he splendid view, the second thought that comes must be, how bare the
Italian country looks compared to the luxuriant cultivation we're
leaving behind. We're turning our backs now on cosy comfort, well-kept
roads, tidy houses, tidy people; and we're on our way to meet beggars,
shabbiness, and rags, poverty everywhere staring us in the face. Yet
much as I admire France, it's to Italy I give my love."

"Talking of frontiers," I flung back the ball to him, "I've often asked
myself why it is that a whole people should with one accord worship
coffin-beds, six inches too short for a normal human being, hard wedges
instead of bolsters, and down coverings three feet thick; while another
whole people just round a geographical corner fiercely demand brass
beds, springy mattresses, and blankets light as--as love. But nobody has
ever satisfactorily answered that question, which may be far more
important in solving the profound mystery of racial differences than it
would seem."

"Why are _you_ prudent and economical, and I reckless and extravagant?"
inquired Terry.

"Because I come from the country that took over England, and you from
the country that England took over," I explained. But Terry only
laughed, being too busy to pick up the cudgels for his native land.
"Probably that's also why I'm a chauffeur while you're an editor," he
added, and Miss Destrey's little nose and long curve of dark eyelash,
seen by me in profile, expressed the sympathy which one young soul in
misfortune must feel for another.

"Now we're in Italy," he went on. "What I said is coming true already.
Look at these carts crawling to meet us down the hill. The harness seems
to be a mere collection of 'unconsidered trifles,' picked up accidently
by the drivers; bits of leather, string and rope. And the road you see
is strewn with loose stones, though a few metres further back it was so
smooth one might dance on it. In dear, lazy Italy, steam-rollers are
almost as unknown as dragons. In most districts, if one wants to mend a
road, one dumps some stones on it, and trusts to luck and traffic to
have them eventually ground in. But luckily our tyres are almost as
trustworthy as the Bank of England, and we don't need to worry about the
roads."

At the pink Italian custom house Terry got down and vanished within, to
pay the deposit and receive certain documents without which we could not
"circulate" on Italian soil. Far above our heads looked down the old,
brown