r. Bradshaw chuckled for some minutes at this proposal, but his wife
would not allow him to pursue the jest.

They lunched at the Hotel Diomede before entering the precincts of the
ruins. Mr. Bradshaw had invariably a splendid appetite, and was by this
time skilled in ordering the meals that suited him. The few phrases of
Italian which he had appropriated were given forth _ore rotundo_, with
Anglo-saxon emphasis on the _o_'s, and accompanied with large gestures.
His mere appearance always sufficed to put landlords and waiters into
their most urbane mood; they never failed to take him for one of the
English nobility--a belief confirmed by the handsomeness of his
gratuities. Mrs. Bradshaw was not, perhaps, the ideal lady of rank, but
the fine self-satisfaction on her matronly visage, the good-natured
disdain with which she allowed herself to be waited upon by foolish
foreigners, her solid disregard of everything beyond the circle of her
own party, were impressive enough, and exacted no little subservience.

Strong in the experience of two former visits, Mr. Bradshaw would have
no guide to-day. Murray in hand, he knew just what he wished to see
again, and where to find it.

As Miriam was at Pompeii for the first time, he took her especially
under his direction, and showed her the city much as he might have led
her over his silk-mill in Manchester. Unimbued with history and
literature, he knew nothing of the scholar's or the poet's enthusiasm;
his gratification lay in exercising his solid intelligence on a lot of
strange and often grotesque facts. Here men had lived two thousand
years ago. There was no mistake about it; you saw the deep ruts of
their wheels along the rugged street; nay, you saw the wearing of their
very feet on the comically narrow pavements. And their life had been as
different as possible from that of men in Manchester. Everything
excited him to merriment.

"Now, this is the house of old Pansa--no doubt an ancestor of friend
Sancho"--with a twinkle in his eye. "We'll go over this carefully, Mrs.
Baske; it's one of the largest and completest in Pompeii. Here we are
in what they called the atrium."

Cecily spoke seldom. Of course, she would have preferred to be alone
here with Miriam; best of all--or nearly so--if they could have made
the same party as at Baiae. At times she lingered a little behind the
others, and seemed deep in contemplation of some object; or she stood
to watch the lizards darting a