o defy the tyranny of the Emperors.

Though the road was poor, except in bits, and gave us all the bumps
mentioned in Sir Ralph's rules, the country was lovely and loveable.
Grapes, mulberries, rice, and stuff called maize, which looked exactly
like our American corn, grew together like a happy family of sisters,
and from the hills dotted about, more thickly than Mamma's crowns on her
toilet things, looked down old feudal castles as melancholy as the
cypresses that stood beside them, like the sole friends of their
adversity.

Of Tortona and Voghera I carried away only the ghost of an impression,
for we darted through their long main streets, deserted in the noon-tide
hour, and darted out again onto the straight white ribbon of road that
was leading us across all Northern Italy. It was so dusty that Mamma,
Maida, and I put on the motor-veils we had discarded after the first few
hours of the trip till now; things made of pongee silk, with windows of
talc over our eyes and little lace doors for our breath to pass through.
It was fun when we would slacken speed in some town or village, to see
how the young Italians tried to pry into the motor-masks' secrets and
find out if we were pretty. How much more they would have stared at
Maida than at her two grey-clad companions, if they had known! But
behind the pongee and the talc, for once our features could flaunt
themselves on an equality with hers. Even monks, brown of face and
robe, gliding noiselessly through wide market places in the blue shadows
of hoary campaniles, searched those talc windows of ours with a
curiosity that was pathetic. Young officers, with great dark eyes and
slender figures tightly buttoned-up in grey-blue uniforms, visibly
preened themselves as the car with the three veiled ladies would sweep
round a corner; and really I think there must be something rather
alluring about a passing glance from a pair of eyes in a face that will
always remain a mystery. If I were a man I believe I should find it so.
Anyway, it's fun for a girl to guess how she would feel about things if
she were a man. I suppose though, we 're generally wrong.

After we 'd frightened enough horses and other domestic animals to
overstock the whole of Northern Italy and felt quite old in consequence
(considerably over thirteen), a sweet peace fell suddenly upon us. We
had passed the place where Napoleon's great battle was fought, and
Voghera, where we might have stopped to see the baths