‘Oh, Uncle Howard, not yet!’ Marcia cried. ‘Let us wait until the end of June. It isn’t too hot till then. Up here in the hills it’s pleasant all summer. I don’t want to leave the villa.’
‘Rome is hot just now in more ways than one,’ he returned. ‘I’d feel safer to have you in Switzerland or up in the Tyrol during the excitement. Goodness only knows what’s going to happen next. I’m expecting to wake up in the middle of a French revolution every morning, and I should like to have you out of the country before the beheading begins.’
‘There isn’t really any danger of a revolution?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Not in a country where every other man’s a soldier and the government’s in command. But there have been houses broken into and a good many acts of lawlessness, and we’re rather lonely off here.’
‘I hate to think of going away,’ Marcia sighed. ‘We’ll come back in the autumn, won’t we, Uncle Howard?’
‘Oh, yes, if you like. I dare say we could manage a month or so out here before we go into the palazzo for the winter.’
‘And I’ll be going back to America for the winter,’ she sighed.
He looked at her with a slight smile.
‘Are you the girl, Marcia, who used to preach sermons to your uncle about Americans living abroad?’