ily closed again. Fifteen
years ago Mary Gowd would have raged. Now she shrugged philosophic
shoulders. Tina stole hairpins, opened letters that she could not hope
to decipher, rummaged bureau drawers, rifled cupboards and fingered
books; but then, so did most of the other Tinas in Rome. What use to
complain?

Mary Gowd opened the thumb-marked letter, bringing it close to the
candlelight. As she read, a smile appeared.

"Huh! Gregg," she said, "Americans!" She glanced again at the hotel
letterhead on the stationery--the best hotel in Naples. "Americans--and
rich!"

The pleased little smile lingered as she beat the omelet briskly for her
supper.

The Henry D. Greggs arrived in Rome on the two o'clock train from
Naples. And all the Roman knights of the waving palm espied them from
afar and hailed them with whoops of joy. The season was still young and
the Henry D. Greggs looked like money--not Italian money, which is
reckoned in lire, but American money, which mounts grandly to dollars.
The postcard men in the Piazza delle Terme sped after their motor taxi.
The swarthy brigand, with his wooden box of tawdry souvenirs, marked
them as they rode past. The cripple who lurked behind a pillar in the
colonnade threw aside his coat with a practised hitch of his shoulder to
reveal the sickeningly maimed arm that was his stock in trade.

Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Gregg had left their comfortable home in Batavia,
Illinois, with its sleeping porch, veranda and lawn, and seven-passenger
car; with its two glistening bathrooms, and its Oriental rugs, and its
laundry in the basement, and its Sunday fried chicken and ice cream,
because they felt that Miss Eleanora Gregg ought to have the benefit of
foreign travel. Miss Eleanora Gregg thought so too: in fact, she had
thought so first.

Her name was Eleanora, but her parents called her Tweetie, which really
did not sound so bad as it might if Tweetie had been one whit less
pretty. Tweetie was so amazingly, Americanly pretty that she could have
triumphed over a pet name twice as absurd.

The Greggs came to Rome, as has been stated, at two P.M. Wednesday. By
two P.M. Thursday Tweetie had bought a pair of long, dangling earrings,
a costume with a Roman striped collar and sash, and had learned to loll
back in her cab in imitation of the dashing, black-eyed, sallow women
she had seen driving on the Pincio. By Thursday evening she was teasing
Papa Gregg for a spray of white aigrets, such as