The Italian understood perfectly. And where would madame and m’sieu wish to go? To the Italian all well-dressed foreigners are French.
“To the top of that hill first,” the madame commanded. M’sieu remarked, “We must not get too far away. We sail at nine to-night; and clocks are not very dependable in these parts.”
“Yes, we must be careful about the time,” she agreed, but offered no word of the more recent information she had received from the purser. “We can have one good glorious dinner somewhere and be back easily by half-past eight,” she told him.
They had turned a corner of the creaking winding road which gave suddenly a little glimpse of the Bay.
“Look!” she exclaimed. They turned their heads. “It is beginning to be blue already! U-m!” she sniffed. “Did you get that delicious scent? What is it? Lilac?... And look over there! Still bluer.”
“Cerulean blue, every yard of it guaranteed,” he remarked lazily; but there was no doubt he was taking it in as eagerly as she. To the lady this was one of many possible trips abroad. To the man it was a sight of Italy, almost withheld like the Promised Land from Moses of old, now made a reality; the promise fulfilled of seven years’ mean living.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed on one rise of ground; the assumption of indifference was hard to keep up. “By Jove!” he stared and breathed in the perfumed air. “This is paradise! And Italians come to America to clean the streets and sell fruit! How can they leave it? How ever can they leave it?”
The “dinky” carriage plodded slowly up the hill. The grey tile-topped roofs began to huddle together below them. Old Vesuvius grew to look less like a flat ash-heap. Far off in the background ranges of higher hills began to push solemnly skyward. And the Bay of Naples slowly expanded, and softened, and yielded up its velvet blue.
“Isn’t it great?” the lady said, gazing afar.
“Great!” the man replied. “Wonderful!”