going on about the beastly wedding; boxes coming from London
with hats and jackets in, and wedding presents--all glassy and silvery,
or else brooches and chains--and clothes sent down from London to choose
from. I can't think how a lady can want so many petticoats and boots and
things just because she's going to be married. No man would think of
getting twenty-four shirts and twenty-four waistcoats, and so on, just
to be married in.

"It's because they're going to Rome, I think," Alice said, when we
talked it over before the fire in the kitchen the day Mrs. Pettigrew
went to see her aunt, and we were allowed to make toffee. "You see, in
Rome you can only buy Roman clothes, and I think they're all stupid
bright colours--at least I know the sashes are. You stir now, Oswald.
My face is all burnt black."

Oswald took the spoon, though it was really not his turn by three; but
he is one whose nature is so that he cannot make a fuss about little
things--and he knows he can make toffee.

"Lucky hounds," H.O. said, "to be going to Rome. I wish I was."

"Hounds isn't polite, H.O., dear," Dora said; and H.O. said--

"Well, lucky bargees, then."

"It's the dream of my life to go to Rome," Noel said. Noel is our poet
brother. "Just think of what the man says in the 'Roman Road.' I wish
they'd take me."

"They won't," Dicky said. "It costs a most awful lot. I heard Father
saying so only yesterday."

"It would only be the fare," Noel answered; "and I'd go third, or even
in a cattle-truck, or a luggage van. And when I got there I could easily
earn my own living. I'd make ballads and sing them in the streets. The
Italians would give me lyres--that's the Italian kind of shilling, they
spell it with an _i_. It shows how poetical they are out there, their
calling it that."

"But you couldn't make Italian poetry," H.O. said, staring at Noel with
his mouth open.

"Oh, I don't know so much about that," Noel said. "I could jolly soon
learn anyway, and just to begin with I'd do it in English. There are
sure to be some people who would understand. And if they didn't, don't
you think their warm Southern hearts would be touched to see a pale,
slender, foreign figure singing plaintive ballads in an unknown tongue?
I do. Oh! they'd chuck along the lyres fast enough--they're not hard and
cold like North people. Why, every one here is a brewer, or a baker, or
a banker, or a butcher, or something dull. Over there they're all
bandits, or vi