terwards. Then, as if
every requirement must at last be satisfied, he made as if to go on. But
the conscientious comrades, though evidently faint and discouraged,
hadn't yet given up hope or played their last card, despite the yards of
English red tape with which those two stamped papers had fed their
appetite for officialism.

The taller of the pair laid his black glove on our mud-guard, cracked by
the flapping tyre days ago, and to be mended (I'd heard Mr. Barrymore
say) at the garage in Mestre. With such dramatic gestures as only the
Latin races command, he attempted to prove that the mud-guard must have
been broken in the collision near Bergamo, of which his mind was full.

At last our Chauffeulier comprehended something. He jumped out of the
throbbing car, and in his turn went through a pantomime. From a drawer
under the seat he produced the rubber skin that had come off our tyre,
showed how it fitted on, how it had become detached, and how it had
lashed the mud-guard as we moved. Everybody, including the policemen,
displayed the liveliest interest in this performance. The instant it was
over, Mr. Barrymore took his place again, coiled up the rubber snake,
and this time without asking leave, but with a low bow to the
representatives of local law, drove the car smartly back into the town.
What could the thwarted giants do after such an experience but stand
looking after us and make the best of things?

"It was our salvation that we'd lost our way and were driving towards
Bergamo instead of out," said the conqueror triumphantly. "You see, they
thought probably they'd got hold of the wrong car, as the accused one
had been coming from Lecco. What with that impression, and their despair
at my idiocy, they were ready to give us the benefit of the doubt and
save their faces. Otherwise, though we were innocent and the driver of
the cart merely 'trying it on,' we might have been hung up here for ten
days."

"Oh, could they have hung us?" gasped Aunt Kathryn. "What a dreadful
thing Italian law must be."

Then we all laughed so much that she was vexed, and when Beechy called
her a "stupid little Mamma," snapped back that anyhow she wasn't stupid
enough to forget her Italian--if she knew any--just when it was needed.

She is too sweet-tempered to be cross for long, however, and the way
towards Brescia was so charming that she forgot her annoyance. Though
the surface was not so good as it had been, it was not too bad; and