“Oh, do stop trying to be Pater-esque!” scoffed Jane, “and let’s go to luncheon. That sounds too much like sublimated guide-book, and the hotel looks miles away to my unimaginative eye.”
“We won’t, will we?” said Jane half an hour later, with her irreverent mouth full.
Peripatetica knew what she meant.
“Go on to-morrow? No, indeed. We’ll telegraph Cook to send our mail here until further notice—the idea of being told there was nothing to linger for at Girgenti! It’s the nicest place we’ve yet found in Sicily.”
The room was full of the munching of tourists. From the talk in German, English, and French, could be gathered they had one and all “done” the five temples, the tombs, and San Niccola that morning—would “take in” the town sights that afternoon and pass on that evening or the next morning. The two Seekers, to whom the morning had not been long enough in which to dream and dispute over one temple, felt their heads growing dizzy at the rush with which the tourist stream flowed along its Cook-dug channels, and they gladly resolved to leave the current and climb up high and dry on the bank of this inviting little backwater.
The announcement of their intention to stay on seemed to give the polite young proprietor of the hotel a strange shock. He offered better rooms looking on the terrace, and pension rates if they stayed more than three days, instead of the usual week for which that reduction is commonly made. A flutter of excitement at their behaviour passed at once through all the personnel of the hotel.
First came the concierge. “You are really not leaving to-morrow morning, ladies? For what day do you wish me to get your tickets stamped?” He was startledly incredulous when told that the day was still too far in the future for a date to be fixed. The porter came to ask at what time he was to carry out their luggage in the morning—the head waiter to know for which train they wished to be called. The stolid chambermaid’s mouth fell open in surprise when asked to move their things to other rooms. The two-foot-high Buttons shifted about chairs four times his own size in the lobby to get a chance to gaze satisfactorily at such peculiar ladies, and by tea-time the German waiters were staring as they carried about tea-trays, and pointing out to one another the strangely behaving two who were not leaving the next day!
The pretty little hotel was like a railway restaurant. Successive sets of hurried tourists appeared, made a one-meal or a one-night stop, and rushed on, leaving their places to others. In a week’s time so many sets had come and gone that Peripatetica and Jane began to take on the air of pre-historic aborigines; as if they had been sitting on their sunny bank watching all the invading hordes of nations since the Carthagenians made their first raid.
By way of emphasizing the superior intelligence of their own methods they savoured slowly and lingeringly Girgenti’s endless charms. Loafing placidly on the flowery terrace for an hour after breakfast to enjoy the distant view of the golden temples, or to watch the patient labours of ancient brown Orlando and his ancient grey ass Carlo, who spent all their waking hours in climbing down, down the precipitous road to the Fonte dei Greci with empty water-barrels, and toilsomely bringing them up full and dripping to be emptied into the terrace well with its lovely carved well head. Or they retired to the niche below the terrace stairs under the feathery pepper tree, and sat amid a blaze of poppies and mauve to write letters, punctuated by frequent pauses to look across the olive orchards and young wheat fields to the wide blue fields of the sea. And every day they strolled away through the orchard footpaths towards the temples, which were ever their goal, though they might be hours in reaching that goal because of being led away by adventures on the road.