Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/306

 with me because Aunt Mary was afraid there would be another storm; and besides, some little English ladies she has met in our hotel had invited her to have tea with them in their bedroom. They make it themselves with their own things, because then you don't have to pay; and if there aren't enough cups to go round among the ladies they've asked, they take their tooth-brush glasses for themselves. And they bring in custardy cakes in paper-bags and cream in tiny pails which they hide in their muffs, and try to look unconscious. There are a lot here like that, and they stay all winter. None of them are married, and they all do and say exactly the things you know they will beforehand. Why, just to look at them you feel sure they'd have tatting on their stays, and make their own garters. But some of them are titled, or if they're not they talk a great deal about being "well connected"; and they do nothing on weekdays but read novels, work in worsteds, and play bridge with the windows hermetically sealed; or on Sundays but go to the English church. Only think, and they're in Rome!

I haven't wasted one minute since we came, but, thank goodness, I'm not trying to "do" Rome scientifically and exhaustively like so many poor wilted-looking Americans I've met here. They think they must see every picture in every gallery, and put at least their noses inside every church; and then they scribble things down in their note-books—things which will do them just as much good afterwards as Lizard Bill's writings on his slate when the ink trickled over his nose, in Alice's Adventures. One