"I am too weary to admire anything," said Mrs. Cleveland with a yawn, "and it seems as if we were never to reach the inn at Staiti. The heat is almost suffocating."
"I say," halloed Horace to the driver, "how long shall we be in arriving at Staiti?"
The Italian shrugged his shoulders, and without taking the trouble to turn round made reply, "We shall not be there till twenty-four o'clock, signore."
"Twenty-four o'clock!" exclaimed Horace; not surprised, however, by the expression, as the reader may possibly be, as he was familiar with the Italian mode of reckoning the twenty-four hours from sunset to sunset. "Is there no inn,—no locanda, where we could rest on the way?"
"Si, signore," answered the Calabrese, pointing onwards with his whip to a small, irregularly built house, which seemed wedged between two masses of rock overgrown with cactus, and which was so much of the color of the cliffs, that one might fancy that it had grown out of them.
"It looks much more picturesque than comfortable," observed Horace, drawing back his head, and showing the inn to his mother.
"Let's stop there—or anywhere," gasped Mrs. Cleveland, fanning herself with the air of one whose patience as well as strength is almost exhausted. "I can go no further to-day."
"We can stop and bait," said Horace; and again he leaned out of the window to give his orders to the driver in the haughty tone of command which he seemed to think befitting an English "milordo."
It was clear at a glance that Horace Cleveland regarded himself as one of the lords of creation, and, from national or family or personal pride, considered himself superior to all such of his fellow-creatures as he might meet in Calabria. His manner, even to his mother, was petulant and imperious. Horace Cleveland had had, indeed, much to foster his vanity and strengthen his pride. Horace occupied a proud position in his school, and he plumed himself not a little upon it.
"The boy is father of the man," sang the poet; and on the strength of that aphorism, Horace built up a high tower of airy hopes. He had been accustomed to be admired, imitated, followed, in the little world of a public school, and he expected to hold the same place in the great world, which he soon must enter. Horace felt himself born to command.