“Having supplied Miss Fairfield with all necessary advice and information, the two scholarly and erudite gentlemen rose to take their leave,” drawled Austin, as he rose from his chair and beckoned to Mr. Homer to do the same.
Peter Homer made his adieus, and then, saying good-by to Patty, he added:
“I wish I were to show you my Italy, but perhaps it’s just as well for you to discover your own. Still, I must warn you not to let the glamour gather too thickly. Brush it off once in a while, and look at the real thing.”
“I’ll remember,” promised Patty. “But we’ll see you again, sooner or later?”
“Oh, yes; I’ll be in Italy before Christmas, and everybody in Italy runs against everybody else, somewhere. Good-by.”
“Good-by,” said Patty, with a kindly politeness, and turned to say the same to Austin Floyd.
“Be sure to go to the Aquarium in Naples,” he reminded her, for the fourteenth time. “The polyps are so pleasantly disgusting, and that fat red starfish is a love. Don’t disgrace your country,—remember you’re Murrican. I shall miss you,—oh, my heart will be as an empty colander! My dolour will be as of one without hope! I shall be as a mullein stalk—but, ’tis better so! Good-by!”
Austin’s melodramatic tone was so absurd that the final good-bys were said amid much laughter, but Patty was conscious of a sincere regret at leaving the gay merriment of Markleham Grange, and its pleasant neighbours.
Next morning the three Fairfields started for London.