Ruth opened wide her eyes. “Can they be worse than the accommodations for human beings?” she wondered.
“All I can tell you,” Bertram replied, “is that I once took Balzatore with me to Padua, and he howled conscientiously the whole way. I have never known a human being (barring babies) to do that. They shut him in a kind of drawer, a kind of black hole, under the carriage.”
“Brutes,” said Ruth, with a shudder. “Don't you rather admire our view?” she asked, first glancing up at her companion, and then directing her gaze down the valley.
“There never were such eyes,” said Bertram to himself. “There never was such a view,” he said to her. “With the sky and the clouds and the sun—and the haze, like gold turned to vapour—and the purple domes and pinnacles of Florence. How is it possible for a town to be at the same time so lovely and so dull?”
Ruth glanced up at him again. “Is Florence dull?”
“Don't you think so?” he asked, smiling down.
“I'm afraid I don't know it very well,” she answered. “The Ponte Vecchio seems fairly animated—and then there are always the Botticellis.”
“I dare say there are always the Botticellis,” Bertram admitted, laughing. “But the Ponte Vecchio doesn't count—the people there are all Jews. I was thinking of the Florentines.”
“Ah, yes; I see,” said Ruth. “They're chiefly retired Anglo-Indians, aren't they?”
“Well, isn't that,” demanded Bertram, with livelier laughter, “an entire concession of my point?”