You will laugh at me, I am sure, when I tell you that those two women persuaded us, three in number, with our luggage at the station, to go back with them to Assisi and stay over another day. In justice to our steadfastness of purpose I must tell you that we only yielded when we learned, what the padrone had not been clever enough to tell us, that on the following day the feast of the Holy Cross was to be celebrated, and the great basilica lighted with scores of wax candles.
We are truly glad that we yielded to Bertha's persuasions. Consistency in adhering to a schedule is not always a jewel in one's crown, especially when one is rewarded by such a view of the frescoes in San Francesco as can only be had by the light of many long candles and tapers.
It is just such incidents by the way, such turning back and retracing of steps at one's pleasure, that make for the happiness of the freeborn American traveller who carries her luggage with her and is not dominated by trunks—I say her instead of him, because most of the travellers we meet are women; and, as if to give weight to my reasoning, Bertha adds, "In a land where one reckons time by hundreds of years, what difference does one day more or less make?"
"Especially," said Angela, "if you are not hampered by a hard and fast schedule, or a conscience about disappointing our landlady at the Pension Riccoli in Florence."
"She will not be disappointed," said Mrs. Robins, oracularly, and Mrs. Robins, having travelled much, knows the ways of Italian landladies.
XIV
THE CITY OF FLOWERS
Lung' Arno delle Grazie,
Florence, May 6th.