The four Corners abroad

by Amy Ella Blanchard

"The girls are all home for the Easter holidays now," said Jo reflectively. "I think it will be rather good fun to go back there after all, and after this year's travel. Think what a sensation I shall make and what an authority I shall be, yet it will be rather hard to get into the traces again, and to subsist on the everlasting baked apples and baked beans."

"Our holiday has been a tremendously long one," said Nan, "for though we have done some studying, there is much of the time we have taken our mental nourishment in other ways than from books. I am glad Miss Barnes agreed that travel would count as study and that we should not lose by giving up school-books for part of the time. Who was Caracalla, Carter? I see something about the Thermæ of Caracalla here in the book."

"He was a Roman emperor of about 212 B. C."

"That's enough," cried Jo. "Anything B. C. gets beyond my assimilation. I can't digest it till I have taken a course of treatment, fish or brain food of some kind. I think while I am in Rome I must consult a physician and get him to recommend a diet that will increase my supply of gray matter."

"You certainly do talk funny, Jo Keyes," said Mary Lee. "You are always trying to make out that you haven't any brains, and yet you are always the one who rises to the occasion and who comes up smiling whatever the rest of us do. When Nan and I get completely snowed under by dates and chronological events you glibly reel them off and tell us that so-and-so was the daughter of King This-and-That, and that Emperor XYZ married Princess Tutti-Frutti. Why even that mixy up Bavarian history you had all smoothed out fine before we came away."

Jo blew Mary Lee a kiss from the tips of her fingers. "Thanks for the bouquets," she said. "Just because I know a little arithmetic you think I am smart. When it comes to real literature I am floored." She began to gather up her traps for they were approaching the station and soon their feet would be treading the streets of the Eternal City.

A few moments in the station, a swift drive to their hotel and they were established in Rome.

There was such a variety of wishes displayed the next morning that the party split up into three sections. Mr. Pinckney, Miss Dolores, Mary Lee and Mr. Kirk, as a matter of course, yearned to see St. Peter's. Nan, Carter and Jo voted for the Forum, so Miss Helen agreed to join them. This left Mrs. Corner and the twins to decide upon what they should see. Jack was divided between a desire to be of the party with Carter and to go to the Coliseum, a place upon which Jean had set her heart. At last Jean's references to the early martyrs and to the dens and chambers for the wild beasts so fired Jack's imagination that she concluded to go with her mother and Jean.

"It is too large a party anyhow," declared Miss Helen. "We shall all get along much more comfortably this way."

"Of course Mary Lee would go with Miss Dolores," remarked Nan, "and of course Jean and Jack wanted to be harrowed by a view of the spot where the early Christians were martyred. I suppose Jack will be in tears over it while Jean will be interested in seeing where they used to keep the lions and tigers, and will placidly tell Jack that it all happened so long ago that there is no use in one's feeling badly about it." This described the temperaments of the two so well that all laughed.