Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/347

 and I got sick of Cannes, which is too far from Monte Carlo to be lively, we all went on to Rome. That was just after my last epistle to you. It rained cats and dogs in Rome, and I never went into a single church, not even St. Peter's. We planned to wait for "Jack," but your letter came, and I was afraid there might be something in that joke of yours about his trying to keep out of my way, and I was bound he shouldn't think I was after him. There's as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it for a girl who can bait her hook as I can. So when Lady B.'s neuralgia got bad, we proposed Naples, and it was very nice. But she is a fussy old thing and couldn't let well alone; she'd seen Naples and hadn't seen Sicily. Nothing would do but we should "run over." I would have put my foot down on that, but Lady B. mentioned that she had a friend at some place called Taormina, an English baronet with a lovely house, who always had a lot of nice people staying with him. And she said she'd often been invited, and would get an invitation for us all for a few days if we'd go. I thought we might meet someone it would be a good thing for us to know, so I consented; but we were to go first to Palermo and Siracusa, and work on to Taormina by the time our invitation arrived.

Palermo wasn't so bad. I never saw so many young men in my life, all very dark, with enormous eyes, and little moustaches and canes, both of which they twirled a good deal when they looked at anyone they admired. But Syracuse was awful. I daresay it was nice enough when you could be a tyrant and