Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/318

 town till you come on it; then suddenly you are in a busy piazza, with an old palace or two and a beautiful tower, and everything characteristically Italian, even the sunshine, which is so vivid that it is like a pool of light. Here we made a great deal more excitement before we drove under an old archway and plunged down a steep, stone-paved street filled with gay little shops, and ending with the courtyard of our hotel.

I know you only came to Capri with the "trippers" to see the Blue Grotto, and I feel sorry for you, you poor Dad, because, though the Grotto is so strange and beautiful, it is the thing I care for least of all. Just think, you didn't even stay long enough to see the sunset turn the Faraglioni rocks to brilliant, beaten copper, standing up from clear depths of emerald, into which the clouds drop rose-leaves! You didn't go to the old grey Certosa, for if you had you would certainly have bought it and restored it to use as a sort of "occasional villa," like those nice heroes of Ouida's who say, "I believe, by the way, that is mine," when they are travelling with friends in yachts and pass magnificent palaces which they have quite forgotten on the shores of the Mediterranean or the Italian lakes. You didn't walk along a steep path about twelve inches wide, hanging over a dizzy precipice, to the —and neither would I if it hadn't been for Brown. I was horribly afraid, but I was ashamed to let him see that, so I struggled along somehow, and it was glorious. We ended the walk by going down a great many steps cut in the rock to the grotto of Mitromania, where they used