Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/305

 course it's not quite so hard to bear as common, second-class influenza. It appears that he was so anxious to see "dear Lady Brighthelmston before she could get away" that he shed his automobile at Genoa, and hurried on by train, though whether on receipt of a telegraphic bidding from her ladyship or not I don't know. Anyway, she didn't wait for him, or else the influenza frightened her; for she has gone, and apparently without leaving word for poor disconsolate Jimmy. She was at his hotel, and left word with the manager that she would wire when she was settled in "some place where there was a little sunshine" for her letters to be forwarded. He is waiting till that wire arrives.

Jimmy is "thick as thieves" with Aunt Mary, but as frigid as a whole iceberg to poor Brown, if they happen to run across each other. I do think, don't you, Dad, that it shows shocking bad breeding to be nasty to a person who, from the very nature of the case, can't answer back? When I hear people speaking rudely to servants I always set them down as cads. Imagine marrying a man and then finding out that he was a cad! One ought to be able to get a divorce. The weather has, I suppose, been terrible since we came to Rome; at least, I hear everyone in our hotel grumbling, and certainly gardens haven't been of much use to us. But I am in a mood not to mind weather. I am in Rome. I say that over to myself, and I read Lanciani and Hare, and then I don't know whether it rains or not. Besides, yesterday was clear on purpose for me to walk in the Pincian and Borghese Gardens. Brown had to go