knows the
man. Oh, he must be loathsome! Goodness me! I've forgotten to pack the
ammonia!... It has been a terrible lesson for Caroline, but I fancy it
is her turning-point. I can't help liking to think that out of all this
evil good will come."

Philip saw no prospect of good, nor of beauty either. But the expedition
promised to be highly comic. He was not averse to it any longer; he
was simply indifferent to all in it except the humours. These would be
wonderful. Harriet, worked by her mother; Mrs. Herriton, worked by Miss
Abbott; Gino, worked by a cheque--what better entertainment could he
desire? There was nothing to distract him this time; his sentimentality
had died, so had his anxiety for the family honour. He might be a
puppet's puppet, but he knew exactly the disposition of the strings.

They travelled for thirteen hours down-hill, whilst the streams
broadened and the mountains shrank, and the vegetation changed, and the
people ceased being ugly and drinking beer, and began instead to drink
wine and to be beautiful. And the train which had picked them at sunrise
out of a waste of glaciers and hotels was waltzing at sunset round the
walls of Verona.

"Absurd nonsense they talk about the heat," said Philip, as they drove
from the station. "Supposing we were here for pleasure, what could be
more pleasurable than this?"

"Did you hear, though, they are remarking on the cold?" said Harriet
nervously. "I should never have thought it cold."

And on the second day the heat struck them, like a hand laid over the
mouth, just as they were walking to see the tomb of Juliet. From
that moment everything went wrong. They fled from Verona. Harriet's
sketch-book was stolen, and the bottle of ammonia in her trunk burst
over her prayer-book, so that purple patches appeared on all her
clothes. Then, as she was going through Mantua at four in the morning,
Philip made her look out of the window because it was Virgil's
birthplace, and a smut flew in her eye, and Harriet with a smut in her
eye was notorious. At Bologna they stopped twenty-four hours to rest. It
was a FESTA, and children blew bladder whistles night and day. "What a
religion!" said Harriet. The hotel smelt, two puppies were asleep on
her bed, and her bedroom window looked into a belfry, which saluted her
slumbering form every quarter of an hour. Philip left his walking-stick,
his socks, and the Baedeker at Bologna; she only left her sponge-bag.
Next day they cros