caught sight of the name on +the corner; "that is the street where Maria Crawford in Mansfield Park, +you know, 'opened one of the best houses' after she married Mr. +Rushworth. Think of seeing Wimpole Street! What fun!" She looked eagerly +out after the "best houses," but the whole street looked uninteresting +and old-fashioned; the best house to be seen was not of a kind, Katy +thought, to reconcile an ambitious young woman to a dull husband. Katy +had to remind herself that Miss Austen wrote her novels nearly a century +ago, that London was a "growing" place, and that things were probably +much changed since that day. + +More "fun" awaited them when they arrived at Batt's, and exactly such a +landlady sailed forth to welcome them as they had often met with in +books,--an old landlady, smiling and rubicund, with a towering lace cap +on her head, a flowered silk gown, a gold chain, and a pair of fat +mittened hands demurely crossed over a black brocade apron. She alone +would have been worth crossing the ocean to see, they all declared. +Their telegram had been received, and rooms were ready, with a bright, +smoky fire of soft coals; the dinner-table was set, and a nice, formal, +white-cravated old waiter, who seemed to have stepped out of the same +book with the landlady, was waiting to serve it. Everything was dingy +and old-fashioned, but very clean and comfortable; and Katy concluded +that on the whole Godfrey Percy would have done wisely to go to Batt's, +and could have fared no better at the other hotel where he did stay. + +The first of Katy's "London sights" came to her next morning before she +was out of her bedroom. She heard a bell ring and a queer squeaking +little voice utter a speech of which she could not make out a single +word. Then came a laugh and a shout, as if several boys were amused at +something or other; and altogether her curiosity was roused, so that she +finished dressing as fast as she could, and ran to the drawing-room +window which commanded a view of the street. Quite a little crowd was +collected under the window, and in their midst was a queer box raised +high on poles, with little red curtains tied back on either side to form +a miniature stage, on which puppets were moving and vociferating. Katy +knew in a moment that she was seeing her first Punch and Judy! + +The box and the crowd began to move away. Katy in despair ran to +Wilkins, the old waiter who was setting the breakfast-table. + +"Oh, please stop that man!" she said. "I want to see him." + +"What man is it, Miss?" said Wilkins. + +When he reached the window and realized what Katy meant, his sense of +propriety seemed to receive a severe shock. He even ventured on +remonstrance. + +"H'I wouldn't, Miss, h'if h'I was you. Them Punches are a low lot, Miss; +they h'ought to be put down, really they h'ought. Gentlefolks, h'as a +general thing, pays no h'attention to them." + +But Katy didn't care what "gentlefolks" did or did not do, and insisted +upon having Punch called back. So Wilkins was forced to swallow his +remonstrances and his dignity, and go in pursuit of the objectionable +object. Amy came rushing out, with her hair flying and Mabel in her +arms; and she and Katy had a real treat of Punch and Judy, with all the +well-known scenes, and perhaps a few new ones thrown in for their +especial behoof; for the showman seemed to be inspired by the rapturous +enjoyment of his little audience of three at the first-floor windows. +Punch beat Judy and stole the baby, and Judy banged Punch in return, and +the constable came in and Punch outwitted him, and the hangman and the +devil made their appearance duly; and it was all perfectly satisfactory, +and "just exactly what she hoped it would be, and it quite made up for +the muffins," Katy declared. + +Then, when Punch had gone away, the question arose as to what they +should choose, out of the many delightful things in London, for their +first morning. + +Like ninety-nine Americans out of a hundred, they decided on Westminster +Abbey; and indeed there is nothing in England better worth seeing, or +more impressive, in its dim, rich antiquity, to eyes fresh from the +world which still calls itself "new." So to the Abbey they went, and +lingered there till Mrs. Ashe declared herself to be absolutely dropping +with fatigue. + +"If you don't take me home and give me something to eat," she said, "I +shall drop down on one of these pedestals and stay there and be +exhibited forever after as an 'h'effigy' of somebody belonging to +ancient English history." + +So Katy tore herself away from Henry the Seventh and the Poets' Corner, +and tore Amy away from a quaint little tomb shaped like a cradle, with +the marble image of a baby in it, which had greatly taken her fancy. She +could only be consoled by the promise that she should soon come again +and stay as long as she liked. She reminded Katy of this promise the +very next morning. + +"Mamma has waked up with rather a bad headache, and she thinks she +will lie still and not come to breakfast," she reported. "And she +sends her love, and says will you please have a cab and go where you +like; and if I won't be a trouble, she would be glad if you would take +me with you. And I won't be a trouble, Miss Katy, and I know where I +wish you would go." + +"Where is that!" + +"To see that cunning little baby again that we saw yesterday. I want to +show her to Mabel,--she didn't go with us, you know, and I don't like to +have her mind not improved; and, darling Miss Katy, mayn't I buy some +flowers and put them on the Baby? She's so dusty and so old that I don't +believe anybody has put any flowers for her for ever so long." + +Katy found this idea rather pretty, and willingly stopped at Covent +Garden, where they bought a bunch of late roses for eighteen pence, +which entirely satisfied Amy. With them in her hand, and Mabel in her +arms, she led the way through the dim aisles of the Abbey, through +grates and doors and up and down steps; the guide following, but not at +all needed, for Amy seemed to have a perfectly clear recollection of +every turn and winding. When the chapel was reached, she laid the roses +on the tomb with gentle fingers, and a pitiful, reverent look in her +gray eyes. Then she lifted Mabel up to kiss the odd little baby effigy +above the marble quilt; whereupon the guide seemed altogether surprised +out of his composure, and remarked to Katy,-- + +"Little Miss is an h'American, as is plain to see; no h'English child +would be likely to think of doing such a thing." + +"Do not English children take any interest in the tombs of the Abbey?" +asked Katy. + +"Oh yes, m'm,--h'interest; but they don't take no special notice of one +tomb above h'another." + +Katy could scarcely keep from laughing, especially as she heard Amy, who +had been listening to the conversation, give an audible sniff, and +inform Mabel that she was glad _she_ was not an English child, who +didn't notice things and liked grown-up graves as much as she did dear +little cunning ones like this! + +Later in the day, when Mrs. Ashe was better, they all drove together to +the quaint old keep which has been the scene of so many tragedies, and +is known as the Tower of London. Here they were shown various rooms and +chapels and prisons; and among the rest the apartments where Queen +Elizabeth, when a friendless young Princess, was shut up for many months +by her sister, Queen Mary. Katy had read somewhere, and now told Amy, +the pretty legend of the four little children who lived with their +parents in the Tower, and used to play with the royal captive; and how +one little boy brought her a key which he had picked up on the ground, +and said, "Now you can go out when you will, lady;" and how the Lords of +the Council, getting wind of it, sent for the children to question them, +and frightened them and their friends almost to death, and forbade them +to go near the Princess again. + +A story about children always brings the past much nearer to a child, +and Amy's imagination was so excited by this tale, that when they got to +the darksome closet which is said to have been the prison of Sir Walter +Raleigh, she marched out of it with a pale and wrathful face. + +"If this is English history, I never mean to learn any more of it, and +neither shall Mabel," she declared. + +But it is not possible for Amy or any one else not to learn a great deal +of history simply by going about London. So many places are associated +with people or events, and seeing the places makes one care so much more +for the people or the events, that one insensibly questions and wonders. +Katy, who had "browsed" all through her childhood in a good +old-fashioned library, had her memory stuffed with all manner of little +scraps of information and literary allusions, which now came into use. +It was like owning the disjointed bits of a puzzle, and suddenly +discovering that properly put together they make a pattern. Mrs. Ashe, +who had never been much of a reader, considered her young friend a +prodigy of intelligence; but Katy herself realized how inadequate and +inexact her knowledge was, and how many bits were missing from the +pattern of her puzzle. She wished with all her heart, as every one +wishes under such circumstances, that she had studied harder and more +wisely while the chance was in her power. On a journey you cannot read +to advantage. Remember that, dear girls, who are looking forward to +travelling some day, and be industrious in time. + +October is not a favorable month in which to see England. Water, water +is everywhere; you breathe it, you absorb it; it wets your clothes and +it dampens your spirits. Mrs. Ashe's friends advised her not to think of +Scotland at that time of the year. One by one their little intended +excursions were given up. A single day and night in Oxford and +Stratford-on-Avon; a short visit to the Isle of Wight, where, in a +country-place which seemed provokingly pretty as far as they could see +it for the rain, lived that friend of Mrs. Ashe who had married an +Englishman and in so doing had, as Katy privately thought, "renounced +the sun;" a peep at Stonehenge from under the shelter of an umbrella, +and an hour or two in Salisbury Cathedral,--was all that they +accomplished, except a brief halt at Winchester, that Katy might have +the privilege of seeing the grave of her beloved Miss Austen. Katy had +come abroad with a terribly long list of graves to visit, Mrs. Ashe +declared. They laid a few rain-washed flowers upon the tomb, and +listened with edification to the verger, who inquired,-- + +"Whatever was it, ma'am, that lady did which brings so many h'Americans +to h'ask about her? Our h'English people don't seem to take the same +h'interest." + +"She wrote such delightful stories," explained Katy; but the old verger +shook his head. + +"I think h'it must be some other party, Miss, you've confused with this +here. It stands to reason, Miss, that we'd have heard of 'em h'over 'ere +in England sooner than you would h'over there in h'America, if the books +'ad been h'anything so h'extraordinary." + +The night after their return to London they were dining for the second +time with the cousins of whom Mrs. Ashe had spoken to Dr. Carr; and as +it happened Katy sat next to a quaint elderly American, who had lived +for twenty years in London and knew it much better than most Londoners +do. This gentleman, Mr. Allen Beach, had a hobby for antiquities, old +books especially, and passed half his time at the British Museum, and +the other half in sales rooms and the old shops in Wardour Street. + +Katy was lamenting over the bad weather which stood in the way of +their plans. + +"It is so vexatious," she said. "Mrs. Ashe meant to go to York and +Lincoln and all the cathedral towns and to Scotland; and we have had to +give it all up because of the rains. We shall go away having seen hardly +anything." + +"You can see London." + +"We have,--that is, we have seen the things that everybody sees." + +"But there are so many things that people in general do not see. How +much longer are you to stay, Miss Carr?" + +"A week, I believe." + +"Why don't you make out a list of old buildings which are connected with +famous people in history, and visit them in turn? I did that the second +year after I came. I gave up three months to it, and it was most +interesting. I unearthed all manner of curious stories and traditions." + +"Or," cried Katy, struck with a sudden bright thought, "why mightn't +I put into the list some of the places I know about in books,--novels +as well as history,--and the places where the people who wrote the +books lived?" + +"You might do that, and it wouldn't be a bad idea, either," said Mr. +Beach, pleased with her enthusiasm. "I will get a pencil after dinner +and help you with your list if you will allow me." + +Mr. Beach was better than his word. He not only suggested places and +traced a plan of sight-seeing, but on two different mornings he went +with them himself; and his intelligent knowledge of London added very +much to the interest of the excursions. Under his guidance the little +party of four--for Mabel was never left out; it was _such_ a chance for +her to improve her mind, Amy declared--visited the Charter-House, where +Thackeray went to school, and the Home of the Poor Brothers connected +with it, in which Colonel Newcome answered "Adsum" to the roll-call of +the angels. They took a look at the small house in Curzon Street, which +is supposed to have been in Thackeray's mind when he described the +residence of Becky Sharpe; and the other house in Russell Square which +is unmistakably that where George Osborne courted Amelia Sedley. They +went to service in the delightful old church of St. Mary in the Temple, +and thought of Ivanhoe and Brian de Bois-Guilbert and Rebecca the +Jewess. From there Mr. Beach took them to Lamb's Court, where Pendennis +and George Warrington dwelt in chambers together; and to Brick Court, +where Oliver Goldsmith passed so much of his life, and the little rooms +in which Charles and Mary Lamb spent so many sadly happy years. On +another day they drove to Whitefriars, for the sake of Lord Glenvarloch +and the old privilege of Sanctuary in the "Fortunes of Nigel;" and took +a peep at Bethnal Green, where the Blind Beggar and his "Pretty Bessee" +lived, and at the old Prison of the Marshalsea, made interesting by its +associations with "Little Dorrit." They also went to see Milton's house +and St. Giles Church, in which he is buried; and stood a long time +before St. James Palace, trying to make out which could have been Miss +Burney's windows when she was dresser to Queen Charlotte of bitter +memory. And they saw Paternoster Row and No. 5 Cheyne Walk, sacred +forevermore to the memory of Thomas Carlyle, and Whitehall, where Queen +Elizabeth lay in state and King Charles was beheaded, and the state +rooms of Holland House; and by great good luck had a glimpse of George +Eliot getting out of a cab. She stood for a moment while she gave her +fare to the cabman, and Katy looked as one who might not look again, and +carried away a distinct picture of the unbeautiful, interesting, +remarkable face. + +With all this to see and to do, the last week sped all too swiftly, and +the last day came before they were at all ready to leave what Katy +called "Story-book England." Mrs. Ashe had decided to cross by Newhaven +and Dieppe, because some one had told her of the beautiful old town of +Rouen, and it seemed easy and convenient to take it on the way to Paris. +Just landed from the long voyage across the Atlantic, the little passage +of the Channel seemed nothing to our travellers, and they made ready for +their night on the Dieppe steamer with the philosophy which is born of +ignorance. They were speedily undeceived! + +The English Channel has a character of its own, which distinguishes it +from other seas and straits. It seems made fractious and difficult by +Nature, and set as on purpose to be barrier between two nations who are +too unlike to easily understand each other, and are the safer neighbors +for this wholesome difficulty of communication between them. The "chop" +was worse than usual on the night when our travellers crossed; the +steamer had to fight her way inch by inch. And oh, such a little +steamer! and oh, such a long night! + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +ACROSS THE CHANNEL. + + +Dawn had given place to day, and day was well advanced toward noon, +before the stout little steamer gained her port. It was hours after +the usual time for arrival; the train for Paris must long since have +started, and Katy felt dejected and forlorn as, making her way out of +the terrible ladies'-cabin, she crept on deck for her first glimpse +of France. + +The sun was struggling through the fog with a watery smile, and his +faint beams shone on a confusion of stone piers, higher than the +vessel's deck, intersected with canal-like waterways, through whose +intricate windings the steamer was slowly threading her course to the +landing-place. Looking up, Katy could see crowds of people assembled to +watch the boat come in,--workmen, peasants, women, children, soldiers, +custom-house officers, moving to and fro,--and all this crowd were +talking all at once and all were talking French! + +I don't know why this should have startled her as it did. She knew, of +course, that people of different countries were liable to be found +speaking their own languages; but somehow the spectacle of the +chattering multitude, all seeming so perfectly at ease with their +preterits and subjunctives and never once having to refer to Ollendorf +or a dictionary, filled her with a sense of dismayed surprise. + +"Good gracious!" she said to herself, "even the babies understand it!" +She racked her brains to recall what she had once known of French, but +very little seemed to have survived the horrors of the night! + +"Oh dear! what is the word for trunk-key?" she asked herself. "They will +all begin to ask questions, and I shall not have a word to say; and Mrs. +Ashe will be even worse off, I know." She saw the red-trousered +custom-house officers pounce upon the passengers as they landed one by +one, and she felt her heart sink within her. + +But after all, when the time came it did not prove so very bad. Katy's +pleasant looks and courteous manner stood her in good stead. She did not +trust herself to say much; but the officials seemed to understand +without saying. They bowed and gestured, whisked the keys in and out, +and in a surprisingly short time all was pronounced right, the baggage +had "passed," and it and its owners were free to proceed to the +railway-station, which fortunately was close at hand. + +Inquiry revealed the fact that no train for Paris left till four in the +afternoon. + +"I am rather glad," declared poor Mrs. Ashe, "for I feel too used up to +move. I will lie here on this sofa; and, Katy dear, please see if there +is an eating-place, and get some breakfast for yourself and Amy, and +send me a cup of tea." + +"I don't like to leave you alone," Katy was beginning; but at that +moment a nice old woman who seemed to be in charge of the waiting-room +appeared, and with a flood of French which none of them could follow, +but which was evidently sympathetic in its nature, flew at Mrs. Ashe and +began to make her comfortable. From a cupboard in the wall she produced +a pillow, from another cupboard a blanket; in a trice she had one under +Mrs. Ashe's head and the other wrapped round her feet. + +"Pauvre madame," she said, "si pâle! si souffrante! Il faut avoir +quelque chose à boire et à manger tout de suite." She trotted across the +room and into the restaurant which opened out of it, while Mrs. Ashe +smiled at Katy and said, "You see you can leave me quite safely; I am to +be taken care of." And Katy and Amy passed through the same door into +the _buffet_, and sat down at a little table. + +It was a particularly pleasant-looking place to breakfast in. There were +many windows with bright polished panes and very clean short muslin +curtains, and on the window-sills stood rows of thrifty potted plants in +full bloom,--marigolds, balsams, nasturtiums, and many colored +geraniums. Two birds in cages were singing loudly; the floor was waxed +to a glass-like polish; nothing could have been whiter than the marble +of the tables except the napkins laid over them. And such a good +breakfast as was presently brought to them,--delicious coffee in +bowl-like cups, crisp rolls and rusks, an omelette with a delicate +flavor of fine herbs, stewed chicken, little pats of freshly churned +butter without salt, shaped like shells and tasting like solidified +cream, and a pot of some sort of nice preserve. Amy made great delighted +eyes at Katy, and remarking, "I think France is heaps nicer than that +old England," began to eat with a will; and Katy herself felt that if +this railroad meal was a specimen of what they had to expect in the +future, they had indeed come to a land of plenty. + +Fortified with the satisfactory breakfast, she felt equal to a walk; and +after they had made sure that Mrs. Ashe had all she needed, she and Amy +(and Mabel) set off by themselves to see the sights of Dieppe. I don't +know that travellers generally have considered Dieppe an interesting +place, but Katy found it so. There was a really old church and some +quaint buildings of the style of two centuries back, and even the more +modern streets had a novel look to her unaccustomed eyes. At first they +only ventured a timid turn or two, marking each corner, and going back +now and then to reassure themselves by a look at the station; but after +a while, growing bolder, Katy ventured to ask a question or two in +French, and was surprised and charmed to find herself understood. After +that she grew adventurous, and, no longer fearful of being lost, led Amy +straight down a long street lined with shops, almost all of which were +for the sale of articles in ivory. + +Ivory wares are one of the chief industries of Dieppe. There were cases +full, windows full, counters full, of the most exquisite combs and +brushes, some with elaborate monograms in silver and colors, others +plain; there were boxes and caskets of every size and shape, ornaments, +fans, parasol handles, looking-glasses, frames for pictures large and +small, napkin-rings. + +Katy was particularly smitten with a paper-knife in the form of an angel +with long slender wings raised over its head and meeting to form a +point. Its price was twenty francs, and she was strongly tempted to buy +it for Clover or Rose Red. But she said to herself sensibly, "This is +the first shop I have been into and the first thing I have really wanted +to buy, and very likely as we go on I shall see things I like better and +want more, so it would be foolish to do it. No, I won't." And she +resolutely turned her back on the ivory angel, and walked away. + +The next turn brought them to a gay-looking little market-place, where +old women in white caps were sitting on the ground beside baskets and +panniers full of apples, pears, and various queer and curly vegetables, +none of which Katy recognized as familiar; fish of all shapes and colors +were flapping in shallow tubs of sea-water; there were piles of +stockings, muffetees, and comforters in vivid blue and red worsted, and +coarse pottery glazed in bright patterns. The faces of the women were +brown and wrinkled; there were no pretty ones among them, but their +black eyes were full of life and quickness, and their fingers one and +all clicked with knitting-needles, as their tongues flew equally fast in +the chatter and the chaffer, which went on without stop or stay, though +customers did not seem to be many and sales were few. + +Returning to the station they found that Mrs. Ashe had been asleep +during their absence, and seemed so much better that it was with greatly +amended spirits that they took their places in the late afternoon train +which was to set them down at Rouen. Katy said they were like the Wise +Men of the East, "following a star," in their choice of a hotel; for, +having no better advice, they had decided upon one of those thus +distinguished in Baedeker's Guide-book. + +The star did not betray their confidence; for the Hôtel de la Cloche, to +which it led them, proved to be quaint and old, and very pleasant of +aspect. The lofty chambers, with their dimly frescoed ceilings, and beds +curtained with faded patch, might to all appearances have been furnished +about the time when "Columbus crossed the ocean blue;" but everything +was clean, and had an air of old-time respectability. The dining-room, +which was evidently of more modern build, opened into a square courtyard +where oleanders and lemon trees in boxes stood round the basin of a +little fountain, whose tinkle and plash blended agreeably with the +rattle of the knives and forks. In one corner of the room was a raised +and railed platform, where behind a desk sat the mistress of the house, +busy with her account-books, but keeping an eye the while on all that +went forward. + +Mrs. Ashe walked past this personage without taking any notice of her, +as Americans are wont to do under such circumstances; but presently the +observant Katy noticed that every one else, as they went in or out of +the room, addressed a bow or a civil remark to this lady. She quite +blushed at the recollection afterward, as she made ready for bed. + +"How rude we must have seemed!" she thought. "I am afraid the people +here think that Americans have _awful_ manners, everybody is so polite. +They said 'Bon soir' and 'Merci' and 'Voulez-vous avoir la bonté,' to +the waiters even! Well, there is one thing,--I am going to reform. +To-morrow I will be as polite as anybody. They will think that I am +miraculously improved by one night on French soil; but, never mind! I am +going to do it." + +She kept her resolution, and astonished Mrs. Ashe next morning, by +bowing to the dame on the platform in the most winning manner, and +saying, "Bon jour, madame," as they went by. + +"But, Katy, who is that person? Why do you speak to her?" + +"Don't you see that they all do? She is the landlady, I think; at all +events, everybody bows to her. And just notice how prettily these ladies +at the next table speak to the waiter. They do not order him to do +things as we do at home. I noticed it last night, and I liked it so much +that I made a resolution to get up and be as polite as the French +themselves this morning." + +So all the time that they went about the sumptuous old city, rich in +carvings and sculptures and traditions, while they were looking at the +Cathedral and the wonderful church of St. Ouen, and the Palace of +Justice, and the "Place of the Maid," where poor Jeanne d'Arc was burned +and her ashes scattered to the winds, Katy remembered her manners, and +smiled and bowed, and used courteous prefixes in a soft pleasant voice; +and as Mrs. Ashe and Amy fell in with her example more or less, I think +the guides and coachmen and the old women who showed them over the +buildings felt that the air of France was very civilizing indeed, and +that these strangers from savage countries over the sea were in a fair +way to be as well bred as if they had been born in a more favored part +of the world! + +Paris looked very modern after the peculiar quaint richness and air of +the Middle Ages which distinguish Rouen. Rooms had been engaged for +Mrs. Ashe's party in a _pension_ near the Arc d'Étoile, and there they +drove immediately on arriving. The rooms were not in the _pension_ +itself, but in a house close by,--a sitting-room with six mirrors, +three clocks, and a pinched little grate about a foot wide, a +dining-room just large enough for a table and four chairs, and two +bedrooms. A maid called Amandine had been detailed to take charge of +these rooms and serve their meals. + +Dampness, as Katy afterward wrote to Clover, was the first impression +they received of "gay Paris." The tiny fire in the tiny grate had only +just been lighted, and the walls and the sheets and even the blankets +felt chilly and moist to the touch. They spent their first evening in +hanging the bedclothes round the grate and piling on fuel; they even set +the mattresses up on edge to warm and dry! It was not very enlivening, +it must be confessed. Amy had taken a cold, Mrs. Ashe looked worried, +and Katy thought of Burnet and the safety and comfort of home with a +throb of longing. + +The days that ensued were not brilliant enough to remove this +impression. The November fogs seemed to have followed them across the +Channel, and Paris remained enveloped in a wet blanket which dimmed and +hid its usually brilliant features. Going about in cabs with the windows +drawn up, and now and then making a rush through the drip into shops, +was not exactly delightful, but it seemed pretty much all that they +could do. It was worse for Amy, whose cold kept her indoors and denied +her even the relaxation of the cab. Mrs. Ashe had engaged a +well-recommended elderly English maid to come every morning and take +care of Amy while they were out; and with this respectable functionary, +whose ideas were of a rigidly British type and who did not speak a word +of any language but her own, poor Amy was compelled to spend most of her +time. Her only consolation was in persuading this serene attendant to +take a part in the French lessons which she made a daily point of giving +to Mabel out of her own little phrase-book. + +"Wilkins is getting on, I think," she told Katy one night. "She says +'Biscuit glacé' quite nicely now. But I never will let her look at the +book, though she always wants to; for if once she saw how the words are +spelled, she would never in the world pronounce them right again. They +look so very different, you know." + +Katy looked at Amy's pale little face and eager eyes with a real +heartache. Her rapture when at the end of the long dull afternoons her +mother returned to her was touching. Paris was very _triste_ to poor +Amy, with all her happy facility for amusing herself; and Katy felt that +the sooner they got away from it the better it would be. So, in spite of +the delight which her brief glimpses at the Louvre gave her, and the fun +it was to go about with Mrs. Ashe and see her buy pretty things, and the +real satisfaction she took in the one perfectly made walking-suit to +which she had treated herself, she was glad when the final day came, +when the belated dressmakers and artistes in jackets and wraps had sent +home their last wares, and the trunks were packed. It had been rather +the fault of circumstances than of Paris; but Katy had not learned to +love the beautiful capital as most Americans do, and did not feel at all +as if she wanted that her "reward of virtue" should be to go there when +she died! There must be more interesting places for live people, and +ghosts too, to be found on the map of Europe, she was sure. + +Next morning as they drove slowly down the Champs Élysées, and +looked back for a last glimpse of the famous Arch, a bright object +met their eyes, moving vaguely against the mist. It was the gay red +wagon of the Bon Marché, carrying bundles home to the dwellers of +some up-town street. + +Katy burst out laughing. "It is an emblem of Paris," she said,--"of our +Paris, I mean. It has been all Bon Marché and fog!" + +"Miss Katy," interrupted Amy, "_do_ you like Europe? For my part, I was +never so disgusted with any place in my life!" + +"Poor little bird, her views of 'Europe' are rather dark just now, and +no wonder," said her mother. "Never mind, darling, you shall have +something pleasanter by and by if I can find it for you." + +"Burnet is a great deal pleasanter than Paris," pronounced Amy, +decidedly. "It doesn't keep always raining there, and I can take walks, +and I understand everything that people say." + +All that day they sped southward, and with every hour came a change in +the aspect of their surroundings. Now they made brief stops in large +busy towns which seemed humming with industry. Now they whirled through +grape countries with miles of vineyards, where the brown leaves still +hung on the vines. Then again came glimpses of old Roman ruins, +amphitheatres, viaducts, fragments of wall or arch; or a sudden chill +betokened their approach to mountains, where snowy peaks could be seen +on the far horizon. And when the long night ended and day roused them +from broken slumbers, behold, the world was made over! Autumn had +vanished, and the summer, which they thought fled for good, had taken +his place. Green woods waved about them, fresh leaves were blowing in +the wind, roses and hollyhocks beckoned from white-walled gardens; and +before they had done with exclaiming and rejoicing, the Mediterranean +shot into view, intensely blue, with white fringes of foam, white sails +blowing across, white gulls flying above it, and over all a sky of the +same exquisite blue, whose clouds were white as the drifting sails on +the water below, and they were at Marseilles. + +It was like a glimpse of Paradise to eyes fresh from autumnal grays and +glooms, as they sped along the lovely coast, every curve and turn +showing new combinations of sea and shore, olive-crowned cliff and +shining mountain-peak. With every mile the blue became bluer, the wind +softer, the feathery verdure more dense and summer-like. Hyères and +Cannes and Antibes were passed, and then, as they rounded a long point, +came the view of a sunshiny city lying on a sunlit shore; the train +slackened its speed, and they knew that their journey's end was come and +they were in Nice. + +The place seemed to laugh with gayety as they drove down the Promenade +des Anglais and past the English garden, where the band was playing +beneath the acacias and palm-trees. On one side was a line of +bright-windowed hotels and _pensions_, with balconies and striped +awnings; on the other, the long reach of yellow sand-beach, where ladies +were grouped on shawls and rugs, and children ran up and down in the +sun, while beyond stretched the waveless sea. The December sun felt as +warm as on a late June day at home, and had the same soft caressing +touch. The pavements were thronged with groups of leisurely-looking +people, all wearing an unmistakable holiday aspect; pretty girls in +correct Parisian costumes walked demurely beside their mothers, with +cavaliers in attendance; and among these young men appeared now and +again the well-known uniform of the United States Navy. + +"I wonder," said Mrs. Ashe, struck by a sudden thought, "if by any +chance our squadron is here." She asked the question the moment they +entered the hotel; and the porter, who prided himself on understanding +"zose Eenglesh," replied,-- + +"Mais oui, Madame, ze Americaine fleet it is here; zat is, not here, +but at Villefranche, just a leetle four mile away,--it is ze same +zing exactly." + +"Katy, do you hear that?" cried Mrs. Ashe. "The frigates _are_ here, and +the 'Natchitoches' among them of course; and we shall have Ned to go +about with us everywhere. It is a real piece of good luck for us. Ladies +are at such a loss in a place like this with nobody to escort them. I am +perfectly delighted." + +"So am I," said Katy. "I never saw a frigate, and I always wanted to see +one. Do you suppose they will let us go on board of them?" + +"Why, of course they will." Then to the porter, "Give me a sheet +of paper and an envelope, please.--I must let Ned know that I am +here at once." + +Mrs. Ashe wrote her note and despatched it before they went upstairs to +take off their bonnets. She seemed to have a half-hope that some bird of +the air might carry the news of her arrival to her brother, for she kept +running to the window as if in expectation of seeing him. She was too +restless to lie down or sleep, and after she and Katy had lunched, +proposed that they should go out on the beach for a while. + +"Perhaps we may come across Ned," she remarked. + +They did not come across Ned, but there was no lack of other +delightful objects to engage their attention. The sands were smooth +and hard as a floor. Soft pink lights were beginning to tinge the +western sky. To the north shone the peaks of the maritime Alps, and +the same rosy glow caught them here and there, and warmed their grays +and whites into color. + +"I wonder what that can be?" said Katy, indicating the rocky point which +bounded the beach to the east, where stood a picturesque building of +stone, with massive towers and steep pitches of roof. "It looks half +like a house and half like a castle, but it is quite fascinating, I +think. Do you suppose that people live there?" + +"We might ask," suggested Mrs. Ashe. + +Just then they came to a shallow river spanned by a bridge, beside whose +pebbly bed stood a number of women who seemed to be washing clothes by +the simple and primitive process of laying them in the water on top of +the stones, and pounding them with a flat wooden paddle till they were +white. Katy privately thought that the clothes stood a poor chance of +lasting through these cleansing operations; but she did not say so, and +made the inquiry which Mrs. Ashe had suggested, in her best French. + +"Celle-là?" answered the old woman whom she had addressed. "Mais c'est +la Pension Suisse." + +"A _pension_; why, that means a boarding-house," cried Katy. "What fun +it must be to board there!" + +"Well, why shouldn't we board there!" said her friend. "You know we +meant to look for rooms as soon as we were rested and had found out a +little about the place. Let us walk on and see what the Pension Suisse +is like. If the inside is as pleasant as the outside, we could not do +better, I should think." + +"Oh, I do hope all the rooms are not already taken," said Katy, who had +fallen in love at first sight with the Pension Suisse. She felt quite +oppressed with anxiety as they rang the bell. + +The Pension Suisse proved to be quite as charming inside as out. The +thick stone walls made deep sills and embrasures for the casement +windows, which were furnished with red cushions to serve as seats and +lounging-places. Every window seemed to command a view, for those which +did not look toward the sea looked toward the mountains. The house was +by no means full, either. Several sets of rooms were to be had; and Katy +felt as if she had walked straight into the pages of a romance When Mrs. +Ashe engaged for a month a delightful suite of three, a sitting-room and +two sleeping-chambers, in a round tower, with a balcony overhanging the +water, and a side window, from which a flight of steps led down into a +little walled garden, nestled in among the masonry, where tall +laurestinus and lemon trees grew, and orange and brown wallflowers made +the air sweet. Her contentment knew no bounds. + +"I am so glad that I came," she told Mrs. Ashe. "I never confessed it to +you before; but sometimes.--when we were sick at sea, you know, and when +it would rain all the time, and after Amy caught that cold in Paris--I +have almost wished, just for a minute or two at a time, that we hadn't. +But now I wouldn't not have come for the world! This is perfectly +delicious. I am glad, glad, glad we are here, and we are going to have a +lovely time, I know." + +They were passing out of the rooms into the hall as she said these +words, and two ladies who were walking up a cross passage turned their +heads at the sound of her voice. To her great surprise Katy recognized +Mrs. Page and Lilly. + +"Why, Cousin Olivia, is it you?" she cried, springing forward with +the cordiality one naturally feels in seeing a familiar face in a +foreign land. + +Mrs. Page seemed rather puzzled than cordial. She put up her eyeglass +and did not seem to quite make out who Katy was. + +"It is Katy Carr, mamma," explained Lilly. "Well, Katy, this _is_ a +surprise! Who would have thought of meeting you in Nice!" + +There was a decided absence of rapture in Lilly's manner. She was +prettier than ever, as Katy saw in a moment, and beautifully dressed in +soft brown velvet, which exactly suited her complexion and her +pale-colored wavy hair. + +"Katy Carr! why, so it is," admitted Mrs. Page. "It is a surprise +indeed. We had no idea that you were abroad. What has brought you so far +from Tunket,--Burnet, I mean? Who are you with?" + +"With my friend Mrs. Ashe," explained Katy, rather chilled by this cool +reception. + +"Let me introduce you. Mrs. Ashe, these are my cousins Mrs. Page and +Miss Page. Amy,--why where is Amy?" + +Amy had walked back to the door of the garden staircase, and was +standing there looking down upon the flowers. + +Cousin Olivia bowed rather distantly. Her quick eye took in the details +of Mrs. Ashe's travelling-dress and Katy's dark blue ulster. + +"Some countrified friend from that dreadful Western town where they +live," she said to herself. "How foolish of Philip Carr to try to send +his girls to Europe! He can't afford it, I know." Her voice was rather +rigid as she inquired,-- + +"And what brings you here?--to this house, I mean?" + +"Oh, we are coming to-morrow to stay; we have taken rooms for a month," +explained Katy. "What a delicious-looking old place it is." + +"Have you?" said Lilly, in a voice which did not express any particular +pleasure. "Why, we are staying here too." + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE PENSION SUISSE. + + +"What do you suppose can have brought Katy Carr to Europe?" inquired +Lilly, as she stood in the window watching the three figures walk slowly +down the sands. "She is the last person I expected to turn up here. I +supposed she was stuck in that horrid place--what is the name of +it?--where they live, for the rest of her life." + +"I confess I am surprised at meeting her myself," rejoined Mrs. Page. "I +had no idea that her father could afford so expensive a journey." + +"And who is this woman that she has got along with her?" + +"I have no idea, I'm sure. Some Western friend, I suppose." + +"Dear me, I wish they were going to some other house than this," said +Lilly, discontentedly. "If they were at the Rivoir, for instance, or one +of those places at the far end of the beach, we shouldn't need to see +anything of them, or even know that they were in town! It's a real +nuisance to have people spring upon you this way, people you don't want +to meet; and when they happen to be relations it is all the worse. Katy +will be hanging on us all the time, I'm afraid." + +"Oh, my dear, there is no fear of that. A little repression on our part +will prevent her from being any trouble, I'm quite certain. But we +_must_ treat her politely, you know, Lilly; her father is my cousin." + +"That's the saddest part of it! Well, there's one thing, I shall _not_ +take her with me every time we go to the frigates," said Lilly, +decisively. "I am not going to inflict a country cousin on Lieutenant +Worthington, and spoil all my own fun beside. So I give you fair +warning, mamma, and you must manage it somehow." + +"Certainly, dear, I will. It would be a great pity to have your visit to +Nice spoiled in any way, with the squadron here too, and that pleasant +Mr. Worthington so very attentive." + +Unconscious of these plans for her suppression, Katy walked back to the +hotel in a mood of pensive pleasure. Europe at last promised to be as +delightful as it had seemed when she only knew it from maps and books, +and Nice so far appeared to her the most charming place in the world. + +Somebody was waiting for them at the Hotel des Anglais,--a tall, +bronzed, good-looking somebody in uniform, with pleasant brown eyes +beaming from beneath a gold-banded cap; at the sight of whom Amy rushed +forward with her long locks flying, and Mrs. Ashe uttered an exclamation +of pleasure. It was Ned Worthington, Mrs. Ashe's only brother, whom she +had not met for two years and a half; and you can easily imagine how +glad she was to see him. + +"You got my note then?" she said after the first eager greetings were +over and she had introduced him to Katy. + +"Note? No. Did you write me a note?" + +"Yes; to Villefranche." + +"To the ship? I shan't get that till tomorrow. No; finding out that you +were here is just a bit of good fortune. I came over to call on some +friends who are staying down the beach a little way, and dropping in to +look over the list of arrivals, as I generally do, I saw your names; and +the porter not being able to say which way you had gone, I waited for +you to come in." + +"We have been looking at such a delightful old place, the Pension +Suisse, and have taken rooms." + +"The Pension Suisse, eh? Why, that was where I was going to call. I know +some people who are staying there. It seems a pleasant house; I'm glad +you are going there, Polly. It's first-rate luck that the ships happen +to be here just now. I can see you every day." + +"But, Ned, surely you are not leaving me so soon? Surely you will stay +and dine with us?" urged his sister, as he took up his cap. + +"I wish I could, but I can't to-night, Polly. You see I had engaged to +take some ladies out to drive, and they will expect me. I had no idea +that you would be here, or I should have kept myself free," +apologetically. "Tomorrow I will come over early, and be at your service +for whatever you like to do." + +"That's right, dear boy. We shall expect you." Then, the moment he was +gone, "Now, Katy, isn't he nice?" + +"Very nice, I should think," said Katy, who had watched the brief +interview with interest. "I like his face so much, and how fond he +is of you!" + +"Dear fellow! so he is. I am seven years older than he, but we have +always been intimate. Brothers and sisters are not always intimate, you +know,--or perhaps you don't know, for all of yours are." + +"Yes, indeed," said Katy, with a happy smile. "There is nobody like +Clover and Elsie, except perhaps Johnnie and Dorry and Phil," she added +with a laugh. + +The remove to the Pension Suisse was made early the next morning. Mrs. +Page and Lilly did not appear to welcome them. Katy rather rejoiced in +their absence, for she wanted the chance to get into order without +interruptions. + +There was something comfortable in the thought that they were to stay a +whole month in these new quarters; for so long a time, it seemed worth +while to make them pretty and homelike. So, while Mrs. Ashe unpacked her +own belongings and Amy's, Katy, who had a natural turn for arranging +rooms, took possession of the little parlor, pulled the furniture into +new positions, laid out portfolios and work-cases and their few books, +pinned various photographs which they had bought in Oxford and London on +the walls, and tied back the curtains to admit the sunshine. Then she +paid a visit to the little garden, and came back with a long branch of +laurestinus, which she trained across the mantelpiece, and a bunch of +wallflowers for their one little vase. The maid, by her orders, laid a +fire of wood and pine cones ready for lighting; and when all was done +she called Mrs. Ashe to pronounce upon the effect. + +"It is lovely," she said, sinking into a great velvet arm-chair which +Katy had drawn close to the seaward window. "I haven't seen anything so +pleasant since we left home. You are a witch, Katy, and the comfort of +my life. I am so glad I brought you! Now, pray go and unpack your own +things, and make yourself look nice for the second breakfast. We have +been a shabby set enough since we arrived. I saw those cousins of yours +looking askance at our old travelling-dresses yesterday. Let us try to +make a more respectable impression to-day." + +So they went down to breakfast, Mrs. Ashe in one of her new Paris gowns, +Katy in a pretty dress of olive serge, and Amy all smiles and ruffled +pinafore, walking hand in hand with her uncle Ned, who had just arrived +and whose great ally she was; and Mrs. Page and Lilly, who were already +seated at table, had much ado to conceal their somewhat unflattering +surprise at the conjunction. For one moment Lilly's eyes opened into a +wide stare of incredulous astonishment; then she remembered herself, +nodded as pleasantly as she could to Mrs. Ashe and Katy, and favored +Lieutenant Worthington with a pretty blushing smile as he went by, while +she murmured,-- + +"Mamma, do you see that? What does it mean?" + +"Why, Ned, do you know those people?" asked Mrs. Ashe at the same +moment. + +"Do _you_ know them!" + +"Yes; we met yesterday. They are connections of my friend Miss Carr." + +"Really? There is not the least family likeness between them." And Mr. +Worthington's eyes travelled deliberately from Lilly's delicate, golden +prettiness to Katy, who, truth to say, did not shine by the contrast. + +"She has a nice, sensible sort of face," he thought, "and she looks like +a lady, but for beauty there is no comparison between the two." Then he +turned to listen to his sister as she replied,-- + +"No, indeed, not the least; no two girls could be less like." Mrs. Ashe +had made the same comparison, but with quite a different result. Katy's +face was grown dear to her, and she had not taken the smallest fancy to +Lilly Page. + +Her relationship to the young naval officer, however, made a wonderful +difference in the attitude of Mrs. Page and Lilly toward the party. Katy +became a person to be cultivated rather than repressed, and +thenceforward there was no lack of cordiality on their part. + +"I want to come in and have a good talk," said Lilly, slipping her arm +through Katy's as they left the dining-room. "Mayn't I come now while +mamma is calling on Mrs. Ashe?" This arrangement brought her to the side +of Lieutenant Worthington, and she walked between him and Katy down the +hall and into the little drawing-room. + +"Oh, how perfectly charming! You have been fixing up ever since you +came, haven't you? It looks like home. I wish we had a _salon_, but +mamma thought it wasn't worth while, as we were only to be here such a +little time. What a delicious balcony over the water, too! May I go out +on it? Oh, Mr. Worthington, do see this!" + +She pushed open the half-closed window and stepped out as she spoke. Mr. +Worthington, after hesitating a moment, followed. Katy paused uncertain. +There was hardly room for three in the balcony, yet she did not quite +like to leave them. But Lilly had turned her back, and was talking in a +low tone; it was nothing more in reality than the lightest chit-chat, +but it had the air of being something confidential; so Katy, after +waiting a little while, retreated to the sofa, and took up her work, +joining now and then in the conversation which Mrs. Ashe was keeping up +with Cousin Olivia. She did not mind Lilly's ill-breeding, nor was she +surprised at it. Mrs. Ashe was less tolerant. + +"Isn't it rather damp out there, Ned?" she called to her brother; "you +had better throw my shawl round Miss Page's shoulders." + +"Oh, it isn't a bit damp," said Lilly, recalled to herself by this broad +hint. "Thank you so much for thinking of it, Mrs. Ashe, but I am just +coming in." She seated herself beside Katy, and began to question her +rather languidly. + +"When did you leave home, and how were they all when you came away?" + +"All well, thank you. We sailed from Boston on the 14th of October; and +before that I spent two days with Rose Red,--you remember her? She is +married now, and has the dearest little home and such a darling baby." + +"Yes, I heard of her marriage. It didn't seem much of a match for Mr. +Redding's daughter to make, did it? I never supposed she would be +satisfied with anything less than a member of Congress or a Secretary of +Legation." + +"Rose isn't particularly ambitious, I think, and she seems perfectly +happy," replied Katy, flushing. + +"Oh, you needn't fire up in her defence; you and Clover always did adore +Rose Red, I know, but I never could see what there was about her that +was so wonderfully fascinating. She never had the least style, and she +was always just as rude to me as she could be." + +"You were not intimate at school, but I am sure Rose was never rude," +said Katy, with spirit. + +"Well, we won't fight about her at this late day. Tell me where you have +been, and where you are going, and how long you are to stay in Europe." + +Katy, glad to change the subject, complied, and the conversation +diverged into comparison of plans and experiences. Lilly had been in +Europe nearly a year, and had seen "almost everything," as she phrased +it. She and her mother had spent the previous winter in Italy, had taken +a run into Russia, "done" Switzerland and the Tyrol thoroughly, and +France and Germany, and were soon going into Spain, and from there to +Paris, to shop in preparation for their return home in the spring. + +"Of course we shall want quantities of things," she said. "No one will +believe that we have been abroad unless we bring home a lot of clothes. +The _lingerie_ and all that is ordered already; but the dresses must be +made at the last moment, and we shall have a horrid time of it, I +suppose. Worth has promised to make me two walking-suits and two +ball-dresses, but he's very bad about keeping his word. Did you do much +when you were in Paris, Katy?" + +"We went to the Louvre three times, and to Versailles and St. Cloud," +said Katy, wilfully misunderstanding her. + +"Oh, I didn't mean that kind of stupid thing; I meant gowns. What +did you buy?" + +"One tailor-made suit of dark blue cloth." + +"My! what moderation!" + +Shopping played a large part in Lilly's reminiscences. She recollected +places, not from their situation or beauty or historical associations, +or because of the works of art which they contained, but as the places +where she bought this or that. + +"Oh, that dear Piazza di Spagna!" she would say; "that was where I +found my rococo necklace, the loveliest thing you ever saw, Katy." Or, +"Prague--oh yes, mother got the most enchanting old silver chatelaine +there, with all kinds of things hanging to it,--needlecases and watches +and scent-bottles, all solid, and so beautifully chased." Or again, +"Berlin was horrid, we thought; but the amber is better and cheaper +than anywhere else,--great strings of beads, of the largest size and +that beautiful pale yellow, for a hundred francs. You must get yourself +one, Katy." + +Poor Lilly! Europe to her was all "things." She had collected trunks +full of objects to carry home, but of the other collections which do not +go into trunks, she had little or none. Her mind was as empty, her heart +as untouched as ever; the beauty and the glory and the pathos of art and +history and Nature had been poured out in vain before her closed and +indifferent eyes. + +Life soon dropped into a peaceful routine at the Pension Suisse, which +was at the same time restful and stimulating. Katy's first act in the +morning, as soon as she opened her eyes, was to hurry to the window in +hopes of getting a glimpse of Corsica. She had discovered that this +elusive island could almost always be seen from Nice at the dawning, but +that as soon as the sun was fairly up, it vanished to appear no more for +the rest of the day. There was something fascinating to her imagination +in the hovering mountain outline between sea and sky. She felt as if she +were under an engagement to be there to meet it, and she rarely missed +the appointment. Then, after Corsica had pulled the bright mists over +its face and melted from view, she would hurry with her dressing, and as +soon as was practicable set to work to make the _salon_ look bright +before the coffee and rolls should appear, a little after eight o'clock. +Mrs. Ashe always found the fire lit, the little meal cosily set out +beside it, and Katy's happy untroubled face to welcome her when she +emerged from her room; and the cheer of these morning repasts made a +good beginning for the day. + +Then came walking and a French lesson, and a long sitting on the beach, +while Katy worked at her home letters and Amy raced up and down in the +sun; and then toward noon Lieutenant Ned generally appeared, and some +scheme of pleasure was set on foot. Mrs. Ashe ignored his evident +_penchant_ for Lilly Page, and claimed his time and attentions as hers +by right. Young Worthington was a good deal "taken" with the pretty +Lilly; still, he had an old-time devotion for his sister and the habit +of doing what she desired, and he yielded to her behests with no audible +objections. He made a fourth in the carriage while they drove over the +lovely hills which encircle Nice toward the north, to Cimiers and the +Val de St. André, or down the coast toward Ventimiglia. He went with +them to Monte-Carlo and Mentone, and was their escort again and again +when they visited the great war-ships as they lay at anchor in a bay +which in its translucent blue was like an enormous sapphire. + +Mrs. Page and her daughter were included in these parties more than +once; but there was something in Mrs. Ashe's cool appropriation of her +brother which was infinitely vexatious to Lilly, who before her +arrival had rather looked upon Lieutenant Worthington as her own +especial property. + +"I wish _that_ Mrs. Ashe had stayed at home," she told her mother. "She +quite spoils everything. Mr. Worthington isn't half so nice as he was +before she came. I do believe she has a plan for making him fall in love +with Katy; but there she makes a miss of it, for he doesn't seem to care +anything about her." + +"Katy is a nice girl enough," pronounced her mother, "but not of the +sort to attract a gay young man, I should fancy. I don't believe _she_ +is thinking of any such thing. You needn't be afraid, Lilly." + +"I'm not afraid," said Lilly, with a pout; "only it's so provoking." + +Mrs. Page was quite right. Katy was not thinking of any such thing. She +liked Ned Worthington's frank manners; she owned, quite honestly, that +she thought him handsome, and she particularly admired the sort of +deferential affection which he showed to Mrs. Ashe, and his nice ways +with Amy. For herself, she was aware that he scarcely noticed her except +as politeness demanded that he should be civil to his sister's friend; +but the knowledge did not trouble her particularly. Her head was full of +interesting things, plans, ideas. She was not accustomed to being made +the object of admiration, and experienced none of the vexations of a +neglected belle. If Lieutenant Worthington happened to talk to her, she +responded frankly and freely; if he did not, she occupied herself with +something else; in either case she was quite unembarrassed both in +feeling and manner, and had none of the awkwardness which comes from +disappointed vanity and baffled expectations, and the need for +concealing them. + +Toward the close of December the officers of the flag-ship gave a ball, +which was the great event of the season to the gay world of Nice. +Americans were naturally in the ascendant on an American frigate; and of +all the American girls present, Lilly Page was unquestionably the +prettiest. Exquisitely dressed in white lace, with bands of turquoises +on her neck and arms and in her hair, she had more partners than she +knew what to do with, more bouquets than she could well carry, and +compliments enough to turn any girl's head. Thrown off her guard by her +triumphs, she indulged a little vindictive feeling which had been +growing in her mind of late on account of what she chose to consider +certain derelictions of duty on the part of Lieutenant Worthington, and +treated him to a taste of neglect. She was engaged three deep when he +asked her to dance; she did not hear when he invited her to walk; she +turned a cold shoulder when he tried to talk, and seemed absorbed by the +other cavaliers, naval and otherwise, who crowded about her. + +Piqued and surprised, Ned Worthington turned to Katy. She did not dance, +saying frankly that she did not know how and was too tall; and she was +rather simply dressed in a pearl-gray silk, which had been her best gown +the winter before in Burnet, with a bunch of red roses in the white lace +of the tucker, and another in her hand, both the gifts of little Amy; +but she looked pleasant and serene, and there was something about her +which somehow soothed his disturbed mind, as he offered her his arm for +a walk on the decks. + +For a while they said little, and Katy was quite content to pace up and +down in silence, enjoying the really beautiful scene,--the moonlight on +the Bay, the deep wavering reflections of the dark hulls and slender +spars, the fairy effect of the colored lamps and lanterns, and the +brilliant moving maze of the dancers. + +"Do you care for this sort of thing?" he suddenly asked. + +"What sort of thing do you mean?" + +"Oh, all this jigging and waltzing and amusement." + +"I don't know how to 'jig,' but it's delightful to look on," she +answered merrily. "I never saw anything so pretty in my life." + +The happy tone of her voice and the unruffled face which she turned upon +him quieted his irritation. + +"I really believe you mean it," he said; "and yet, if you won't think me +rude to say so, most girls would consider the thing dull enough if they +were only getting out of it what you are,--if they were not dancing, I +mean, and nobody in particular was trying to entertain them." + +"But everything _is_ being done to entertain me," cried Katy. "I can't +imagine what makes you think that it could seem dull. I am in it all, +don't you see,--I have my share--. Oh, I am stupid, I can't make you +understand." + +"Yes, you do. I understand perfectly, I think; only it is such a +different point of view from what girls in general would take." (By +girls he meant Lilly!) "Please do not think me uncivil." + +"You are not uncivil at all; but don't let us talk any more about me. +Look at the lights between the shadows of the masts on the water. How +they quiver! I never saw anything so beautiful, I think. And how warm it +is! I can't believe that we are in December and that it is nearly +Christmas." + +"How is Polly going to celebrate her Christmas? Have you decided?" + +"Amy is to have a Christmas-tree for her dolls, and two other dolls are +coming. We went out this morning to buy things for it,--tiny little toys +and candles fit for Lilliput. And that reminds me, do you suppose one +can get any Christmas greens here?" + +"Why not? The place seems full of green." + +"That's just it; the summer look makes it unnatural. But I should like +some to dress the parlor with if they could be had." + +"I'll see what I can find, and send you a load." + +I don't know why this very simple little talk should have made an +impression on Lieutenant Worthington's mind, but somehow he did not +forget it. + +"'Don't let us talk any more about me,'" he said to himself that night +when alone in his cabin. "I wonder how long it would be before the other +one did anything to divert the talk from herself. Some time, I fancy." +He smiled rather grimly as he unbuckled his sword-belt. It is unlucky +for a girl when she starts a train of reflection like this. Lilly's +little attempt to pique her admirer had somehow missed its mark. + +The next afternoon Katy in her favorite place on the beach was at work +on the long weekly letter which she never failed to send home to Burnet. +She held her portfolio in her lap, and her pen ran rapidly over the +paper, as rapidly almost as her tongue would have run could her +correspondents have been brought nearer. + + + "Nice, December 22. + + "Dear Papa and everybody,--Amy and I are sitting on my old purple + cloak, which is spread over the sand just where it was spread the + last time I wrote you. We are playing the following game: I am a + fairy and she is a little girl. Another fairy--not sitting on the + cloak at present--has enchanted the little girl, and I am telling + her various ways by which she can work out her deliverance. At + present the task is to find twenty-four dull red pebbles of the same + color, failing to do which she is to be changed into an owl. When we + began to play, I was the wicked fairy; but Amy objected to that + because I am 'so nice,' so we changed the characters. I wish you + could see the glee in her pretty gray eyes over this infantile game, + into which she has thrown herself so thoroughly that she half + believes in it. 'But I needn't really be changed into an owl! 'she + says, with a good deal of anxiety in her voice. + + "To think that you are shivering in the first snow-storm, or sending + the children out with their sleds and india-rubbers to slide! How I + wish instead that you were sharing the purple cloak with Amy and me, + and could sit all this warm balmy afternoon close to the surf-line + which fringes this bluest of blue seas! There is plenty of room for + you all. Not many people come down to this end of the beach, and if + you were very good we would let you play. + + "Our life here goes on as delightfully as ever. Nice is very full of + people, and there seem to be some pleasant ones among them. Here at + the Pension Suisse we do not see a great many Americans. The + fellow-boarders are principally Germans and Austrians with a + sprinkling of French. (Amy has found her twenty-four red pebbles, so + she is let off from being an owl. She is now engaged in throwing + them one by one into the sea. Each must hit the water under penalty + of her being turned into a Muscovy duck. She doesn't know exactly + what a Muscovy duck is, which makes her all the more particular + about her shots.) But, as I was saying, our little _suite_ in the + round tower is so on one side of the rest of the Pension that it is + as good as having a house of our own. The _salon_ is very bright and + sunny; we have two sofas and a square table and a round table and a + sort of what-not and two easy-chairs and two uneasy chairs and a + lamp of our own and a clock. There is also a sofa-pillow. There's + richness for you! We have pinned up all our photographs on the + walls, including Papa's and Clovy's and that bad one of Phil and + Johnnie making faces at each other, and three lovely red and yellow + Japanese pictures on muslin which Rose Red put in my trunk the last + thing, for a spot of color. There are some autumn leaves too; and we + always have flowers and in the mornings and evenings a fire. + + "Amy is now finding fifty snow-white pebbles, which when found are + to be interred in one common grave among the shingle. If she fails + to do this, she is to be changed to an electrical eel. The chief + difficulty is that she loses her heart to particular pebbles. 'I + can't bury you,' I hear her saying. + + "To return,--we have jolly little breakfasts together in the + _salon_. They consist of coffee and rolls, and are served by a + droll, snappish little _garçon_ with no teeth, and an Italian-French + patois which is very hard to understand when he sputters. He told me + the other day that he had been a _garçon_ for forty-six years, which + seemed rather a long boyhood. + + "The company, as we meet them at table, are rather entertaining. + Cousin Olivia and Lilly are on their best behavior to me because I + am travelling with Mrs. Ashe, and Mrs. Ashe is Lieutenant + Worthington's sister, and Lieutenant Worthington is Lilly's admirer, + and they like him very much. In fact, Lilly has intimated + confidentially that she is all but engaged to him; but I am not sure + about it, or if that was what she meant; and I fear, if it proves + true, that dear Polly will not like it at all. She is quite + unmanageable, and snubs Lilly continually in a polite way, which + makes me fidgety for fear Lilly will be offended, but she never + seems to notice it. Cousin Olivia looks very handsome and gorgeous. + She quite takes the color out of the little Russian Countess who + sits next to her, and who is as dowdy and meek as if she came from + Akron or Binghampton, or any other place where countesses are + unknown. Then there are two charming, well-bred young Austrians. The + one who sits nearest to me is a 'Candidat' for a Doctorate of Laws, + and speaks eight languages well. He has only studied English for the + past six weeks, but has made wonderful progress. I wish my French + were half as good as his English is already. + + "There is a very gossiping young woman on the story beneath ours, + whom I meet sometimes in the garden, and from her I hear all manner + of romantic tales about people in the house. One little French girl + is dying of consumption and a broken heart, because of a quarrel + with her lover, who is a courier; and the _padrona_, who is young + and pretty, and has only been married a few months to our elderly + landlord, has a story also. I forget some of the details; but there + was a stern parent and an admirer, and a cup of cold poison, and now + she says she wishes she were dying of consumption like poor + Alphonsine. For all that, she looks quite fat and rosy, and I often + see her in her best gown with a great deal of Roman scarf and mosaic + jewelry, stationed in the doorway, 'making the Pension look + attractive to the passers-by.' So she has a sense of duty, though + she is unhappy. + + "Amy has buried all her pebbles, and says she is tired of playing + fairy. She is now sitting with her head on my shoulder, and + professedly studying her French verb for to-morrow, but in reality, + I am sorry to say, she is conversing with me about be-headings,--a + subject which, since her visit to the Tower, has exercised a + horrible fascination over her mind. 'Do people die right away?' she + asks. 'Don't they feel one minute, and doesn't it feel awfully?' + There is a good deal of blood, she supposes, because there was so + much straw laid about the block in the picture of Lady Jane Gray's + execution, which enlivened our walls in Paris. On the whole, I am + rather glad that a fat little white dog has come waddling down the + beach and taken off her attention. + + "Speaking of Paris seems to renew the sense of fog which we had + there. Oh, how enchanting sunshine is after weeks of gloom! I shall + never forget how the Mediterranean looked when we saw it first,--all + blue, and such a lovely color. There ought, according to Morse's + Atlas, to have been a big red letter T on the water about where we + were, but I didn't see any. Perhaps they letter it so far out from + shore that only people in boats notice it. + + "Now the dusk is fading, and the odd chill which hides under these + warm afternoons begins to be felt. Amy has received a message + written on a mysterious white pebble to the effect--" + +Katy was interrupted at this point by a crunching step on the gravel +behind her. + +"Good afternoon," said a voice. "Polly has sent me to fetch you and Amy +in. She says it is growing cool." + +"We were just coming," said Katy, beginning to put away her papers. + +Ned Worthington sat down on the cloak beside her. The distance was now +steel gray against the sky; then came a stripe of violet, and then a +broad sheet of the vivid iridescent blue which one sees on the necks of +peacocks, which again melted into the long line of flashing surf. + +"See that gull," he said, "how it drops plumb into the sea, as if bound +to go through to China!" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne calls skylarks 'little raptures,'" replied Katy. +"Sea-gulls seem to me like grown-up raptures." + +"Are you going?" said Lieutenant Worthington in a tone of surprise, +as she rose. + +"Didn't you say that Polly wanted us to come in?" + +"Why, yes; but it seems too good to leave, doesn't it? Oh, by the way, +Miss Carr, I came across a man to-day and ordered your greens. They will +be sent on Christmas Eve. Is that right?" + +"Quite right, and we are ever so much obliged to you." She turned for a +last look at the sea, and, unseen by Ned Worthington, formed her lips +into a "good-night." Katy had made great friends with the Mediterranean. + +The promised "greens" appeared on the afternoon before Christmas Day, in +the shape of an enormous fagot of laurel and laurestinus and holly and +box; orange and lemon boughs with ripe fruit hanging from them, thick +ivy tendrils whole yards long, arbutus, pepper tree, and great branches +of acacia, covered with feathery yellow bloom. The man apologized for +bringing so little. The gentleman had ordered two francs worth, he said, +but this was all he could carry; he would fetch some more if the young +lady wished! But Katy, exclaiming with delight over her wealth, wished +no more; so the man departed, and the three friends proceeded to turn +the little _salon_ into a fairy bower. Every photograph and picture was +wreathed in ivy, long garlands hung on either side the windows, and the +chimney-piece and door-frames became clustering banks of leaf and +blossom. A great box of flowers had come with the greens, and bowls of +fresh roses and heliotrope and carnations were set everywhere; violets +and primroses, gold-hearted brown auriculas, spikes of veronica, all the +zones and all the seasons, combining to make the Christmas-tide sweet, +and to turn winter topsy-turvy in the little parlor. + +Mabel and Mary Matilda, with their two doll visitors, sat gravely round +the table, in the laps of their little mistresses; and Katy, putting on +an apron and an improvised cap, and speaking Irish very fast, served +them with a repast of rolls and cocoa, raspberry jam, and delicious +little almond cakes. The fun waxed fast and furious; and Lieutenant +Worthington, coming in with his hands full of parcels for the +Christmas-tree, was just in time to hear Katy remark in a strong County +Kerry brogue,-- + +"Och, thin indade, Miss Amy, and it's no more cake you'll be getting out +of me the night. That's four pieces you've ate, and it's little slape +your poor mother'll git with you a tossin' and tumblin' forenenst her +all night long because of your big appetite." + +"Oh, Miss Katy, talk Irish some more!" cried the delighted children. + +"Is it Irish you'd be afther having me talk, when it's me own langwidge, +and sorrow a bit of another do I know?" demanded Katy. Then she caught +sight of the new arrival and stopped short with a blush and a laugh. + +"Come in, Mr. Worthington," she said; "we're at supper, as you see, and +I am acting as waitress." + +"Oh, Uncle Ned, please go away," pleaded Amy, "or Katy will be polite, +and not talk Irish any more." + +"Indade, and the less ye say about politeness the betther, when ye're +afther ordering the jantleman out of the room in that fashion!" said the +waitress. Then she pulled off her cap and untied her apron. + +"Now for the Christmas-tree," she said. + +It was a very little tree, but it bore some remarkable fruits; for in +addition to the "tiny toys and candles fit for Lilliput," various +parcels were found to have been hastily added at the last moment for +various people. The "Natchitoches" had lately come from the Levant, and +delightful Oriental confections now appeared for Amy and Mrs. Ashe; +Turkish slippers, all gold embroidery; towels, with richly decorated +ends in silks and tinsel;--all the pretty superfluities which the East +holds out to charm gold from the pockets of her Western visitors. A +pretty little dagger in agate and silver fell to Katy's share out of +what Lieutenant Worthington called his "loot;" and beside, a most +beautiful specimen of the inlaid work for which Nice is famous,--a +looking-glass, with a stand and little doors to close it in,--which was +a present from Mrs. Ashe. It was quite unlike a Christmas Eve at home, +but altogether delightful; and as Katy sat next morning on the sand, +after the service in the English church, to finish her home letter, and +felt the sun warm on her cheek, and the perfumed air blow past as softly +as in June, she had to remind herself that Christmas is not necessarily +synonymous with snow and winter, but means the great central heat and +warmth, the advent of Him who came to lighten the whole earth. + +A few days after this pleasant Christmas they left Nice. All of them +felt a reluctance to move, and Amy loudly bewailed the necessity. + +"If I could stay here till it is time to go home, I shouldn't be +homesick at all," she declared. + +"But what a pity it would be not to see Italy!" said her mother. "Think +of Naples and Rome and Venice." + +"I don't want to think about them. It makes me feel as if I was studying +a great long geography lesson, and it tires me so to learn it." + +"Amy, dear, you're not well." + +"Yes, I am,--quite well; only I don't want to go away from Nice." + +"You only have to learn a little bit at a time of your geography lesson, +you know," suggested Katy; "and it's a great deal nicer way to study it +than out of a book." But though she spoke cheerfully she was conscious +that she shared Amy's reluctance. + +"It's all laziness," she told herself. "Nice has been so pleasant that +it has spoiled me." + +It was a consolation and made going easier that they were to drive over +the famous Cornice Road as far as San Remo, instead of going to Genoa +by rail as most travellers now-a-days do. They departed from the +Pension Suisse early on an exquisite morning, fair and balmy as June, +but with a little zest and sparkle of coolness in the air which made it +additionally delightful. The Mediterranean was of the deepest +violet-blue; a sort of bloom of color seemed to lie upon it. The sky +was like an arch of turquoise; every cape and headland shone jewel-like +in the golden sunshine. The carriage, as it followed the windings of +the road cut shelf-like on the cliffs, seemed poised between earth and +heaven; the sea below, the mountain summits above, with a fairy world +of verdure between. The journey was like a dream of enchantment and +rapidly changing surprises; and when it ended in a quaint hostelry at +San Remo, with palm-trees feathering the Bordighera Point and Corsica, +for once seen by day, lying in bold, clear outlines against the sunset, +Katy had to admit to herself that Nice, much as she loved it, was not +the only, not even the most beautiful place in Europe. Already she felt +her horizon growing, her convictions changing; and who should say what +lay beyond? + +The next day brought them to Genoa, to a hotel once the stately palace +of an archbishop, where they were lodged, all three together, in an +enormous room, so high and broad and long that their three little +curtained beds set behind a screen of carved wood made no impression on +the space. There were not less than four sofas and double that number of +arm-chairs in the room, besides a couple of monumental wardrobes; but, +as Katy remarked, several grand pianos could still have been moved in +without anybody's feeling crowded. On one side of them lay the port of +Genoa, filled with craft from all parts of the world, and flying the +flags of a dozen different nations. From the other they caught glimpses +of the magnificent old city, rising in tier over tier of churches and +palaces and gardens; while nearer still were narrow streets, which +glittered with gold filigree and the shops of jewel-workers. And while +they went in and out and gazed and wondered, Lilly Page, at the Pension +Suisse, was saying,-- + +"I am so glad that Katy and _that_ Mrs. Ashe are gone. Nothing has been +so pleasant since they came. Lieutenant Worthington is dreadfully stiff +and stupid, and seems quite different from what he used to be. But now +that we have got rid of them it will all come right again." + +"I really don't think that Katy was to blame," said Mrs. Page. "She +never seemed to me to be making any effort to attract him." + +"Oh, Katy is sly," responded Lilly, vindictively. "She never _seems_ to +do anything, but somehow she always gets her own way. I suppose she +thought I didn't see her keeping him down there on the beach the other +day when he was coming in to call on us, but I did. It was just out of +spite, and because she wanted to vex me; I know it was." + +"Well, dear, she's gone now, and you won't be worried with her again," +said her mother, soothingly. "Don't pout so, Lilly, and wrinkle up your +forehead. It's very unbecoming." + +"Yes, she's gone," snapped Lilly; "and as she's bound for the East, and +we for the West, we are not likely to meet again, for which I am +devoutly thankful." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. + + +"We are going to follow the track of Ulysses," said Katy, with her eyes +fixed on the little travelling-map in her guide-book. "Do you realize +that, Polly dear? He and his companions sailed these very seas before +us, and we shall see the sights they saw,--Circe's Cape and the Isles of +the Sirens, and Polyphemus himself, perhaps, who knows?" + +The "Marco Polo" had just cast off her moorings, and was slowly steaming +out of the crowded port of Genoa into the heart of a still rosy sunset. +The water was perfectly smooth; no motion could be felt but the engine's +throb. The trembling foam of the long wake showed glancing points of +phosphorescence here and there, while low on the eastern sky a great +silver planet burned like a signal lamp. + +"Polyphemus was a horrible giant. I read about him once, and I don't +want to see him," observed Amy, from her safe protected perch in her +mother's lap. + +"He may not be so bad now as he was in those old times. Some missionary +may have come across him and converted him. If he were good, you +wouldn't mind his being big, would you?" suggested Katy. + +"N-o," replied Amy, doubtfully; "but it would take a great lot of +missionaries to make _him_ good, I should think. One all alone would be +afraid to speak to him. We shan't really see him, shall we?" + +"I don't believe we shall; and if we stuff cotton in our ears and look +the other way, we need not hear the sirens sing," said Katy, who was in +the highest spirits.--"And oh, Polly dear, there is one delightful thing +I forgot to tell you about. The captain says he shall stay in Leghorn +all day to-morrow taking on freight, and we shall have plenty of time to +run up to Pisa and see the Cathedral and the Leaning Tower and +everything else. Now, that is something Ulysses didn't do! I am so glad +I didn't die of measles when I was little, as Rose Red used to say." She +gave her book a toss into the air as she spoke, and caught it again as +it fell, very much as the Katy Carr of twelve years ago might have done. + +"What a child you are!" said Mrs. Ashe, approvingly; "you never seem out +of sorts or tired of things." + +"Out of sorts? I should think not! And pray why should I be, +Polly dear?" + +Katy had taken to calling her friend "Polly dear" of late,--a trick +picked up half unconsciously from Lieutenant Ned. Mrs. Ashe liked it; +it was sisterly and intimate, she said, and made her feel nearer +Katy's age. + +"Does the tower really lean?" questioned Amy,--"far over, I mean, so +that we can see it?" + +"We shall know to-morrow," replied Katy. "If it doesn't, I shall lose +all my confidence in human nature." + +Katy's confidence in human nature was not doomed to be impaired. There +stood the famous tower, when they reached the Place del Duomo in Pisa, +next morning, looking all aslant, exactly as it does in the pictures and +the alabaster models, and seeming as if in another moment it must topple +over, from its own weight, upon their heads. Mrs. Ashe declared that it +was so unnatural that it made her flesh creep; and when she was coaxed +up the winding staircase to the top, she turned so giddy that they were +all thankful to get her safely down to firm ground again. She turned her +back upon the tower, as they crossed the grassy space to the majestic +old Cathedral, saying that if she thought about it any more, she should +become a disbeliever in the attraction of gravitation, which she had +always been told all respectable people _must_ believe in. + +The guide showed them the lamp swinging by a long slender chain, before +which Galileo is said to have sat and pondered while he worked out his +theory of the pendulum. This lamp seemed a sort of own cousin to the +attraction of gravitation, and they gazed upon it with respect. Then +they went to the Baptistery to see Niccolo Pisano's magnificent pulpit +of creamy marble, a mass of sculpture supported on the backs of lions, +and the equally lovely font, and to admire the extraordinary sound +which their guide evoked from a mysterious echo, with which he seemed +to be on intimate terms, for he made it say whatever he would and +almost "answer back." + +It was in coming out of the Baptistery that they met with an adventure +which Amy could never quite forget. Pisa is the mendicant city of Italy, +and her streets are infested with a band of religious beggars who call +themselves the Brethren of the Order of Mercy. They wear loose black +gowns, sandals laced over their bare feet, and black cambric masks with +holes, through which their eyes glare awfully; and they carry tin cups +for the reception of offerings, which they thrust into the faces of all +strangers visiting the city, whom they look upon as their lawful prey. + +As our party emerged from the Baptistery, two of these Brethren espied +them, and like great human bats came swooping down upon them with long +strides, their black garments flying in the wind, their eyes rolling +strangely behind their masks, and brandishing their alms-cups, which had +"Pour les Pauvres" lettered upon them, and gave forth a clapping sound +like a watchman's rattle. There was something terrible in their +appearance and the rushing speed of their movements. Amy screamed and +ran behind her mother, who visibly shrank. Katy stood her ground; but +the bat-winged fiends in Doré's illustrations to Dante occurred to her, +and her fingers trembled as she dropped some money in the cups. + +Even mendicant friars are human. Katy ceased to tremble as she observed +that one of them, as he retreated, walked backward for some distance in +order to gaze longer at Mrs. Ashe, whose cheeks were flushed with bright +pink and who was looking particularly handsome. She began to laugh +instead, and Mrs. Ashe laughed too; but Amy could not get over the +impression of having been attacked by demons, and often afterward +recurred with a shudder to the time when those awful black _things_ flew +at her and she hid behind mamma. The ghastly pictures of the Triumph of +Death, which were presently exhibited to them on the walls of the Campo +Santo, did not tend to reassure her, and it was with quite a pale, +scared little face that she walked toward the hotel where they were to +lunch, and she held fast to Katy's hand. + +Their way led them through a narrow street inhabited by the poorer +classes,--a dusty street with high shabby buildings on either side and +wide doorways giving glimpses of interior courtyards, where empty +hogsheads and barrels and rusty caldrons lay, and great wooden trays of +macaroni were spread out in the sun to dry. Some of the macaroni was +gray, some white, some yellow; none of it looked at all desirable to +eat, as it lay exposed to the dust, with long lines of ill-washed +clothes flapping above on wires stretched from one house to another. As +is usual in poor streets, there were swarms of children; and the +appearance of little Amy with her long bright hair falling over her +shoulders and Mabel clasped in her arms created a great sensation. The +children in the street shouted and exclaimed, and other children within +the houses heard the sounds and came trooping out, while mothers and +older sisters peeped from the doorways. The very air seemed full of +eager faces and little brown and curly heads bobbing up and down with +excitement, and black eyes all fixed upon big beautiful Mabel, who with +her thick wig of flaxen hair, her blue velvet dress and jacket, +feathered hat, and little muff, seemed to them like some strange small +marvel from another world. They could not decide whether she was a +living child or a make-believe one, and they dared not come near enough +to find out; so they clustered at a little distance, pointed with their +fingers, and whispered and giggled, while Amy, much pleased with the +admiration shown for her darling, lifted Mabel up to view. + +At last one droll little girl with a white cap on her round head seemed +to make up _her_ mind, and darting indoors returned with her doll,--a +poor little image of wood, its only garment a coarse shirt of red +cotton. This she held out for Amy to see. Amy smiled for the first time +since her encounter with the bat-like friars; and Katy, taking Mabel +from her, made signs that the two dolls should kiss each other. But +though the little Italian screamed with laughter at the idea of a +_bacio_ between two dolls, she would by no means allow it, and hid her +treasure behind her back, blushing and giggling, and saying something +very fast which none of them understood, while she waved two fingers at +them with a curious gesture. + +"I do believe she is afraid Mabel will cast the evil eye on her doll," +said Katy at last, with a sudden understanding as to what this +pantomime meant. + +"Why, you silly thing!" cried the outraged Amy; "do you suppose for one +moment that my child could hurt your dirty old dolly? You ought to be +glad to have her noticed at all by anybody that's clean." + +The sound of the foreign tongue completed the discomfiture of the +little Italian. With a shriek she fled, and all the other children +after her; pausing at a distance to look back at the alarming creatures +who didn't speak the familiar language. Katy, wishing to leave a +pleasant impression, made Mabel kiss her waxen fingers toward them. +This sent the children off into another fit of laughter and chatter, +and they followed our friends for quite a distance as they proceeded on +their way to the hotel. + +All that night, over a sea as smooth as glass, the "Marco Polo" slipped +along the coasts past which the ships of Ulysses sailed in those old +legendary days which wear so charmed a light to our modern eyes. Katy +roused at three in the morning, and looking from her cabin window had a +glimpse of an island, which her map showed her must be Elba, where that +war-eagle Napoleon was chained for a while. Then she fell asleep again, +and when she roused in full daylight the steamer was off the coast of +Ostia and nearing the mouth of the Tiber. Dreamy mountain-shapes rose +beyond the far-away Campagna, and every curve and indentation of the +coast bore a name which recalled some interesting thing. + +About eleven a dim-drawn bubble appeared on the horizon, which the +captain assured them was the dome of St. Peter's, nearly thirty miles +distant. This was one of the "moments" which Clover had been fond of +speculating about; and Katy, contrasting the real with the imaginary +moment, could not help smiling. Neither she nor Clover had ever supposed +that her first glimpse of the great dome was to be so little impressive. + +On and on they went till the air-hung bubble disappeared; and Amy, grown +very tired of scenery with which she had no associations, and grown-up +raptures which she did not comprehend, squeezed herself into the end of +the long wooden settee on which Katy sat, and began to beg for another +story concerning Violet and Emma. + +"Just a little tiny chapter, you know, Miss Katy, about what they did on +New Year's Day or something. It's so dull to keep sailing and sailing +all day and have nothing to do, and it's ever so long since you told me +anything about them, really and truly it is!" + +Now, Violet and Emma, if the truth is to be told, had grown to be the +bane of Katy's existence. She had rung the changes on their uneventful +adventures, and racked her brains to invent more and more details, till +her imagination felt like a dry sponge from which every possible drop of +moisture had been squeezed. Amy was insatiable. Her interest in the tale +never flagged; and when her exhausted friend explained that she really +could not think of another word to say on the subject, she would turn +the tables by asking, "Then, Miss Katy, mayn't I tell _you_ a chapter?" +whereupon she would proceed somewhat in this fashion:-- + +"It was the day before Christmas--no, we won't have it the day before +Christmas; it shall be three days before Thanksgiving. Violet and Emma +got up in the morning, and--well, they didn't do anything in particular +that day. They just had their breakfasts and dinners, and played and +studied a little, and went to bed early, you know, and the next morning +--well, there didn't much happen that day, either; they just had their +breakfasts and dinners, and played." + +Listening to Amy's stories was so much worse than telling them to her, +that Katy in self-defence was driven to recommence her narrations, but +she had grown to hate Violet and Emma with a deadly hatred. So when Amy +made this appeal on the steamer's deck, a sudden resolution took +possession of her, and she decided to put an end to these dreadful +children once for all. + +"Yes, Amy," she said, "I will tell you one more story about Violet and +Emma; but this is positively the last." + +So Amy cuddled close to her friend, and listened with rapt attention as +Katy told how on a certain day just before the New Year, Violet and Emma +started by themselves in a little sleigh drawn by a pony, to carry to a +poor woman who lived in a lonely house high up on a mountain slope a +basket containing a turkey, a mould of cranberry jelly, a bunch of +celery, and a mince-pie. + +"They were so pleased at having all these nice things to take to poor +widow Simpson and in thinking how glad she would be to see them," +proceeded the naughty Katy, "that they never noticed how black the sky +was getting to be, or how the wind howled through the bare boughs of the +trees. They had to go slowly, for the road was up hill all the way, and +it was hard work for the poor pony. But he was a stout little fellow, +and tugged away up the slippery track, and Violet and Emma talked and +laughed, and never thought what was going to happen. Just half-way up +the mountain there was a rocky cliff which overhung the road, and on +this cliff grew an enormous hemlock tree. The branches were loaded with +snow, which made them much heavier than usual. Just as the sleigh passed +slowly underneath the cliff, a violent blast of wind blew up from the +ravine, struck the hemlock and tore it out of the ground, roots and all. +It fell directly across the sleigh, and Violet and Emma and the pony and +the basket with the turkey and the other things in it were all crushed +as flat as pancakes!" + +"Well," said Amy, as Katy stopped, "go on! what happened then?" + +"Nothing happened then," replied Katy, in a tone of awful solemnity; +"nothing could happen! Violet and Emma were dead, the pony was dead, the +things in the basket were broken all to little bits, and a great +snowstorm began and covered them up, and no one knew where they were or +what had become of them till the snow melted in the spring." + +With a loud shriek Amy jumped up from the bench. + +"No! no! no!" she cried; "they aren't dead! I won't let them be dead!" +Then she burst into tears, ran down the stairs, locked herself into her +mother's stateroom, and did not appear again for several hours. + +Katy laughed heartily at first over this outburst, but presently she +began to repent and to think that she had treated her pet unkindly. She +went down and knocked at the stateroom door; but Amy would not answer. +She called her softly through the key-hole, and coaxed and pleaded, but +it was all in vain. Amy remained invisible till late in the afternoon; +and when she finally crept up again to the deck, her eyes were red with +crying, and her little face as pale and miserable as if she had been +attending the funeral of her dearest friend. + +Katy's heart smote her. + +"Come here, my darling," she said, holding out her hand; "come and sit +in my lap and forgive me. Violet and Emma shall not be dead. They shall +go on living, since you care so much for them, and I will tell stories +about them to the end of the chapter." + +"No," said Amy, shaking her head mournfully; "you can't. They're dead, +and they won't come to life again ever. It's all over, and I'm so +so-o-rry." + +All Katy's apologies and efforts to resuscitate the story were useless. +Violet and Emma were dead to Amy's imagination, and she could not make +herself believe in them any more. + +She was too woe-begone to care for the fables of Circe and her swine +which Katy told as they rounded the magnificent Cape Circello, and the +isles where the sirens used to sing appealed to her in vain. The sun +set, the stars came out; and under the beams of their countless lamps +and the beckonings of a slender new moon, the "Marco Polo" sailed into +the Bay of Naples, past Vesuvius, whose dusky curl of smoke could be +seen outlined against the luminous sky, and brought her passengers to +their landing-place. + +They woke next morning to a summer atmosphere full of yellow sunshine +and true July warmth. Flower-vendors stood on every corner, and pursued +each newcomer with their fragrant wares. Katy could not stop exclaiming +over the cheapness of the flowers, which were thrust in at the carriage +windows as they drove slowly up and down the streets. They were tied +into flat nosegays, whose centre was a white camellia, encircled with +concentric rows of pink tea rosebuds, ring after ring, till the whole +was the size of an ordinary milk-pan; all to be had for the sum of ten +cents! But after they had bought two or three of these enormous +bouquets, and had discovered that not a single rose boasted an inch of +stem, and that all were pierced with long wires through their very +hearts, she ceased to care for them. + +"I would rather have one Souvenir or General Jacqueminot, with a long +stem and plenty of leaves, than a dozen of these stiff platters of +bouquets," Katy told Mrs. Ashe. But when they drove beyond the city +gates, and the coachman came to anchor beneath walls overhung with the +same roses, and she found that she might stand on the seat and pull down +as many branches of the lovely flowers as she desired, and gather +wallflowers for herself out of the clefts in the masonry, she was +entirely satisfied. + +"This is the Italy of my dreams," she said. + +With all its beauty there was an underlying sense of danger about +Naples, which interfered with their enjoyment of it. Evil smells came +in at the windows, or confronted them as they went about the city. +There seemed something deadly in the air. Whispered reports met their +ears of cases of fever, which the landlords of the hotels were doing +their best to hush up. An American gentleman was said to be lying very +ill at one house. A lady had died the week before at another. Mrs. Ashe +grew nervous. + +"We will just take a rapid look at a few of the principal things," she +told Katy, "and then get away as fast as we can. Amy is so on my mind +that I have no peace of my life. I keep feeling her pulse and imagining +that she does not look right; and though I know it is all my fancy, I am +impatient to be off. You won't mind, will you, Katy?" + +After that everything they did was done in a hurry. Katy felt as if she +were being driven about by a cyclone, as they rushed from one sight to +another, filling up all the chinks between with shopping, which was +irresistible where everything was so pretty and so wonderfully cheap. +She herself purchased a tortoise-shell fan and chain for Rose Red, and +had her monogram carved upon it; a coral locket for Elsie; some studs +for Dorry; and for her father a small, beautiful vase of bronze, copied +from one of the Pompeian antiques. + +"How charming it is to have money to spend in such a place as this!" she +said to herself with a sigh of satisfaction as she surveyed these +delightful buyings. "I only wish I could get ten times as many things +and take them to ten times as many people. Papa was so wise about it. I +can't think how it is that he always knows beforehand exactly how people +are going to feel, and what they will want!" + +Mrs. Ashe also bought a great many things for herself and Amy, and to +take home as presents; and it was all very pleasant and satisfactory +except for that subtle sense of danger from which they could not escape +and which made them glad to go. "See Naples and die," says the old +adage; and the saying has proved sadly true in the case of many an +American traveller. + +Beside the talk of fever there was also a good deal of gossip about +brigands going about, as is generally the case in Naples and its +vicinity. Something was said to have happened to a party on one of the +heights above Sorrento; and though nobody knew exactly what the +something was, or was willing to vouch for the story, Mrs. Ashe and +Katy felt a good deal of trepidation as they entered the carriage which +was to take them to the neighborhood where the mysterious "something" +had occurred. + +The drive between Castellamare and Sorrento is in reality as safe as +that between Boston and Brookline; but as our party did not know this +fact till afterward, it did them no good. It is also one of the most +beautiful drives in the world, following the windings of the exquisite +coast mile after mile, in long links of perfectly made road, carved on +the face of sharp cliffs, with groves of oranges and lemons and olive +orchards above, and the Bay of Naples beneath, stretching away like a +solid sheet of lapis-lazuli, and gemmed with islands of the most +picturesque form. + +It is a pity that so much beauty should have been wasted on Mrs. Ashe +and Katy, but they were too frightened to half enjoy it. Their carriage +was driven by a shaggy young savage, who looked quite wild enough to be +a bandit himself. He cracked his whip loudly as they rolled along, and +every now and then gave a long shrill whistle. Mrs. Ashe was sure that +these were signals to his band, who were lurking somewhere on the +olive-hung hillsides. She thought she detected him once or twice making +signs to certain questionable-looking characters as they passed; and she +fancied that the people they met gazed at them with an air of +commiseration, as upon victims who were being carried to execution. Her +fears affected Katy; so, though they talked and laughed, and made jokes +to amuse Amy, who must not be scared or led to suppose that anything was +amiss, and to the outward view seemed a very merry party, they were +privately quaking in their shoes all the way, and enjoying a deal of +highly superfluous misery. And after all they reached Sorrento in +perfect safety; and the driver, who looked so dangerous, turned out to +be a respectable young man enough, with a wife and family to support, +who considered a plateful of macaroni and a glass of sour red wine as +the height of luxury, and was grateful for a small gratuity of thirty +cents or so, which would enable him to purchase these dainties. Mrs. +Ashe had a very bad headache next day, to pay for her fright; but she +and Katy agreed that they had been very foolish, and resolved to pay no +more attention to unaccredited rumors or allow them to spoil their +enjoyment, which was a sensible resolution to make. + +Their hotel was perched directly over the sea. From the balcony of their +sitting-room they looked down a sheer cliff some sixty feet high, into +the water; their bedrooms opened on a garden of roses, with an orange +grove beyond. Not far from them was the great gorge which cuts the +little town of Sorrento almost in two, and whose seaward end makes the +harbor of the place. Katy was never tired of peering down into this +strange and beautiful cleft, whose sides, two hundred feet in depth, are +hung with vines and trailing growths of all sorts, and seem all +a-tremble with the fairy fronds of maiden-hair ferns growing out of +every chink and crevice. She and Amy took walks along the coast toward +Massa, to look off at the lovely island shapes in the bay, and admire +the great clumps of cactus and Spanish bayonet which grew by the +roadside; and they always came back loaded with orange-flowers, which +could be picked as freely as apple-blossoms from New England orchards in +the spring. The oranges themselves at that time of the year were very +sour, but they answered as well for a romantic date, "From an orange +grove," as if they had been the sweetest in the world. + +They made two different excursions to Pompeii, which is within easy +distance of Sorrento. They scrambled on donkeys over the hills, and had +glimpses of the far-away Calabrian shore, of the natural arch, and the +temples of Pæstum shining in the sun many miles distant. On Katy's +birthday, which fell toward the end of January, Mrs. Ashe let her have +her choice of a treat; and she elected to go to the Island of Capri, +which none of them had seen. It turned out a perfect day, with sea and +wind exactly right for the sail, and to allow of getting into the famous +"Blue Grotto," which can only be entered under particular conditions of +tide and weather. And they climbed the great cliff-rise at the island's +end, and saw the ruins of the villa built by the wicked emperor +Tiberius, and the awful place known as his "Leap," down which, it is +said, he made his victims throw themselves; and they lunched at a hotel +which bore his name, and just at sunset pushed off again for the row +home over the charmed sea. This return voyage was almost the pleasantest +thing of all the day. The water was smooth, the moon at its full. It was +larger and more brilliant than American moons are, and seemed to possess +an actual warmth and color. The boatmen timed their oar-strokes to the +cadence of Neapolitan _barcaroles_ and folk-songs, full of rhythmic +movement, which seemed caught from the pulsing tides. And when at last +the bow grated on the sands of the Sorrento landing-place, Katy drew a +long, regretful breath, and declared that this was her best +birthday-gift of all, better than Amy's flowers, or the pretty +tortoise-shell locket that Mrs. Ashe had given her, better even than the +letter from home, which, timed by happy accident, had arrived by the +morning's post to make a bright opening for the day. + +All pleasant things must come to an ending. + +"Katy," said Mrs. Ashe, one afternoon in early February, "I heard some +ladies talking just now in the _salon_, and they said that Rome is +filling up very fast. The Carnival begins in less than two weeks, and +everybody wants to be there then. If we don't make haste, we shall not +be able to get any rooms." + +"Oh dear!" said Katy, "it is very trying not to be able to be in two +places at once. I want to see Rome dreadfully, and yet I cannot bear to +leave Sorrento. We have been very happy here, haven't we?" + +So they took up their wandering staves again, and departed for Rome, +like the Apostle, "not knowing what should befall them there." + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +A ROMAN HOLIDAY. + + +"Oh dear!" said Mrs. Ashe, as she folded her letters and laid them +aside, "I wish those Pages would go away from Nice, or else that the +frigates were not there." + +"Why! what's the matter?" asked Katy, looking up from the many-leaved +journal from Clover over which she was poring. + +"Nothing is the matter except that those everlasting people haven't gone +to Spain yet, as they said they would, and Ned seems to keep on seeing +them," replied Mrs. Ashe, petulantly. + +"But, dear Polly, what difference does it make? And they never did +promise you to go on any particular time, did they?" + +"N-o, they didn't; but I wish they would, all the same. Not that Ned is +such a goose as really to care anything for that foolish Lilly!" Then +she gave a little laugh at her own inconsistency, and added, "But I +oughtn't to abuse her when she is your cousin." + +"Don't mention it," said Katy, cheerfully. "But, really, I don't see why +poor Lilly need worry you so, Polly dear." + +The room in which this conversation took place was on the very topmost +floor of the Hotel del Hondo in Rome. It was large and many-windowed; +and though there was a little bed in one corner half hidden behind a +calico screen, with a bureau and washing-stand, and a sort of stout +mahogany hat-tree on which Katy's dresses and jackets were hanging, the +remaining space, with a sofa and easy-chairs grouped round a fire, and a +round table furnished with books and a lamp, was ample enough to make a +good substitute for the private sitting-room which Mrs. Ashe had not +been able to procure on account of the near approach of the Carnival and +the consequent crowding of strangers to Rome. In fact, she was assured +that under the circumstances she was lucky in finding rooms as good as +these; and she made the most of the assurance as a consolation for the +somewhat unsatisfactory food and service of the hotel, and the four long +flights of stairs which must be passed every time they needed to reach +the dining-room or the street door. + +The party had been in Rome only four days, but already they had seen a +host of interesting things. They had stood in the strange sunken space +with its marble floor and broken columns, which is all that is left of +the great Roman Forum. They had visited the Coliseum, at that period +still overhung with ivy garlands and trailing greeneries, and not, as +now, scraped clean and bare and "tidied" out of much of its +picturesqueness. They had seen the Baths of Caracalla and the Temple of +Janus and St. Peter's and the Vatican marbles, and had driven out on the +Campagna and to the Pamphili-Doria Villa to gather purple and red +anemones, and to the English cemetery to see the grave of Keats. They +had also peeped into certain shops, and attended a reception at the +American Minister's,--in short, like most unwarned travellers, they had +done about twice as much as prudence and experience would have +permitted, had those worthies been consulted. + +All the romance of Katy's nature responded to the fascination of the +ancient city,--the capital of the world, as it may truly be called. The +shortest drive or walk brought them face to face with innumerable and +unexpected delights. Now it was a wonderful fountain, with plunging +horses and colossal nymphs and Tritons, holding cups and horns from +which showers of white foam rose high in air to fall like rushing rain +into an immense marble basin. Now it was an arched doorway with +traceries as fine as lace,--sole-remaining fragment of a heathen temple, +flung and stranded as it were by the waves of time on the squalid shore +of the present. Now it was a shrine at the meeting of three streets, +where a dim lamp burned beneath the effigy of the Madonna, with always a +fresh rose beside it in a vase, and at its foot a peasant woman kneeling +in red bodice and blue petticoat, with a lace-trimmed towel folded over +her hair. Or again it would be a sunlit terrace lifted high on a +hillside, and crowded with carriages full of beautifully dressed people, +while below all Rome seemed spread out like a panorama, dim, mighty, +majestic, and bounded by the blue wavy line of the Campagna and the +Alban hills. Or perhaps it might be a wonderful double flight of steps +with massive balustrades and pillars with urns, on which sat a crowd of +figures in strange costumes and attitudes, who all looked as though they +had stepped out of pictures, but who were in reality models waiting for +artists to come by and engage them. No matter what it was,--a bit of +oddly tinted masonry with a tuft of brown and orange wallflowers hanging +upon it, or a vegetable stall where endive and chiccory and curly +lettuces were arranged in wreaths with tiny orange gourds and scarlet +peppers for points of color,--it was all Rome, and, by virtue of that +word, different from any other place,--more suggestive, more +interesting, ten times more mysterious than any other could possibly be, +so Katy thought. + +This fact consoled her for everything and anything,--for the fleas, the +dirt, for the queer things they had to eat and the still queerer odors +they were forced to smell! Nothing seemed of any particular consequence +except the deep sense of enjoyment, and the newly discovered world of +thought and sensation of which she had become suddenly conscious. + +The only drawback to her happiness, as the days went on, was that +little Amy did not seem quite well or like herself. She had taken a +cold on the journey from Naples, and though it did not seem serious, +that, or something, made her look pale and thin. Her mother said she +was growing fast, but the explanation did not quite account for the +wistful look in the child's eyes and the tired feeling of which she +continually complained. Mrs. Ashe, with vague uneasiness, began to talk +of cutting short their Roman stay and getting Amy off to the more +bracing air of Florence. But meanwhile there was the Carnival close at +hand, which they must by no means lose; and the feeling that their +opportunity might be a brief one made her and Katy all the more anxious +to make the very most of their time. So they filled the days full with +sights to see and things to do, and came and went; sometimes taking Amy +with them, but more often leaving her at the hotel under the care of a +kind German chambermaid, who spoke pretty good English and to whom Amy +had taken a fancy. + +"The marble things are so cold, and the old broken things make me so +sorry," she explained; "and I hate beggars because they are dirty, and +the stairs make my back ache; and I'd a great deal rather stay with +Maria and go up on the roof, if you don't mind, mamma." + +This roof, which Amy had chosen as a playplace, covered the whole of the +great hotel, and had been turned into a sort of upper-air garden by the +simple process of gravelling it all over, placing trellises of ivy here +and there, and setting tubs of oranges and oleanders and boxes of gay +geraniums and stock-gillyflowers on the balustrades. A tame fawn was +tethered there. Amy adopted him as a playmate; and what with his company +and that of the flowers, the times when her mother and Katy were absent +from her passed not unhappily. + +Katy always repaired to the roof as soon as they came in from their long +mornings and afternoons of sight-seeing. Years afterward, she would +remember with contrition how pathetically glad Amy always was to see +her. She would put her little head on Katy's breast and hold her tight +for many minutes without saying a word. When she did speak it was always +about the house and the garden that she talked. She never asked any +questions as to where Katy had been, or what she had done; it seemed to +tire her to think about it. + +"I should be very lonely sometimes if it were not for my dear little +fawn," she told Katy once. "He is so sweet that I don't miss you and +mamma very much while I have him to play with. I call him Florio,--don't +you think that is a pretty name? I like to stay with him a great deal +better than to go about with you to those nasty-smelling old churches, +with fleas hopping all over them!" + +So Amy was left in peace with her fawn, and the others made haste to see +all they could before the time came to go to Florence. + +[Illustration: Amy was left in peace with her fawn.] + +Katy realized one of the "moments" for which she had come to Europe when +she stood for the first time on the balcony overhanging the Corso, which +Mrs. Ashe had hired in company with some acquaintances made at the +hotel, and looked down at the ebb and surge of the just-begun Carnival. +The narrow street seemed humming with people of all sorts and +conditions. Some were masked; some were not. There were ladies and +gentlemen in fashionable clothes, peasants in the gayest costumes, +surprised-looking tourists in tall hats and linen dusters, harlequins, +clowns, devils, nuns, dominoes of every color,--red, white, blue, black; +while above, the balconies bloomed like a rose-garden with pretty faces +framed in lace veils or picturesque hats. Flowers were everywhere, +wreathed along the house-fronts, tied to the horses' ears, in ladies' +hands and gentlemen's button-holes, while venders went up and down the +street bearing great trays of violets and carnations and camellias for +sale. The air was full of cries and laughter, and the shrill calls of +merchants advertising their wares,--candy, fruit, birds, lanterns, and +_confetti_, the latter being merely lumps of lime, large or small, with +a pea or a bean embedded in each lump to give it weight. Boxes full of +this unpleasant confection were suspended in front of each balcony, with +tin scoops to use in ladling it out and flinging it about. Everybody +wore or carried a wire mask as protection against this white, incessant +shower; and before long the air became full of a fine dust which hung +above the Corso like a mist, and filled the eyes and noses and clothes +of all present with irritating particles. + +Pasquino's Car was passing underneath just as Katy and Mrs. Ashe +arrived,--a gorgeous affair, hung with silken draperies, and bearing as +symbol an enormous egg, in which the Carnival was supposed to be in act +of incubation. A huge wagon followed in its wake, on which was a house +some sixteen feet square, whose sole occupant was a gentleman attended +by five servants, who kept him supplied with _confetti_, which he +showered liberally on the heads of the crowd. Then came a car in the +shape of a steamboat, with a smoke-pipe and sails, over which flew the +Union Jack, and which was manned with a party wearing the dress of +British tars. The next wagon bore a company of jolly maskers equipped +with many-colored bladders, which they banged and rattled as they went +along. Following this was a troupe of beautiful circus horses, +cream-colored with scarlet trappings, or sorrel with blue, ridden by +ladies in pale green velvet laced with silver, or blue velvet and gold. +Another car bore a bird-cage which was an exact imitation of St. +Peter's, within which perched a lonely old parrot. This device evidently +had a political signification, for it was alternately hissed and +applauded as it went along. The whole scene was like a brilliant, +rapidly shifting dream; and Katy, as she stood with lips apart and eyes +wide open with wonderment and pleasure, forgot whether she was in the +body or not,--forgot everything except what was passing before her gaze. + +She was roused by a stinging shower of lime-dust. An Englishman in the +next balcony had take courteous advantage of her preoccupation, and had +flung a scoopful of _confetti_ in her undefended face! It is generally +Anglo-Saxons of the less refined class, English or Americans, who do +these things at Carnival times. The national love of a rough joke comes +to the surface, encouraged by the license of the moment, and all the +grace and prettiness of the festival vanish. Katy laughed, and dusted +herself as well as she could, and took refuge behind her mask; while a +nimble American boy of the party changed places with her, and +thenceforward made that particular Englishman his special target, plying +such a lively and adroit shovel as to make Katy's assailant rue the hour +when he evoked this national reprisal. His powdered head and rather +clumsy efforts to retaliate excited shouts of laughter from the +adjoining balconies. The young American, fresh from tennis and college +athletics, darted about and dodged with an agility impossible to his +heavily built foe; and each effective shot and parry on his side was +greeted with little cries of applause and the clapping of hands on the +part of those who were watching the contest. + +Exactly opposite them was a balcony hung with white silk, in which sat a +lady who seemed to be of some distinction; for every now and then an +officer in brilliant uniform, or some official covered with orders and +stars, would be shown in by her servants, bow before her with the utmost +deference, and after a little conversation retire, kissing her gloved +hand as he went. The lady was a beautiful person, with lustrous black +eyes and dark hair, over which a lace mantilla was fastened with diamond +stars. She wore pale blue with white flowers, and altogether, as Katy +afterward wrote to Clover, reminded her exactly of one of those +beautiful princesses whom they used to play about in their childhood and +quarrel over, because every one of them wanted to be the Princess and +nobody else. + +"I wonder who she is," said Mrs. Ashe in a low tone. "She might be +almost anybody from her looks. She keeps glancing across to us, Katy. Do +you know, I think she has taken a fancy to you." + +Perhaps the lady had; for just then she turned her head and said a word +to one of her footmen, who immediately placed something in her hand. It +was a little shining bonbonniere, and rising she threw it straight at +Katy. Alas! it struck the edge of the balcony and fell into the street +below, where it was picked up by a ragged little peasant girl in a red +jacket, who raised a pair of astonished eyes to the heavens, as if sure +that the gift must have fallen straight from thence. Katy bent forward +to watch its fate, and went through a little pantomime of regret and +despair for the benefit of the opposite lady, who only laughed, and +taking another from her servant flung with better aim, so that it fell +exactly at Katy's feet. This was a gilded box in the shape of a +mandolin, with sugar-plums tucked cunningly away inside. Katy kissed +both her hands in acknowledgment for the pretty toy, and tossed back a +bunch of roses which she happened to be wearing in her dress. After that +it seemed the chief amusement of the fair unknown to throw bonbons at +Katy. Some went straight and some did not; but before the afternoon +ended, Katy had quite a lapful of confections and trifles,--roses, +sugared almonds, a satin casket, a silvered box in the shape of a +horseshoe, a tiny cage with orange blossoms for birds on the perches, a +minute gondola with a _marron glacée_ by way of passenger, and, +prettiest of all, a little ivory harp strung with enamelled violets +instead of wires. For all these favors she had nothing better to offer, +in return, than a few long-tailed bonbons with gay streamers of ribbon. +These the lady opposite caught very cleverly, rarely missing one, and +kissing her hand in thanks each time. + +"Isn't she exquisite?" demanded Katy, her eyes shining with +excitement. "Did you ever see any one so lovely in your life, Polly +dear? I never did. There, now! she is buying those birds to set them +free, I do believe." + +It was indeed so. A vender of larks had, by the aid of a long staff, +thrust a cage full of wretched little prisoners up into the balcony; and +"Katy's lady," as Mrs. Ashe called her, was paying for the whole. As +they watched she opened the cage door, and with the sweetest look on her +face encouraged the birds to fly away. The poor little creatures cowered +and hesitated, not knowing at first what use to make of their new +liberty; but at last one, the boldest of the company, hopped to the door +and with a glad, exultant chirp flew straight upward. Then the others, +taking courage from his example, followed, and all were lost to view in +the twinkling of an eye. + +"Oh, you angel!" cried Katy, leaning over the edge of the balcony and +kissing both hands impulsively, "I never saw any one so sweet as you are +in my life. Polly dear, I think carnivals are the most perfectly +bewitching things in the world. How glad I am that this lasts a week, +and that we can come every day. Won't Amy be delighted with these +bonbons! I do hope my lady will be here tomorrow." + +How little she dreamed that she was never to enter that balcony again! +How little can any of us see what lies before us till it comes so near +that we cannot help seeing it, or shut our eyes, or turn away! + +The next morning, almost as soon as it was light, Mrs. Ashe tapped at +Katy's door. She was in her dressing-gown, and her eyes looked large and +frightened. + +"Amy is ill," she cried. "She has been hot and feverish all night, and +she says that her head aches dreadfully. What shall I do, Katy? We +ought to have a doctor at once, and I don't know the name even of any +doctor here." + +Katy sat up in bed, and for one bewildered moment did not speak. Her +brain felt in a whirl of confusion; but presently it cleared, and she +saw what to do. + +"I will write a note to Mrs. Sands," she said. Mrs. Sands was the wife +of the American Minister, and one of the few acquaintances they had +made since they came to Rome. "You remember how nice she was the other +day, and how we liked her; and she has lived here so long that of +course she must know all about the doctors. Don't you think that is the +best thing to do!" + +"The very best," said Mrs. Ashe, looking relieved. "I wonder I did not +think of it myself, but I am so confused that I can't think. Write the +note at once, please, dear Katy. I will ring your bell for you, and then +I must hurry back to Amy." + +Katy made haste with the note. The answer came promptly in half an hour, +and by ten o'clock the physician recommended appeared. Dr. Hilary was a +dark little Italian to all appearance; but his mother had been a +Scotch-woman, and he spoke English very well,--a great comfort to poor +Mrs. Ashe, who knew not a word of Italian and not a great deal of +French. He felt Amy's pulse for a long time, and tested her temperature; +but he gave no positive opinion, only left a prescription, and said that +he would call later in the day and should then be able to judge more +clearly what the attack was likely to prove. + +Katy augured ill from this reserve. There was no talk of going to the +Carnival that afternoon; no one had any heart for it. Instead, Katy +spent the time in trying to recollect all she had ever heard about the +care of sick people,--what was to be done first and what next,--and in +searching the shops for a feather pillow, which luxury Amy was +imperiously demanding. The pillows of Roman hotels are, as a general +thing, stuffed with wool, and very hard. + +"I won't have this horrid pillow any longer," poor Amy was screaming. +"It's got bricks in it. It hurts the back of my neck. Take it away, +mamma, and give me a nice soft American pillow. I won't have this a +minute longer. Don't you hear me, mamma! Take it away!" + +So, while Mrs. Ashe pacified Amy to the best of her ability, Katy +hurried out in quest of the desired pillow. It proved almost an +unattainable luxury; but at last, after a long search, she secured an +air-cushion, a down cushion about twelve inches square, and one old +feather pillow which had come from some auction, and had apparently lain +for years in the corner of the shop. When this was encased in a fresh +cover of Canton flannel, it did very well, and stilled Amy's complaints +a little; but all night she grew worse, and when Dr. Hilary came next +day, he was forced to utter plainly the dreaded words "Roman fever." Amy +was in for an attack,--a light one he hoped it might be,--but they had +better know the truth and make ready for it. + +Mrs. Ashe was utterly overwhelmed by this verdict, and for the first +bewildered moments did not know which way to turn. Katy, happily, kept +a steadier head. She had the advantage of a little preparation of +thought, and had decided beforehand what it would be necessary to do +"in case." Oh, that fateful "in case"! The doctor and she consulted +together, and the result was that Katy sought out the padrona of the +establishment, and without hinting at the nature of Amy's attack, +secured some rooms just vacated, which were at the end of a corridor, +and a little removed from the rooms of other people. There was a large +room with corner windows, a smaller one opening from it, and another, +still smaller, close by, which would serve as a storeroom or might do +for the use of a nurse. + +These rooms, without much consultation with Mrs. Ashe,--who seemed +stunned and sat with her eyes fixed on Amy, just answering, "Certainly, +dear, anything you say," when applied to,--Katy had arranged according +to her own ideas of comfort and hygienic necessity, as learned from Miss +Nightingale's excellent little book on nursing. From the larger room she +had the carpet, curtains, and nearly all the furniture taken away, the +floor scrubbed with hot soapsuds, and the bed pulled out from the wall +to allow of a free circulation of air all round it. The smaller one she +made as comfortable as possible for the use of Mrs. Ashe, choosing for +it the softest sofa and the best mattresses that were obtainable; for +she knew that her friend's strength was likely to be severely tried if +Amy's illness proved serious. When all was ready, Amy, well wrapped in +her coverings, was carried down the entry and laid in the fresh bed with +the soft pillows about her; and Katy, as she went to and fro, conveying +clothes and books and filling drawers, felt that they were perhaps +making arrangements for a long, hard trial of faith and spirits. + +By the next day the necessity of a nurse became apparent, and in the +afternoon Katy started out in a little hired carriage in search of one. +She had a list of names, and went first to the English nurses; but +finding them all engaged, she ordered the coachman to drive to a convent +where there was hope that a nursing sister might be procured. + +Their route lay across the Corso. So utterly had the Carnival with all +its gay follies vanished from her mind, that she was for a moment +astonished at finding herself entangled in a motley crowd, so dense +that the coachman was obliged to rein in his horses and stand still for +some time. + +There were the same masks and dominos, the same picturesque peasant +costumes which had struck her as so gay and pretty only three days +before. The same jests and merry laughter filled the air, but somehow +it all seemed out of tune. The sense of cold, lonely fear that had +taken possession of her killed all capacity for merriment; the +apprehension and solicitude of which her heart was full made the gay +chattering and squeaking of the crowd sound harsh and unfeeling. The +bright colors affronted her dejection; she did not want to see them. +She lay back in the carriage, trying to be patient under the detention, +and half shut her eyes. + +A shower of lime dust aroused her. It came from a party of burly figures +in white cotton dominos, whose carriage had been stayed by the crowd +close to her own. She signified by gestures that she had no _confetti_ +and no protection, that she "was not playing," in fact; but her appeal +made no difference. The maskers kept on shovelling lime all over her +hair and person and the carriage, and never tired of the sport till an +opportune break in the procession enabled their vehicle to move on. + +Katy was shaking their largesse from her dress and parasol as well as +she could, when an odd gibbering sound close to her ear, and the +laughter of the crowd attracted her attention to the back of the +carriage. A masker attired as a scarlet devil had climbed into the hood, +and was now perched close behind her. She shook her head at him; but he +only shook his in return, and chattered and grimaced, and bent over till +his fiery mask almost grazed her shoulder. There was no hope but in good +humor, as she speedily realized; and recollecting that in her +shopping-bag one or two of the Carnival bonbons still remained, she took +these out and offered them in the hope of propitiating him. The fiend +bit one to insure that it was made of sugar and not lime, while the +crowd laughed more than ever; then, seeming satisfied, he made Katy a +little speech in rapid Italian, of which she did not comprehend a word, +kissed her hand, jumped down from the carriage and disappeared in the +crowd to her great relief. + +Presently after that the driver spied an opening, of which he took +advantage. They were across the Corso now, the roar and rush of the +Carnival dying into silence as they drove rapidly on; and Katy, as she +finished wiping away the last of the lime dust, wiped some tears from +her cheeks as well. + +"How hateful it all was!" she said to herself. Then she remembered a +sentence read somewhere, "How heavily roll the wheels of other people's +joys when your heart is sorrowful!" and she realized that it is true. + +The convent was propitious, and promised to send a sister next morning, +with the proviso that every second day she was to come back to sleep and +rest. Katy was too thankful for any aid to make objections, and drove +home with visions of saintly nuns with pure pale faces full of peace and +resignation, such as she had read of in books, floating before her eyes. + +Sister Ambrogia, when she appeared next day, did not exactly realize +these imaginations. She was a plump little person, with rosy cheeks, a +pair of demure black eyes, and a very obstinate mouth and chin. It soon +appeared that natural inclination combined with the rules of her convent +made her theory of a nurse's duties a very limited one. + +If Mrs. Ashe wished her to go down to the office with an order, she was +told: "We sisters care for the sick; we are not allowed to converse with +porters and hotel people." + +If Katy suggested that on the way home she should leave a prescription +at the chemist's, it was: "We sisters are for nursing only; we do not +visit shops." And when she was asked if she could make beef tea, she +replied calmly but decisively, "We sisters are not cooks." + +In fact, all that Sister Ambrogia seemed able or willing to do, beyond +the bathing of Amy's face and brushing her hair, which she accomplished +handily, was to sit by the bedside telling her rosary, or plying a +little ebony shuttle in the manufacture of a long strip of tatting. Even +this amount of usefulness was interfered with by the fact that Amy, who +by this time was in a semi-delirious condition, had taken an aversion to +her at the first glance, and was not willing to be left with her for a +single moment. + +"I won't stay here alone with Sister Embroidery," she would cry, if her +mother and Katy went into the next room for a moment's rest or a private +consultation; "I hate Sister Embroidery! Come back, mamma, come back +this moment! She's making faces at me, and chattering just like an old +parrot, and I don't understand a word she says. Take Sister Embroidery +away, mamma, I tell you! Don't you hear me? Come back, I say!" + +The little voice would be raised to a shrill scream; and Mrs. Ashe and +Katy, hurrying back, would find Amy sitting up on her pillow with wet, +scarlet-flushed cheeks and eyes bright with fever, ready to throw +herself out of bed; while, calm as Mabel, whose curly head lay on the +pillow beside her little mistress, Sister Ambrogia, unaware of the +intricacies of the English language, was placidly telling her beads and +muttering prayers to herself. Some of these prayers, I do not doubt, +related to Amy's recovery if not to her conversion, and were well meant; +but they were rather irritating under the circumstances! + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN. + + +When the first shock is over and the inevitable realized and accepted, +those who tend a long illness are apt to fall into a routine of life +which helps to make the days seem short. The apparatus of nursing is got +together. Every day the same things need to be done at the same hours +and in the same way. Each little appliance is kept at hand; and sad and +tired as the watchers may be, the very monotony and regularity of their +proceedings give a certain stay for their thoughts to rest upon. + +But there was little of this monotony to help Mrs. Ashe and Katy through +with Amy's illness. Small chance was there for regularity or exact +system; for something unexpected was always turning up, and needful +things were often lacking. The most ordinary comforts of the sick-room, +or what are considered so in America, were hard to come by, and much of +Katy's time was spent in devising substitutes to take their places. + +Was ice needed? A pailful of dirty snow would be brought in, full of +straws, sticks, and other refuse, which had apparently been scraped from +the surface of the street after a frosty night. Not a particle of it +could be put into milk or water; all that could be done was to make the +pail serve the purpose of a refrigerator, and set bowls and tumblers in +it to chill. + +Was a feeding-cup wanted? It came of a cumbrous and antiquated pattern, +which the infant Hercules may have enjoyed, but which the modern Amy +abominated and rejected. Such a thing as a glass tube could not be found +in all Rome. Bed-rests were unknown. Katy searched in vain for an +India-rubber hot-water bag. + +But the greatest trial of all was the beef tea. It was Amy's sole food, +and almost her only medicine; for Dr. Hilary believed in leaving Nature +pretty much to herself in cases of fever. The kitchen of the hotel sent +up, under that name, a mixture of grease and hot water, which could not +be given to Amy at all. In vain Katy remonstrated and explained the +process. In vain did she go to the kitchen herself to translate a +carefully written recipe to the cook, and to slip a shining five-franc +piece in his hand, which it was hoped would quicken his energies and +soften his heart. In vain did she order private supplies of the best of +beef from a separate market. The cooks stole the beef and ignored the +recipe; and day after day the same bottle-full of greasy liquid came +upstairs, which Amy would not touch, and which would have done her no +good had she swallowed it all. At last, driven to desperation, Katy +procured a couple of stout bottles, and every morning slowly and +carefully cut up two pounds of meat into small pieces, sealed the bottle +with her own seal ring, and sent it down to be boiled for a specified +time. This answered better, for the thieving cook dared not tamper with +her seal; but it was a long and toilsome process, and consumed more time +than she well knew how to spare,--for there were continual errands to be +done which no one could attend to but herself, and the interminable +flights of stairs taxed her strength painfully, and seemed to grow +longer and harder every day. + +At last a good Samaritan turned up in the shape of an American lady with +a house of her own, who, hearing of their plight from Mrs. Sands, +undertook to send each day a supply of strong, perfectly made beef tea, +from her own kitchen, for Amy's use. It was an inexpressible relief, and +the lightening of this one particular care made all the rest seem easier +of endurance. + +Another great relief came, when, after some delay, Dr. Hilary succeeded +in getting an English nurse to take the places of the unsatisfactory +Sister Ambrogia and her substitute, Sister Agatha, whom Amy in her +half-comprehending condition persisted in calling "Sister Nutmeg +Grater." Mrs. Swift was a tall, wiry, angular person, who seemed made of +equal parts of iron and whalebone. She was never tired; she could lift +anybody, do anything; and for sleep she seemed to have a sort of +antipathy, preferring to sit in an easy-chair and drop off into little +dozes, whenever it was convenient, to going regularly to bed for a +night's rest. + +Amy took to her from the first, and the new nurse managed her +beautifully. No one else could soothe her half so well during the +delirious period, when the little shrill voice seemed never to be still, +and went on all day and all night in alternate raving or screaming or, +what was saddest of all to hear, low pitiful moans. There was no +shutting in these sounds. People moved out of the rooms below and on +either side, because they could get no sleep; and till the arrival of +Nurse Swift, there was no rest for poor Mrs. Ashe, who could not keep +away from her darling for a moment while that mournful wailing sounded +in her ears. + +Somehow the long, dry Englishwoman seemed to have a mesmeric effect on +Amy, who was never quite so violent after she arrived. Katy was more +thankful for this than can well be told; for her great underlying +dread--a dread she dared not whisper plainly even to herself--was that +"Polly dear" might break down before Amy was better, and then what +_should_ they do? + +She took every care that was possible of her friend. She made her eat; +she made her lie down. She forced daily doses of quinine and port-wine +down her throat, and saved her every possible step. But no one, however +affectionate and willing, could do much to lift the crushing burden of +care, which was changing Mrs. Ashe's rosy fairness to wan pallor and +laying such dark shadows under the pretty gray eyes. She had taken small +thought of looks since Amy's illness. All the little touches which had +made her toilette becoming, all the crimps and fluffs, had disappeared; +yet somehow never had she seemed to Katy half so lovely as now in the +plain black gown which she wore all day long, with her hair tucked into +a knot behind her ears. Her real beauty of feature and outline seemed +only enhanced by the rigid plainness of her attire, and the charm of +true expression grew in her face. Never had Katy admired and loved her +friend so well as during those days of fatigue and wearing suspense, or +realized so strongly the worth of her sweetness of temper, her +unselfishness and power of devoting herself to other people. + +"Polly bears it wonderfully," she wrote her father; "she was all broken +down for the first day or two, but now her courage and patience are +surprising. When I think how precious Amy is to her and how lonely her +life would be if she were to die, I can hardly keep the tears out of my +eyes. But Polly does not cry. She is quiet and brave and almost cheerful +all the time, keeping herself busy with what needs to be done; she never +complains, and she looks--oh, so pretty! I think I never knew how much +she had in her before." + +All this time no word had come from Lieutenant Worthington. His sister +had written him as soon as Amy was taken ill, and had twice telegraphed +since, but no answer had been received, and this strange silence added +to the sense of lonely isolation and distance from home and help which +those who encounter illness in a foreign land have to bear. + +So first one week and then another wore themselves away somehow. The +fever did not break on the fourteenth day, as had been hoped, and must +run for another period, the doctor said; but its force was lessened, and +he considered that a favorable sign. Amy was quieter now and did not +rave so constantly, but she was very weak. All her pretty hair had been +shorn away, which made her little face look tiny and sharp. Mabel's +golden wig was sacrificed at the same time. Amy had insisted upon it, +and they dared not cross her. + +"She has got a fever, too, and it's a great deal badder than mine is," +she protested. "Her cheeks are as hot as fire. She ought to have ice on +her head, and how can she when her bang is so thick? Cut it all off, +every bit, and then I will let you cut mine." + +"You had better give ze child her way," said Dr. Hilary. "She's in no +state to be fretted with triffles [trifles, the doctor meant], and in ze +end it will be well; for ze fever infection might harbor in zat doll's +head as well as elsewhere, and I should have to disinfect it, which +would be bad for ze skin of her." + +"She isn't a doll," cried Amy, overhearing him; "she's my child, and you +sha'n't call her names." She hugged Mabel tight in her arms, and glared +at Dr. Hilary defiantly. + +So Katy with pitiful fingers slashed away at Mabel's blond wig till her +head was as bare as a billiard-ball; and Amy, quite content, patted her +child while her own locks were being cut, and murmured, "Perhaps your +hair will all come out in little round curls, darling, as Johnnie Carr's +did;" then she fell into one of the quietest sleeps she had yet had. + +It was the day after this that Katy, coming in from a round of errands, +found Mrs. Ashe standing erect and pale, with a frightened look in her +eyes, and her back against Amy's door, as if defending it from somebody. +Confronting her was Madame Frulini, the _padrona_ of the hotel. Madame's +cheeks were red, and her eyes bright and fierce; she was evidently in a +rage about something, and was pouring out a torrent of excited Italian, +with now and then a French or English word slipped in by way of +punctuation, and all so rapidly that only a trained ear could have +followed or grasped her meaning. + +"What is the matter?" asked Katy, in amazement. + +"Oh, Katy, I am so glad you have come," cried poor Mrs. Ashe. "I can +hardly understand a word that this horrible woman says, but I think she +wants to turn us out of the hotel, and that we shall take Amy to some +other place. It would be the death of her,--I know it would. I never, +never will go, unless the doctor says it is safe. I oughtn't to,--I +couldn't; she can't make me, can she, Katy?" + +"Madame," said Katy,--and there was a flash in her eyes before which the +landlady rather shrank,--"what is all this? Why do you come to trouble +madame while her child is so ill?" + +Then came another torrent of explanation which didn't explain; but Katy +gathered enough of the meaning to make out that Mrs. Ashe was quite +correct in her guess, and that Madame Frulini was requesting, nay, +insisting, that they should remove Amy from the hotel at once. There +were plenty of apartments to be had now that the Carnival was over, she +said,--her own cousin had rooms close by,--it could easily be arranged, +and people were going away from the Del Mondo every day because there +was fever in the house. Such a thing could not be, it should not +be,--the landlady's voice rose to a shriek, "the child must go!" + +"You are a cruel woman," said Katy, indignantly, when she had grasped +the meaning of the outburst. "It is wicked, it is cowardly, to come thus +and attack a poor lady under your roof who has so much already to bear. +It is her only child who is lying in there,--her only one, do you +understand, madame?--and she is a widow. What you ask might kill the +child. I shall not permit you or any of your people to enter that door +till the doctor comes, and then I shall tell him how you have behaved, +and we shall see what he will say." As she spoke she turned the key of +Amy's door, took it out and put it in her pocket, then faced the +_padrona_ steadily, looking her straight in the eyes. + +"Mademoiselle," stormed the landlady, "I give you my word, four people +have left this house already because of the noises made by little miss. +More will go. I shall lose my winter's profit,--all of it,--all; it will +be said there is fever at the Del Mondo,--no one will hereafter come to +me. There are lodgings plenty, comfortable,--oh, so comfortable! I will +not have my season ruined by a sickness; no, I will not!" + +Madame Frulini's voice was again rising to a scream. + +"Be silent!" said Katy, sternly; "you will frighten the child. I am +sorry that you should lose any customers, madame, but the fever is here +and we are here, and here we must stay till it is safe to go. The child +shall not be moved till the doctor gives permission. Money is not the +only thing in the world! Mrs. Ashe will pay anything that is fair to +make up your losses to you, but you must leave this room now, and not +return till Dr. Hilary is here." + +Where Katy found French for all these long coherent speeches, she could +never afterward imagine. She tried to explain it by saying that +excitement inspired her for the moment, but that as soon as the moment +was over the inspiration died away and left her as speechless and +confused as ever. Clover said it made her think of the miracle of +Balaam; and Katy merrily rejoined that it might be so, and that no +donkey in any age of the world could possibly have been more grateful +than was she for the sudden gift of speech. + +"But it is not the money,--it is my prestige," declared the landlady. + +"Thank Heaven! here is the doctor now," cried Mrs. Ashe. + +The doctor had in fact been standing in the doorway for several moments +before they noticed him, and had overheard part of the colloquy with +Madame Frulini. With him was some one else, at the sight of whom Mrs. +Ashe gave a great sob of relief. It was her brother, at last. + +When Italian meets Italian, then comes the tug of expletive. It did not +seem to take one second for Dr. Hilary to whirl the _padrona_ out into +the entry, where they could be heard going at each other like two +furious cats. Hiss, roll, sputter, recrimination, objurgation! In five +minutes Madame Frulini was, metaphorically speaking, on her knees, and +the doctor standing over her with drawn sword, making her take back +every word she had said and every threat she had uttered. + +"Prestige of thy miserable hotel!" he thundered; "where will that be +when I go and tell the English and Americans--all of whom I know, every +one!--how thou hast served a countrywoman of theirs in thy house? Dost +thou think thy prestige will help thee much when Dr. Hilary has fixed a +black mark on thy door! I tell thee no; not a stranger shalt thou have +next year to eat so much as a plate of macaroni under thy base roof! I +will advertise thy behavior in all the foreign papers,--in Figaro, in +Galignani, in the Swiss Times, and the English one which is read by all +the nobility, and the Heraldo of New York, which all Americans peruse--" + +"Oh, doctor--pardon me--I regret what I said--I am afflicted--" + +"I will post thee in the railroad stations," continued the doctor, +implacably; "I will bid my patients to write letters to all their +friends, warning them against thy flea-ridden Del Mondo; I will apprise +the steamboat companies at Genoa and Naples. Thou shalt see what comes +of it,--truly, thou shalt see." + +Having thus reduced Madame Frulini to powder, the doctor now +condescended to take breath and listen to her appeals for mercy; and +presently he brought her in with her mouth full of protestations and +apologies, and assurances that the ladies had mistaken her meaning, she +had only spoken for the good of all; nothing was further from her +intention than that they should be disturbed or offended in any way, and +she and all her household were at the service of "the little sick angel +of God." After which the doctor dismissed her with an air of +contemptuous tolerance, and laid his hand on the door of Amy's room. +Behold, it was locked! + +"Oh, I forgot," cried Katy, laughing; and she pulled the key out of +her pocket. + +"You are a hee-roine, mademoiselle," said Dr. Hilary. "I watched you as +you faced that tigress, and your eyes were like a swordsman's as he +regards his enemy's rapier." + +"Oh, she was so brave, and such a help!" said Mrs. Ashe, kissing her +impulsively. "You can't think how she has stood by me all through, Ned, +or what a comfort she has been." + +"Yes, I can," said Ned Worthington, with a warm, grateful look at Katy. +"I can believe anything good of Miss Carr." + +"But where have _you_ been all this time?" said Katy, who felt this +flood of compliment to be embarrassing; "we have so wondered at not +hearing from you." + +"I have been off on a ten-days' leave to Corsica for moufflon-shooting," +replied Mr. Worthington. "I only got Polly's telegrams and letters day +before yesterday, and I came away as soon as I could get my leave +extended. It was a most unlucky absence. I shall always regret it." + +"Oh, it is all right now that you have come," his sister said, leaning +her head on his arm with a look of relief and rest which was good to +see. "Everything will go better now, I am sure." + +"Katy Carr has behaved like a perfect angel," she told her brother when +they were alone. + +"She is a trump of a girl. I came in time for part of that scene with +the landlady, and upon my word she was glorious! I didn't suppose she +could look so handsome." + +"Have the Pages left Nice yet?" asked his sister, rather irrelevantly. + +"No,--at least they were there on Thursday, but I think that they were +to start to-day." + +Mr. Worthington answered carelessly, but his face darkened as he spoke. +There had been a little scene in Nice which he could not forget. He was +sitting in the English garden with Lilly and her mother when his +sister's telegrams were brought to him; and he had read them aloud, +partly as an explanation for the immediate departure which they made +necessary and which broke up an excursion just arranged with the ladies +for the afternoon. It is not pleasant to have plans interfered with; and +as neither Mrs. Page nor her daughter cared personally for little Amy, +it is not strange that disappointment at the interruption of their +pleasure should have been the first impulse with them. Still, this did +not excuse Lilly's unstudied exclamation of "Oh, bother!" and though she +speedily repented it as an indiscretion, and was properly sympathetic, +and "hoped the poor little thing would soon be better," Amy's uncle +could not forget the jarring impression. It completed a process of +disenchantment which had long been going on; and as hearts are sometimes +caught at the rebound, Mrs. Ashe was not so far astray when she built +certain little dim sisterly hopes on his evident admiration for Katy's +courage and this sudden awakening to a sense of her good looks. + +But no space was left for sentiment or match-making while still Amy's +fate hung in the balance, and all three of them found plenty to do +during the next fortnight. The fever did not turn on the twenty-first +day, and another weary week of suspense set in, each day bringing a +decrease of the dangerous symptoms, but each day as well marking a +lessening in the childish strength which had been so long and severely +tested. Amy was quite conscious now, and lay quietly, sleeping a great +deal and speaking seldom. There was not much to do but to wait and hope; +but the flame of hope burned low at times, as the little life flickered +in its socket, and seemed likely to go out like a wind-blown torch. + +Now and then Lieutenant Worthington would persuade his sister to go +with him for a few minutes' drive or walk in the fresh air, from which +she had so long been debarred, and once or twice he prevailed on Katy +to do the same; but neither of them could bear to be away long from +Amy's bedside. + +Intimacy grows fast when people are thus united by a common anxiety, +sharing the same hopes and fears day after day, speaking and thinking of +the same thing. The gay young officer at Nice, who had counted so little +in Katy's world, seemed to have disappeared, and the gentle, +considerate, tender-hearted fellow who now filled his place was quite a +different person in her eyes. Katy began to count on Ned Worthington as +a friend who could be trusted for help and sympathy and comprehension, +and appealed to and relied upon in all emergencies. She was quite at +ease with him now, and asked him to do this and that, to come and help +her, or to absent himself, as freely as if he had been Dorry or Phil. + +He, on his part, found this easy intimacy charming. In the reaction of +his temporary glamour for the pretty Lilly, Katy's very difference from +her was an added attraction. This difference consisted, as much as +anything else, in the fact that she was so truly in earnest in what she +said and did. Had Lilly been in Katy's place, she would probably have +been helpful to Mrs. Ashe and kind to Amy so far as in her lay; but the +thought of self would have tinctured all that she did and said, and the +need of keeping to what was tasteful and becoming would have influenced +her in every emergency, and never have been absent from her mind. + +Katy, on the contrary, absorbed in the needs of the moment, gave little +heed to how she looked or what any one was thinking about her. Her habit +of neatness made her take time for the one thorough daily dressing,--the +brushing of hair and freshening of clothes, which were customary with +her; but, this tax paid to personal comfort, she gave little further +heed to appearances. She wore an old gray gown, day in and day out, +which Lilly would not have put on for half an hour without a large +bribe, so unbecoming was it; but somehow Lieutenant Worthington grew to +like the gray gown as a part of Katy herself. And if by chance he +brought a rose in to cheer the dim stillness of the sick-room, and she +tucked it into her buttonhole, immediately it was as though she were +decked for conquest. Pretty dresses are very pretty on pretty +people,--they certainly play an important part in this queer little +world of ours; but depend upon it, dear girls, no woman ever has +established so distinct and clear a claim on the regard of her lover as +when he has ceased to notice or analyze what she wears, and just accepts +it unquestioningly, whatever it is, as a bit of the dear human life +which has grown or is growing to be the best and most delightful thing +in the world to him. + +The gray gown played its part during the long anxious night when they +all sat watching breathlessly to see which way the tide would turn with +dear little Amy. The doctor came at midnight, and went away to come +again at dawn. Mrs. Swift sat grim and watchful beside the pillow of her +charge, rising now and then to feel pulse and skin, or to put a spoonful +of something between Amy's lips. The doors and windows stood open to +admit the air. In the outer room all was hushed. A dim Roman lamp, fed +with olive oil, burned in one corner behind a screen. Mrs. Ashe lay on +the sofa with her eyes closed, bearing the strain of suspense in +absolute silence. Her brother sat beside her, holding in his one of the +hot hands whose nervous twitches alone told of the surgings of hope and +fear within. Katy was resting in a big chair near by, her wistful eyes +fixed on Amy's little figure seen in the dim distance, her ears alert +for every sound from the sick-room. + +So they watched and waited. Now and then Ned Worthington or Katy would +rise softly, steal on tiptoe to the bedside, and come back to whisper to +Mrs. Ashe that Amy had stirred or that she seemed to be asleep. It was +one of the nights which do not come often in a lifetime, and which +people never forget. The darkness seems full of meaning; the hush, of +sound. God is beyond, holding the sunrise in his right hand, holding the +sun of our earthly hopes as well,--will it dawn in sorrow or in joy? We +dare not ask, we can only wait. + +A faint stir of wind and a little broadening of the light roused Katy +from a trance of half-understood thoughts. She crept once more into +Amy's room. Mrs. Swift laid a warning finger on her lips; Amy was +sleeping, she said with a gesture. Katy whispered the news to the still +figure on the sofa, then she went noiselessly out of the room. The great +hotel was fast asleep; not a sound stirred the profound silence of the +dark halls. A longing for fresh air led her to the roof. + +There was the dawn just tingeing the east. The sky, even thus early, +wore the deep mysterious blue of Italy. A fresh _tramontana_ was +blowing, and made Katy glad to draw her shawl about her. + +Far away in the distance rose the Alban Hills above the dim Campagna, +with the more lofty Sabines beyond, and Soracte, clear cut against the +sky like a wave frozen in the moment of breaking. Below lay the ancient +city, with its strange mingling of the old and the new, of past things +embedded in the present; or is it the present thinly veiling the rich +and mighty past,--who shall say? + +Faint rumblings of wheels and here and there a curl of smoke showed that +Rome was waking up. The light insensibly grew upon the darkness. A pink +flush lit up the horizon. Florio stirred in his lair, stretched his +dappled limbs, and as the first sun-ray glinted on the roof, raised +himself, crossed the gravelled tiles with soundless feet, and ran his +soft nose into Katy's hand. She fondled him for Amy's sake as she stood +bent over the flower-boxes, inhaling the scent of the mignonette and +gilly-flowers, with her eyes fixed on the distance; but her heart was at +home with the sleepers there, and a rush of strong desire stirred her. +Would this dreary time come to an end presently, and should they be set +at liberty to go their ways with no heavy sorrow to press them down, to +be care-free and happy again in their own land? + +A footstep startled her. Ned Worthington was coming over the roof on +tiptoe as if fearful of disturbing somebody. His face looked resolute +and excited. + +"I wanted to tell you," he said in a hushed voice, "that the doctor is +here, and he says Amy has no fever, and with care may be considered out +of danger." + +"Thank God!" cried Katy, bursting into tears. The long fatigue, the +fears kept in check so resolutely, the sleepless night just passed, had +their revenge now, and she cried and cried as if she could never stop, +but with all the time such joy and gratitude in her heart! She was +conscious that Ned had his arm round her and was holding both her hands +tight; but they were so one in the emotion of the moment that it did not +seem strange. + +"How sweet the sun looks!" she said presently, releasing herself, with a +happy smile flashing through her tears; "it hasn't seemed really bright +for ever so long. How silly I was to cry! Where is dear Polly? I must go +down to her at once. Oh, what does she say?" + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +NEXT. + + +Lieut. Worthington's leave had nearly expired. He must rejoin his +ship; but he waited till the last possible moment in order to help his +sister through the move to Albano, where it had been decided that Amy +should go for a few days of hill air before undertaking the longer +journey to Florence. + +It was a perfect morning in late March when the pale little invalid was +carried in her uncle's strong arms, and placed in the carriage which was +to take them to the old town on the mountain slopes which they had seen +shining from far away for so many weeks past. Spring had come in her +fairest shape to Italy. The Campagna had lost its brown and tawny hues +and taken on a tinge of fresher color. The olive orchards were budding +thickly. Almond boughs extended their dazzling shapes across the blue +sky. Arums and acanthus and ivy filled every hollow, roses nodded from +over every gate, while a carpet of violets and cyclamen and primroses +stretched over the fields and freighted every wandering wind with +fragrance. + +When once the Campagna with its long line of aqueducts, arches, and +hoary tombs was left behind, and the carriage slowly began to mount the +gradual rises of the hill, Amy revived. With every breath of the fresher +air her eyes seemed to brighten and her voice to grow stronger. She held +Mabel up to look at the view; and the sound of her laugh, faint and +feeble as it was, was like music to her mother's ears. + +Amy wore a droll little silk-lined cap on her head, over which a downy +growth of pale-brown fuzz was gradually thickening. Already it showed a +tendency to form into tiny rings, which to Amy, who had always hankered +for curls, was an extreme satisfaction. Strange to say, the same thing +exactly had happened to Mabel; her hair had grown out into soft little +round curls also! Uncle Ned and Katy had ransacked Rome for this +baby-wig, which filled and realized all Amy's hopes for her child. On +the same excursion they had bought the materials for the pretty spring +suit which Mabel wore, for it had been deemed necessary to sacrifice +most of her wardrobe as a concession to possible fever-germs. Amy +admired the pearl-colored dress and hat, the fringed jacket and little +lace-trimmed parasol so much, that she was quite consoled for the loss +of the blue velvet costume and ermine muff which had been the pride of +her heart ever since they left Paris, and whose destruction they had +scarcely dared to confess to her. + +So up, up, up, they climbed till the gateway of the old town was passed, +and the carriage stopped before a quaint building once the residence of +the Bishop of Albano, but now known as the Hôtel de la Poste. Here they +alighted, and were shown up a wide and lofty staircase to their rooms, +which were on the sunny side of the house, and looked across a walled +garden, where roses and lemon trees grew beside old fountains guarded by +sculptured lions and heathen divinities with broken noses and a scant +supply of fingers and toes, to the Campagna, purple with distance and +stretching miles and miles away to where Rome sat on her seven hills, +lifting high the Dome of St. Peter's into the illumined air. + +Nurse Swift said that Amy must go to bed at once, and have a long rest. +But Amy nearly wept at the proposal, and declared that she was not a bit +tired and couldn't sleep if she went to bed ever so much. The change of +air had done her good already, and she looked more like herself than for +many weeks past. They compromised their dispute on a sofa, where Amy, +well wrapped up, was laid, and where, in spite of her protestations, she +presently fell asleep, leaving the others free to examine and arrange +their new quarters. + +Such enormous rooms as they were! It was quite a journey to go from one +side of them to another. The floors were of stone, with squares of +carpet laid down over them, which looked absurdly small for the great +spaces they were supposed to cover. The beds and tables were of the +usual size, but they seemed almost like doll furniture because the +chambers were so big. A quaint old paper, with an enormous pattern of +banyan trees and pagodas, covered the walls, and every now and then +betrayed by an oblong of regular cracks the existence of a hidden door, +papered to look exactly like the rest of the wall. + +These mysterious doors made Katy nervous, and she never rested till she +had opened every one of them and explored the places they led to. One +gave access to a queer little bathroom. Another led, through a narrow +dark passage, to a sort of balcony or loggia overhanging the garden. A +third ended in a dusty closet with an artful chink in it from which you +could peep into what had been the Bishop's drawing-room but which was +now turned into the dining-room of the hotel. It seemed made for +purposes of espial; and Katy had visions of a long line of reverend +prelates with their ears glued to the chink, overhearing what was being +said about them in the apartment beyond. + +The most surprising of all she did not discover till she was going to +bed on the second night after their arrival, when she thought she knew +all about the mysterious doors and what they led to. A little +unexplained draught of wind made her candle flicker, and betrayed the +existence of still another door so cunningly hid in the wall pattern +that she had failed to notice it. She had quite a creepy feeling as she +drew her dressing-gown about her, took a light, and entered the narrow +passage into which it opened. It was not a long passage, and ended +presently in a tiny oratory. There was a little marble altar, with a +kneeling-step and candlesticks and a great crucifix above. Ends of wax +candles still remained in the candlesticks, and bunches of dusty paper +flowers filled the vases which stood on either side of them. A faded +silk cushion lay on the step. Doubtless the Bishop had often knelt +there. Katy felt as if she were the first person to enter the place +since he went away. Her common-sense told her that in a hotel bedroom +constantly occupied by strangers for years past, some one _must_ have +discovered the door and found the little oratory before her; but +common-sense is sometimes less satisfactory than romance. Katy liked to +think that she was the first, and to "make believe" that no one else +knew about it; so she did so, and invented legends about the place which +Amy considered better than any fairy story. + +Before he left them Lieutenant Worthington had a talk with his sister +in the garden. She rather forced this talk upon him, for various +things were lying at her heart about which she longed for explanation; +but he yielded so easily to her wiles that it was evident he was not +averse to the idea. + +"Come, Polly, don't beat about the bush any longer," he said at last, +amused and a little irritated at her half-hints and little feminine +_finesses_. "I know what you want to ask; and as there's no use +making a secret of it, I will take my turn in asking. Have I any chance, +do you think?" + +"Any chance?--about Katy, do you mean? Oh, Ned, you make me so happy." + +"Yes; about her, of course." + +"I don't see why you should say 'of course,'" remarked his sister, with +the perversity of her sex, "when it's only five or six weeks ago that I +was lying awake at night for fear you were being gobbled up by that +Lilly Page." + +"There was a little risk of it," replied her brother, seriously. "She's +awfully pretty and she dances beautifully, and the other fellows were +all wild about her, and--well, you know yourself how such things go. I +can't see now what it was that I fancied so much about her, I don't +suppose I could have told exactly at the time; but I can tell without +the smallest trouble what it is in--the other." + +"In Katy? I should think so," cried Mrs. Ashe, emphatically; "the two +are no more to be compared than--than--well, bread and syllabub! You can +live on one, and you can't live on the other." + +"Come, now, Miss Page isn't so bad as that. She is a nice girl enough, +and a pretty girl too,--prettier than Katy; I'm not so far gone that I +can't see that. But we won't talk about her, she's not in the present +question at all; very likely she'd have had nothing to say to me in any +case. I was only one out of a dozen, and she never gave me reason to +suppose that she cared more for me than the rest. Let us talk about this +friend of yours; have I any chance at all, do you think, Polly?" + +"Ned, you are the dearest boy! I would rather have Katy for a sister +than any one else I know. She's so nice all through,--so true and sweet +and satisfactory." + +"She is all that and more; she's a woman to tie to for life, to be +perfectly sure of always. She would make a splendid wife for any man. +I'm not half good enough for her; but the question is,--and you haven't +answered it yet, Polly,--what's my chance?" + +"I don't know," said his sister, slowly. + +"Then I must ask herself, and I shall do so to-day." + +"I don't know," repeated Mrs. Ashe. "'She is a woman, therefore to be +won:' and I don't think there is any one ahead of you; that is the best +hope I have to offer, Ned. Katy never talks of such things; and though +she's so frank, I can't guess whether or not she ever thinks about them. +She likes you, however, I am sure of that. But, Ned, it will not be wise +to say anything to her yet." + +"Not say anything? Why not?" + +"No. Recollect that it is only a little while since she looked upon you +as the admirer of another girl, and a girl she doesn't like very much, +though they are cousins. You must give her time to get over that +impression. Wait awhile; that's my advice, Ned." + +"I'll wait any time if only she will say yes in the end. But it's hard +to go away without a word of hope, and it's more like a man to speak +out, it seems to me." + +"It's too soon," persisted his sister. "You don't want her to think +you a fickle fellow, falling in love with a fresh girl every time you +go into port, and falling out again when the ship sails. Sailors have +a bad reputation for that sort of thing. No woman cares to win a man +like that." + +"Great Scott! I should think not! Do you mean to say that is the way my +conduct appears to her, Polly ?" + +"No, I don't mean just that; but wait, dear Ned, I am sure it is +better." + +Fortified by this sage counsel, Lieutenant Worthington went away next +morning, without saying anything to Katy in words, though perhaps eyes +and tones may have been less discreet. He made them promise that some +one should send a letter every day about Amy; and as Mrs. Ashe +frequently devolved the writing of these bulletins upon Katy, and the +replies came in the shape of long letters, she found herself conducting +a pretty regular correspondence without quite intending it. Ned +Worthington wrote particularly nice letters. He had the knack, more +often found in women than men, of giving a picture with a few graphic +touches, and indicating what was droll or what was characteristic with +a single happy phrase. His letters grew to be one of Katy's pleasures; +and sometimes, as Mrs. Ashe watched the color deepen in her cheeks +while she read, her heart would bound hopefully within her. But she was +a wise woman in her way, and she wanted Katy for a sister very much; so +she never said a word or looked a look to startle or surprise her, but +left the thing to work itself out, which is the best course always in +love affairs. + +Little Amy's improvement at Albano was something remarkable. Mrs. Swift +watched over her like a lynx. Her vigilance never relaxed. Amy was made +to eat and sleep and walk and rest with the regularity of a machine; and +this exact system, combined with the good air, worked like a charm. The +little one gained hour by hour. They could absolutely see her growing +fat, her mother declared. Fevers, when they do not kill, operate +sometimes as spring bonfires do in gardens, burning up all the refuse +and leaving the soil free for the growth of fairer things; and Amy +promised in time to be only the better and stronger for her hard +experience. + +She had gained so much before the time came to start for Florence, that +they scarcely dreaded the journey; but it proved worse than their +expectations. They had not been able to secure a carriage to themselves, +and were obliged to share their compartment with two English ladies, and +three Roman Catholic priests, one old, the others young. The older +priest seemed to be a person of some consequence; for quite a number of +people came to see him off, and knelt for his blessing devoutly as the +train moved away. The younger ones Katy guessed to be seminary students +under his charge. Her chief amusement through the long dusty journey was +in watching the terrible time that one of these young men was having +with his own hat. It was a large three-cornered black affair, with sharp +angles and excessively stiff; and a perpetual struggle seemed to be +going on between it and its owner, who was evidently unhappy when it was +on his head and still more unhappy when it was anywhere else. If he +perched it on his knees it was sure to slide away from him and fall with +a thump on the floor, whereupon he would pick it up, blushing furiously +as he did so. Then he would lay it on the seat when the train stopped at +a station, and jump out with an air of relief; but he invariably forgot, +and sat down upon it when he returned, and sprang up with a look of +horror at the loud crackle it made; after which he would tuck it into +the baggage-rack overhead, from which it would presently descend, +generally into the lap of one of the staid English ladies, who would +hand it back to him with an air of deep offence, remarking to her +companion,-- + +"I never knew anything like it. Fancy! that makes four times that hat +has fallen on me. The young man is a feedgit! He's the most feegitty +creature I ever saw in my life." + +The young _seminariat_ did not understand a word she said; but the +tone needed no interpreter, and set him to blushing more painfully than +ever. Altogether, the hat was never off his mind for a moment. Katy +could see that he was thinking about it, even when he was thumbing his +Breviary and making believe to read. + +At last the train, steaming down the valley of the Arno, revealed fair +Florence sitting among olive-clad hills, with Giotto's beautiful +Bell-tower, and the great, many-colored, soft-hued Cathedral, and the +square tower of the old Palace, and the quaint bridges over the river, +looking exactly as they do in the photographs; and Katy would have felt +delighted, in spite of dust and fatigue, had not Amy looked so worn out +and exhausted. They were seriously troubled about her, and for the +moment could think of nothing else. Happily the fatigue did no permanent +harm, and a day or two of rest made her all right again. By good +fortune, a nice little apartment in the modern quarter of the city had +been vacated by its winter occupants the very day of their arrival, and +Mrs. Ashe secured it for a month, with all its conveniences and +advantages, including a maid named Maria, who had been servant to the +just departed tenants. + +Maria was a very tall woman, at least six feet two, and had a splendid +contralto voice, which she occasionally exercised while busy over her +pots and pans. It was so remarkable to hear these grand arias and +recitatives proceeding from a kitchen some eight feet square, that Katy +was at great pains to satisfy her curiosity about it. By aid of the +dictionary and much persistent questioning, she made out that Maria in +her youth had received a partial training for the opera; but in the end +it was decided that she was too big and heavy for the stage, and the +poor "giantess," as Amy named her, had been forced to abandon her +career, and gradually had sunk to the position of a maid-of-all-work. +Katy suspected that heaviness of mind as well as of body must have stood +in her way; for Maria, though a good-natured giantess, was by no means +quick of intelligence. + +"I do think that the manner in which people over here can make homes for +themselves at five minutes' notice is perfectly delightful," cried Katy, +at the end of their first day's housekeeping. "I wish we could do the +same in America. How cosy it looks here already!" + +It was indeed cosy. Their new domain consisted of a parlor in a corner, +furnished in bright yellow brocade, with windows to south and west; a +nice little dining-room; three bedrooms, with dimity-curtained beds; a +square entrance hall, lighted at night by a tall slender brass lamp +whose double wicks were fed with olive oil; and the aforesaid tiny +kitchen, behind which was a sleeping cubby, quite too small to be a good +fit for the giantess. The rooms were full of conveniences,--easy-chairs, +sofas, plenty of bureaus and dressing-tables, and corner fireplaces like +Franklin stoves, in which odd little fires burned on cool days, made of +pine cones, cakes of pressed sawdust exactly like Boston brown bread cut +into slices, and a few sticks of wood thriftily adjusted, for fuel is +worth its weight in gold in Florence. Katy's was the smallest of the +bedrooms, but she liked it best of all for the reason that its one big +window opened on an iron balcony over which grew a Banksia rose-vine +with a stem as thick as her wrist. It was covered just now with masses +of tiny white blossoms, whose fragrance was inexpressibly delicious and +made every breath drawn in their neighborhood a delight. The sun +streamed in on all sides of the little apartment, which filled a +narrowing angle at the union of three streets; and from one window and +another, glimpses could be caught of the distant heights about the +city,--San Miniato in one direction, Bellosguardo in another, and for +the third the long olive-hung ascent of Fiesole, crowned by its gray +cathedral towers. + +It was astonishing how easily everything fell into train about the +little establishment. Every morning at six the English baker left two +small sweet brown loaves and a dozen rolls at the door. Then followed +the dairyman with a supply of tiny leaf-shaped pats of freshly churned +butter, a big flask of milk, and two small bottles of thick cream, with +a twist of vine leaf in each by way of a cork. Next came a _contadino_ +with a flask of red Chianti wine, a film of oil floating on top to keep +it sweet. People in Florence must drink wine, whether they like it or +not, because the lime-impregnated water is unsafe for use without some +admixture. + +Dinner came from a _trattoria_, in a tin box, with a pan of coals inside +to keep it warm, which box was carried on a man's head. It was furnished +at a fixed price per day,--a soup, two dishes of meat, two vegetables, +and a sweet dish; and the supply was so generous as always to leave +something toward next day's luncheon. Salad, fruit, and fresh eggs Maria +bought for them in the old market. From the confectioners came loaves of +_pane santo_, a sort of light cake made with arrowroot instead of flour; +and sometimes, by way of treat, a square of _pan forte da Siena_, +compounded of honey, almonds, and chocolate,--a mixture as pernicious +as it is delicious, and which might take a medal anywhere for the sure +production of nightmares. + +Amy soon learned to know the shops from which these delicacies came. +She had her favorites, too, among the strolling merchants who sold +oranges and those little sweet native figs, dried in the sun without +sugar, which are among the specialties of Florence. They, in their +turn, learned to know her and to watch for the appearance of her little +capped head and Mabel's blond wig at the window, lingering about till +she came, and advertising their wares with musical modulations, so +appealing that Amy was always running to Katy, who acted as +housekeeper, to beg her to please buy this or that, "because it is my +old man, and he wants me to so much." + +"But, chicken, we have plenty of figs for to-day." + +"No matter; get some more, please do. I'll eat them all; really, I +will." + +And Amy was as good as her word. Her convalescent appetite was something +prodigious. + +There was another branch of shopping in which they all took equal +delight. The beauty and the cheapness of the Florence flowers are a +continual surprise to a stranger. Every morning after breakfast an old +man came creaking up the two long flights of stairs which led to Mrs. +Ashe's apartment, tapped at the door, and as soon as it opened, inserted +a shabby elbow and a large flat basket full of flowers. Such flowers! +Great masses of scarlet and cream-colored tulips, and white and gold +narcissus, knots of roses of all shades, carnations, heavy-headed trails +of wistaria, wild hyacinths, violets, deep crimson and orange +ranunculus, _giglios_, or wild irises,--the Florence emblem, so deeply +purple as to be almost black,--anemones, spring-beauties, faintly tinted +wood-blooms tied in large loose nosegays, ivy, fruit +blossoms,--everything that can be thought of that is fair and sweet. +These enticing wares the old man would tip out on the table. Mrs. Ashe +and Katy would select what they wanted, and then the process of +bargaining would begin, without which no sale is complete in Italy. The +old man would name an enormous price, five times as much as he hoped to +get. Katy would offer a very small one, considerably less than she +expected to give. The old man would dance with dismay, wring his hands, +assure them that he should die of hunger and all his family with him if +he took less than the price named; he would then come down half a franc +in his demand. So it would go on for five minutes, ten, sometimes for a +quarter of an hour, the old man's price gradually descending, and Katy's +terms very slowly going up, a cent or two at a time. Next the giantess +would mingle with the fray. She would bounce out of her kitchen, berate +the flower-vender, snatch up his flowers, declare that they smelt badly, +fling them down again, pouring out all the while a voluble tirade of +reproaches and revilings, and looking so enormous in her excitement that +Katy wondered that the old man dared to answer her at all. Finally, +there would be a sudden lull. The old man would shrug his shoulders, and +remarking that he and his wife and his aged grandmother must go without +bread that day since it was the Signora's will, take the money offered +and depart, leaving such a mass of flowers behind him that Katy would +begin to think that they had paid an unfair price for them and to feel a +little rueful, till she observed that the old man was absolutely dancing +downstairs with rapture over the good bargain he had made, and that +Maria was black with indignation over the extravagance of her ladies! + +"The Americani are a nation of spend-thrifts," she would mutter to +herself, as she quickened the charcoal in her droll little range by +fanning it with a palm-leaf fan; "they squander money like water. Well, +all the better for us Italians!" with a shrug of her shoulders. + +"But, Maria, it was only sixteen cents that we paid, and look at those +flowers! There are at least half a bushel of them." + +"Sixteen cents for garbage like that! The Signorina would better let me +make her bargains for her. _Già! Già!_ No Italian lady would have paid +more than eleven sous for such useless _roba_. It is evident that the +Signorina's countrymen eat gold when at home, they think so little of +casting it away!" + +Altogether, what with the comfort and quiet of this little home, the +numberless delightful things that there were to do and to see, and +Viessieux's great library, from which they could draw books at will +to make the doing and seeing more intelligible, the month at +Florence passed only too quickly, and was one of the times to which +they afterward looked back with most pleasure. Amy grew steadily +stronger, and the freedom from anxiety about her after their long +strain of apprehension was restful and healing beyond expression to +both mind and body. + +Their very last excursion of all, and one of the pleasantest, was to the +old amphitheatre at Fiesole; and it was while they sat there in the soft +glow of the late afternoon, tying into bunches the violets which they +had gathered from under walls whose foundations antedate Rome itself, +that a cheery call sounded from above, and an unexpected surprise +descended upon them in the shape of Lieutenant Worthington, who having +secured another fifteen days' furlough, had come to take his sister on +to Venice. + +"I didn't write you that I had applied for leave," he explained, +"because there seemed so little chance of my getting off again so soon; +but as luck had it, Carruthers, whose turn it was, sprained his ankle +and was laid up, and the Commodore let us exchange. I made all the +capital I could out of Amy's fever; but upon my word, I felt like a +humbug when I came upon her and Mrs. Swift in the Cascine just now, as I +was hunting for you. How she has picked up! I should never have known +her for the same child." + +"Yes, she seems perfectly well again, and as strong as before she had +the fever, though that dear old Goody Swift is just as careful of her as +ever. She would not let us bring her here this afternoon, for fear we +should stay out till the dew fell. Ned, it is perfectly delightful that +you were able to come. It makes going to Venice seem quite a different +thing, doesn't it, Katy?" + +"I don't want it to seem quite different, because going to Venice was +always one of my dreams," replied Katy, with a little laugh. + +"I hope at least it doesn't make it seem less pleasant," said Mr. +Worthington, as his sister stopped to pick a violet. + +"No, indeed, I am glad," said Katy; "we shall all be seeing it for +the first time, too, shall we not? I think you said you had never +been there." She spoke simply and frankly, but she was conscious of +an odd shyness. + +"I simply couldn't stand it any longer," Ned Worthington confided to his +sister when they were alone. "My head is so full of her that I can't +attend to my work, and it came to me all of a sudden that this might be +my last chance. You'll be getting north before long, you know, to +Switzerland and so on, where I cannot follow you. So I made a clean +breast of it to the Commodore; and the good old fellow, who has a soft +spot in his heart for a love-story, behaved like a brick, and made it +all straight for me to come away." + +Mrs. Ashe did not join in these commendations of the Commodore; her +attention was fixed on another part of her brother's discourse. + +"Then you won't be able to come to me again? I sha'n't see you again +after this!" she exclaimed. "Dear me! I never realized that before. What +shall I do without you?" + +"You will have Miss Carr. She is a host in herself," suggested Ned +Worthington. His sister shook her head. + +"Katy is a jewel," she remarked presently; "but somehow one wants a man +to call upon. I shall feel lost without you, Ned." + +The month's housekeeping wound up that night with a "thick tea" in honor +of Lieutenant Worthington's arrival, which taxed all the resources of +the little establishment. Maria was sent out hastily to buy _pan forte +da Siena_ and _vino d'Asti_, and fresh eggs for an omelette, and +chickens' breasts smothered in cream from the restaurant, and artichokes +for a salad, and flowers to garnish all; and the guest ate and praised +and admired; and Amy and Mabel sat on his knee and explained everything +to him, and they were all very happy together. Their merriment was so +infectious that it extended to the poor giantess, who had been very +pensive all day at the prospect of losing her good place, and who now +raised her voice in the grand aria from "Orfeo," and made the kitchen +ring with the passionate demand "Che farò senza Eurydice?" The splendid +notes, full of fire and lamentation, rang out across the saucepans as +effectively as if they had been footlights; and Katy, rising softly, +opened the kitchen door a little way that they might not lose a sound. + +The next day brought them to Venice. It was a "moment," indeed, as Katy +seated herself for the first time in a gondola, and looked from beneath +its black hood at the palace walls on the Grand Canal, past which they +were gliding. Some were creamy white and black, some orange-tawny, +others of a dull delicious ruddy color, half pink, half red; but all, in +build and ornament, were unlike palaces elsewhere. High on the prow +before her stood the gondolier, his form defined in dark outline against +the sky, as he swayed and bent to his long oar, raising his head now and +again to give a wild musical cry, as warning to other approaching +gondolas. It was all like a dream. Ned Worthington sat beside her, +looking more at the changes in her expressive face than at the palaces. +Venice was as new to him as to Katy; but she was a new feature in his +life also, and even more interesting than Venice. They seemed to float +on pleasures for the next ten days. Their arrival had been happily timed +to coincide with a great popular festival which for nearly a week kept +Venice in a state of continual brilliant gala. All the days were spent +on the water, only landing now and then to look at some famous building +or picture, or to eat ices in the Piazza with the lovely façade of St. +Mark's before them. Dining or sleeping seemed a sheer waste of time! The +evenings were spent on the water too; for every night, immediately after +sunset, a beautiful drifting pageant started from the front of the +Doge's Palace to make the tour of the Grand Canal, and our friends +always took a part in it. In its centre went a barge hung with +embroideries and filled with orange trees and musicians. This was +surrounded by a great convoy of skiffs and gondolas bearing colored +lanterns and pennons and gay awnings, and managed by gondoliers in +picturesque uniforms. All these floated and shifted and swept on +together with a sort of rhythmic undulation as if keeping time to the +music, while across their path dazzling showers and arches of colored +fire poured from the palace fronts and the hotels. Every movement of the +fairy flotilla was repeated in the illuminated water, every torch-tip +and scarlet lantern and flake of green or rosy fire; above all the +bright full moon looked down as if surprised. It was magically beautiful +in effect. Katy felt as if her previous sober ideas about life and +things had melted away. For the moment the world was turned topsy-turvy. +There was nothing hard or real or sordid left in it; it was just a fairy +tale, and she was in the middle of it as she had longed to be in her +childhood. She was the Princess, encircled by delights, as when she and +Clover and Elsie played in "Paradise,"--only, this was better; and, dear +me! who was this Prince who seemed to belong to the story and to grow +more important to it every day? + +Fairy tales must come to ending. Katy's last chapter closed with a +sudden turn-over of the leaf when, toward the end of this happy +fortnight, Mrs. Ashe came into her room with the face of one who has +unpleasant news to communicate. + +"Katy," she began, "should you be _awfully_ disappointed, should +you consider me a perfect wretch, if I went home now instead of in +the autumn?" + +Katy was too much astonished to reply. + +"I am grown such a coward, I am so knocked up and weakened by what I +suffered in Rome, that I find I cannot face the idea of going on to +Germany and Switzerland alone, without Ned to take care of me. You are a +perfect angel, dear, and I know that you would do all you could to make +it easy for me, but I am such a fool that I do not dare. I think my +nerves must have given way," she continued half tearfully; "but the very +idea of shifting for myself for five months longer makes me so miserably +homesick that I cannot endure it. I dare say I shall repent afterward, +and I tell myself now how silly it is; but it's no use,--I shall never +know another easy moment till I have Amy safe again in America and under +your father's care." + +"I find," she continued after another little pause, "that we can go down +with Ned to Genoa and take a steamer there which will carry us straight +to New York without any stops. I hate to disappoint you dreadfully, +Katy, but I have almost decided to do it. Shall you mind very much? Can +you ever forgive me?" She was fairly crying now. + +Katy had to swallow hard before she could answer, the sense of +disappointment was so sharp; and with all her efforts there was almost a +sob in her voice as she said,-- + +"Why yes, indeed, dear Polly, there is nothing to forgive. You are +perfectly right to go home if you feel so." Then with another swallow +she added: "You have given me the loveliest six months' treat that ever +was, and I should be a greedy girl indeed if I found fault because it is +cut off a little sooner than we expected." + +"You are so dear and good not to be vexed," said her friend, embracing +her. "It makes me feel doubly sorry about disappointing you. Indeed I +wouldn't if I could help it, but I simply can't. I _must_ go home. +Perhaps we'll come back some day when Amy is grown up, or safely married +to somebody who will take good care of her!" + +This distant prospect was but a poor consolation for the immediate +disappointment. The more Katy thought about it the sorrier did she feel. +It was not only losing the chance--very likely the only one she would +ever have--of seeing Switzerland and Germany; it was all sorts of other +little things besides. They must go home in a strange ship with a +captain they did not know, instead of in the "Spartacus," as they had +planned; and they should land in New York, where no one would be waiting +for them, and not have the fun of sailing into Boston Bay and seeing +Rose on the wharf, where she had promised to be. Furthermore, they must +pass the hot summer in Burnet instead of in the cool Alpine valleys; and +Polly's house was let till October. She and Amy would have to shift for +themselves elsewhere. Perhaps they would not be in Burnet at all. Oh +dear, what a pity it was! what a dreadful pity! + +Then, the first shock of surprise and discomfiture over, other ideas +asserted themselves; and as she realized that in three weeks more, or +four at the longest, she was to see papa and Clover and all her dear +people at home, she began to feel so very glad that she could hardly +wait for the time to come. After all, there was nothing in Europe quite +so good as that. + +"No, I'm not sorry," she told herself; "I am glad. Poor Polly! it's no +wonder she feels nervous after all she has gone through. I hope I wasn't +cross to her! And it will be _very_ nice to have Lieutenant Worthington +to take care of us as far as Genoa." + +The next three days were full of work. There was no more floating in +gondolas, except in the way of business. All the shopping which they had +put off must be done, and the trunks packed for the voyage. Every one +recollected last errands and commissions; there was continual coming and +going and confusion, and Amy, wild with excitement, popping up every +other moment in the midst of it all, to demand of everybody if they were +not glad that they were going back to America. + +Katy had never yet bought her gift from old Mrs. Redding. She had +waited, thinking continually that she should see something more tempting +still in the next place they went to; but now, with the sense that there +were to be no more "next places," she resolved to wait no longer, and +with a hundred francs in her pocket, set forth to choose something from +among the many tempting things for sale in the Piazza. A bracelet of old +Roman coins had caught her fancy one day in a bric-à-brac shop, and she +walked straight toward it, only pausing by the way to buy a pale blue +iridescent pitcher at Salviate's for Cecy Slack, and see it carefully +rolled in seaweed and soft paper. + +The price of the bracelet was a little more than she expected, and quite +a long process of bargaining was necessary to reduce it to the sum she +had to spend. She had just succeeded and was counting out the money when +Mrs. Ashe and her brother appeared, having spied her from the opposite +side of the Piazza, where they were choosing last photographs at Naga's. +Katy showed her purchase and explained that it was a present; "for of +course I should never walk out in cold blood and buy a bracelet for +myself," she said with a laugh. + +"This is a fascinating little shop," said Mrs. Ashe. "I wonder +what is the price of that queer old chatelaine with the bottles +hanging from it." + +The price was high; but Mrs. Ashe was now tolerably conversant with +shopping Italian, which consists chiefly of a few words repeated many +times over, and it lowered rapidly under the influence of her _troppo's_ +and _è molto caro's_, accompanied with telling little shrugs and looks +of surprise. In the end she bought it for less than two thirds of what +had been originally asked for it. As she put the parcel in her pocket, +her brother said,-- + +"If you have done your shopping now, Polly, can't you come out for a +last row?" + +"Katy may, but I can't," replied Mrs. Ashe. "The man promised to bring +me gloves at six o'clock, and I must be there to pay for them. Take +her down to the Lido, Ned. It's an exquisite evening for the water, +and the sunset promises to be delicious. You can take the time, can't +you, Katy?" + +Katy could. + +Mrs. Ashe turned to leave them, but suddenly stopped short. + +"Katy, look! Isn't that a picture!" + +The "picture" was Amy, who had come to the Piazza with Mrs. Swift, to +feed the doves of St. Mark's, which was one of her favorite amusements. +These pretty birds are the pets of all Venice, and so accustomed to +being fondled and made much of by strangers, that they are perfectly +tame. Amy, when her mother caught sight of her, was sitting on the +marble pavement, with one on her shoulder, two perched on the edge of +her lap, which was full of crumbs, and a flight of others circling round +her head. She was looking up and calling them in soft tones. The +sunlight caught the little downy curls on her head and made them +glitter. The flying doves lit on the pavement, and crowded round her, +their pearl and gray and rose-tinted and white feathers, their scarlet +feet and gold-ringed eyes, making a shifting confusion of colors, as +they hopped and fluttered and cooed about the little maid, unstartled +even by her clear laughter. Close by stood Nurse Swift, observant and +grimly pleased. + +The mother looked on with happy tears in her eyes. "Oh, Katy, think +what she was a few weeks ago and look at her now! Can I ever be +thankful enough?" + +She squeezed Katy's hand convulsively and walked away, turning her head +now and then for another glance at Amy and the doves; while Ned and Katy +silently crossed to the landing and got into a gondola. It was the +perfection of a Venice evening, with silver waves lapsing and lulling +under a rose and opal sky; and the sense that it was their last row on +those enchanted waters made every moment seem doubly precious. + +I cannot tell you exactly what it was that Ned Worthington said to Katy +during that row, or why it took so long to say it that they did not get +in till after the sun was set, and the stars had come out to peep at +their bright, glinting faces, reflected in the Grand Canal. In fact, no +one can tell; for no one overheard, except Giacomo, the brown +yellow-jacketed gondolier, and as he did not understand a word of +English he could not repeat the conversation. Venetian boatmen, however, +know pretty well what it means when a gentleman and lady, both young, +find so much to say in low tones to each other under the gondola hood, +and are so long about giving the order to return; and Giacomo, deeply +sympathetic, rowed as softly and made himself as imperceptible as he +could,--a display of tact which merited the big silver piece with which +Lieutenant Worthington "crossed his palm" on landing. + +Mrs. Ashe had begun to look for them long before they appeared, but I +think she was neither surprised nor sorry that they were so late. Katy +kissed her hastily and went away at once,--"to pack," she said,--and +Ned was equally undemonstrative; but they looked so happy, both of them, +that "Polly dear" was quite satisfied and asked no questions. + +Five days later the parting came, when the "Florio" steamer put into the +port of Genoa for passengers. It was not an easy good-by to say. Mrs. +Ashe and Amy both cried, and Mabel was said to be in deep affliction +also. But there were alleviations. The squadron was coming home in the +autumn, and the officers would have leave to see their friends, and of +course Lieutenant Worthington must come to Burnet--to visit his sister. +Five months would soon go, he declared; but for all the cheerful +assurance, his face was rueful enough as he held Katy's hand in a long +tight clasp while the little boat waited to take him ashore. + +After that it was just a waiting to be got through with till they +sighted Sandy Hook and the Neversinks,--a waiting varied with peeps at +Marseilles and Gibraltar and the sight of a whale or two and one distant +iceberg. The weather was fair all the way, and the ocean smooth. Amy was +never weary of lamenting her own stupidity in not having taken Maria +Matilda out of confinement before they left Venice. + +"That child has hardly been out of the trunk since we started," she +said. "She hasn't seen anything except a little bit of Nice. I shall +really be ashamed when the other children ask her about it. I think I +shall play that she was left at boarding-school and didn't come to +Europe at all! Don't you think that would be the best way, mamma?" + +"You might play that she was left in the States-prison for having done +something naughty," suggested Katy; but Amy scouted this idea. + +"She never does naughty things," she said, "because she never does +anything at all. She's just stupid, poor child! It's not her fault." + +The thirty-six hours between New York and Burnet seemed longer than all +the rest of the journey put together, Katy thought. But they ended at +last, as the "Lake Queen" swung to her moorings at the familiar wharf, +where Dr. Carr stood surrounded with all his boys and girls just as they +had stood the previous October, only that now there were no clouds on +anybody's face, and Johnnie was skipping up and down for joy instead of +grief. It was a long moment while the plank was being lowered from the +gangway; but the moment it was in place, Katy darted across, first +ashore of all the passengers, and was in her father's arms. + +Mrs. Ashe and Amy spent two or three days with them, while looking up +temporary quarters elsewhere; and so long as they stayed all seemed a +happy confusion of talking and embracing and exclaiming, and +distributing of gifts. After they went away things fell into their +customary train, and a certain flatness became apparent. Everything had +happened that could happen. The long-talked-of European journey was +over. Here was Katy at home again, months sooner than they expected; yet +she looked remarkably cheerful and content! Clover could not understand +it; she was likewise puzzled to account for one or two private +conversations between Katy and papa in which she had not been invited to +take part, and the occasional arrival of a letter from "foreign parts" +about whose contents nothing was said. + +"It seems a dreadful pity that you had to come so soon," she said one +day when they were alone in their bedroom. "It's delightful to have you, +of course; but we had braced ourselves to do without you till October, +and there are such lots of delightful things that you could have been +doing and seeing at this moment." + +"Oh, yes, indeed," replied Katy, but not at all as if she were +particularly disappointed. + +"Katy Carr, I don't understand you," persisted Clover. "Why don't you +feel worse about it? Here you have lost five months of the most +splendid time you ever had, and you don't seem to mind it a bit! Why, +if I were in your place my heart would be perfectly broken. And you +needn't have come, either; that's the worst of it. It was just a whim +of Polly's. Papa says Amy might have stayed as well as not. Why aren't +you sorrier, Katy?" + +"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because I had so much as it was,--enough to +last all my life, I think, though I _should_ like to go again. You can't +imagine what beautiful pictures are put away in my memory." + +"I don't see that you had so awfully much," said the aggravated Clover; +"you were there only a little more than six months,--for I don't count +the sea,--and ever so much of that time was taken up with nursing Amy. +You can't have any pleasant pictures of _that_ part of it." + +"Yes, I have, some." + +"Well, I should really like to know what. There you were in a dark room, +frightened to death and tired to death, with only Mrs. Ashe and the old +nurse to keep you company--Oh, yes, that brother was there part of the +time; I forgot him--" + +Clover stopped short in sudden amazement. Katy was standing with her +back toward her, smoothing her hair, but her face was reflected in the +glass. At Clover's words a sudden deep flush had mounted in Katy's +cheeks. Deeper and deeper it burned as she became conscious of Clover's +astonished gaze, till even the back of her neck was pink. Then, as if +she could not bear it any longer, she put the brush down, turned, and +fled out of the room; while Clover, looking after her, exclaimed in a +tone of sudden comical dismay,-- + +"What does it mean? Oh, dear me! is that what Katy is going to do next?" + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What Katy Did Next, by Susan Coolidge + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT KATY DID NEXT *** + +This file should be named 8kty210.txt or 8kty210.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8kty211.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8kty210a.txt + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Suzanne L. 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