antly from her father on Monday morning. He sailed
by a very early boat, so that the sun had not yet risen high, as, after
watching his vessel leave the harbor, she turned from the Marina to walk
back to the Casa Verdi. Half of the little town was still asleep. There
were no signs of life in the hotel, where the wistaria was blooming in a
purple shower over the veranda, and green shutters barred the lower
windows of most of the villas. A few peasant people were stirring about;
three dark-eyed girls, as straight as Greek goddesses, were coming down
the steep path from Anacapri with orange baskets on their heads, and
their hands full of posies of pink cyclamen; a mother with a child
clinging to her yellow-bordered skirt was taking an earthenware pitcher
to the well for water; a persistent bell in the little church of S.
Costanzo was calling some to prayers, and others were starting the
ordinary routine of the day, attending to animals, cutting salads in
their gardens, spreading out fishing-nets, or getting ready the hand
barrows on which they sold their wares. In the gleaming morning light
the beautiful island seemed more than ever like a radiant jewel set in a
sapphire sea. Lorna had left the winding highroad, and was taking a
short cut up flights of steep steps between the flowery gardens of
villas, where geraniums grew like weeds, and every bush seemed a mass of
scented blossoms. She was passing a small flat-topped eastern house,
whose gatepost bore the attractive title of "La Carina," when she
suddenly heard her own name called, and turning round, startled and
surprised, what should she see peeping over the cactus hedge but the
smiling face and blonde bobbed locks of Irene. The amazement was mutual.

"Hello! What are you doing in Capri?"

"What are _you_ doing here?"

"I'm staying up on the hill!"

"And we're staying at this villa!"

"To think of meeting you!"

"Sporting, isn't it? Come inside the garden! I can't talk to you down
there in the road."

That her chum should actually also have come to Capri for the holidays
seemed a marvelous piece of luck to Lorna.

"We decided quite in a hurry," explained Irene. "Dad heard this little
place was to let furnished, and took it for three weeks. The Camerons
have taken that big pink house over there, with the umbrella pine in the
garden. Peachy is staying with them. Isn't it absolutely ripping? I was
only saying yesterday I wished you were here too. And my cousin Ma