Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 2.djvu/200

182 rough road close to the garden wall, and went sadly home, along the blooming path to the "Tomb of the Four Thimbles," as Livy irreverently called the ruin, which has an ornament at each of its corners like a gigantic thimble of stone.

A note in Amanda's most elegant French, declining the apartment in the name of Madame Duenna, closed the door of this Eden upon the wandering peris, who entered never more. Now and then as they went clattering by on their donkeys to Lake Nemi, or some other picturesque spot,

The second adventure befell Amanda alone, and in this wise.

Going one day to Rome, on business, she found herself shut up in a car with a gorgeous officer and a meek young man, who read papers all the way. The tall soldier in his gray and silver uniform, with