t we sat awhile in the garden, where there were palm,
lemon, and orange trees, high woody bushes of heliotrope, grotesque
growth of cactus, and the great gray-blue swords of the century-plant.
Before us stretched the sea. Even if we had not known it, we should have
felt sure that its waters laved tropical shores somewhere, and that it
was the reflection of those far skies which we caught here.

Miss Graves now joined us, with an acquaintance she had discovered, a
Mrs. Clary, who had "spent several winters at Mentone," and who adored
"every stone of it." This phrase, which no doubt sounded well coming
from Mrs. Clary, who was an impulsive person, with fine dark eyes and
expressive mobile face, assumed a comical aspect when repeated by the
sober voice of Miss Graves. Mrs. Clary, laughing, hastened to explain;
and Miss Graves, noticing Mrs. Trescott on a bench in the shade, where
she and her laces had floated down, said, warningly, "I should advise
you to rise; I have just learned that the shade of Mentone is of the
most deadly nature, and to be avoided like a scorpion."

[Illustration: A STREET IN THE OLD TOWN]

Mrs. Trescott and her laces floated up. "Is it damp?" she asked,
alarmed.

"No," replied Miss Graves, "it is not damp. It does not know how to be
damp at Mentone. But the shade is deadly, all the same. Now in Florida
it was otherwise." And she went into the house to get a white umbrella.

"Matilda's temperament is really Alpine," said Mrs. Clary, smiling. "I
have always felt that she would be cold even in heaven."

"In that case," said Baker, "she might try--" But he had the grace to
stop.

"What is it about the shade?" I asked.

"Only this," said Mrs. Clary: "as the warmth is due to the heat of the
sun, and not to the air, which is cool, there is more difference between
the sunshine and shade here than we are accustomed to elsewhere. But
surely it is a small thing to remember. The treasure of Mentone is its
sunshine: in it, safety; out of it, danger."

"Like Mr. Micawber's income," said Margaret, smiling. "Amount, twenty
shillings; you spend nineteen shillings and sixpence--riches; twenty
shillings and sixpence--bankruptcy."

A little later we went down to the "old town," as the closely built
village of the Middle Ages, clinging to the side hill, and hardly
changed in the long lapse of centuries, is called. The "old town" lies
between the East Bay and the West Bay, as the body of a bird lies
between t