"Uncle George," said Rollo one morning, while he and Mr. George were eating their breakfast in the dining room, or, as they call it in Europe, the salle à manger, of the hotel, "how much longer are you going to be in studying out those things in the museum?"
"Why?" asked Mr. George. "Does your comfort or enjoyment depend in any way on the decision of that question?"
"Only we want you to go about with us, somewhere," said Rollo.
"Why, you don't need me to go about with you," said Mr. George. "Contrive some sort of excursion yourself, and take the ladies out and amuse them. You might take them out to see Pozzuoli and the Solfatara. Besides, you would be doing me a great service if you would go."
"How?" asked Rollo.
"Why, I shall want to go by and by myself," said Mr. George, "and I don't want to have any trouble in finding the way. But you like finding your way about. Now, I wish you would take a carriage, and go and take the ladies on an excursion along the bay to the westward, and show them Virgil's Tomb, and the Grotto of Posilipo, and Pozzuoli, where the apostle Paul landed on his famous journey to Rome, and the temple of Serapis, half under water, and the great amphitheatre, and the Solfatara, which is the crater of a volcano almost extinct. All these things lie pretty near together along the shores of the bay to the westward of Naples, and you can go and see them in one afternoon, they say. If you go first, you will find out all about the excursion, and what we do about guides and custodians at the different places; and then, when I get ready, you can go again and take me, and I shall not have any trouble about it."
"Just give me a list of all those places," said Rollo, eagerly.
As he spoke he handed Mr. George a pencil and a piece of paper, which he took out of his pocket. Mr. George wrote down the list, and Rollo, taking it, went up to Mrs. Gray's room.
Rollo proposed the plan to Mrs. Gray of making the excursion which Mr. George had indicated, and she was very much pleased with it.
"We'll study it all out in the guide books this evening," said Rollo, "and then to-morrow we will go."