gotiated, as the
phrase is, and, with a dash of reckless liberality that I tremble at now
as I record it, I said, "You've only to say where--nothing but where
to, and I'll take you--up the Rhine, down the Danube, Egypt, the
Cataracts------"

"I don't want to go so far," said she, dryly. "Italy will do."

This was a stunner. I hoped the impossible would have stopped her, but
she caught at the practicable, and foiled me.

"There's only one objection," said I, musing.

"And what may that be? Not money, I hope."

"Heaven forbid--no. It's the language. We get on here tolerably well,
for the waiter speaks broken English; but in Italy, dearest, English is
unknown."

"Let us learn Italian, then. My aunt Groves said I had a remarkable
talent for languages."

I groaned inwardly at this, for the same aunt Groves had vouched for
a sum of seventeen hundred and odd pounds as her niece's fortune, but
which was so beautifully "tied up," as they called it, that neither
Chancellor nor Master were ever equal to the task of untying it.

"Of course, dearest, let us learn Italian;" and I thought how I'd crush
a junior counsel some day with a smashing bit of Dante.

We started that same night--travelled on day after day--crossed
Mont Cenis in a snow-storm, and reached the Feder as wayworn and
wretched-looking a pair as ever travelled on an errand of bliss and
beatitude.

"In for a penny" is very Irish philosophy, but I can't help that; so I
wrote to my brother Peter to sell out another hundred for me out of the
"Threes," saying "dear Paulina's health required a little change to a
milder climate" (it was snowing when I wrote, and the thermometer over
the chimneypiece at 9 deg. Reaumur, with windows that wouldn't shut, and a
marble floor without carpet)--"that the balmy air of Italy" (my teeth
chattered as I set it down) "would soon restore her; and indeed already
she seemed to feel the change." That she did, for she was crouching over
a pan of charcoal ashes, with a railroad wrapper over her shoulders.

It's no use going over what is in every one's experience on first coming
south of the Alps--the daily, hourly difficulty of not believing that
you have taken a wrong road and got into Siberia; and strangest of
all it is to see how little the natives think of it. I declare I often
thought soap must be a great refrigerant, and I wish some chemist would
inquire into the matter.

"Are we ever to begin this blessed language?" said Mrs