She felt an immense relief when Giles’s voice summoned them to the carriage, and she went out and drew a deep breath, with Irma’s farewell words sounding in her ears—
“Good-bye, dear one, you are young and so beautiful; have a good time, it is right, it is fitting.” ...
To the jingling of their ear bells, the pair of little flea-bitten greys raised a whirling column of dust on the winding, downward road to Ventimiglia. With every step gained from the villa, Jocelyn’s spirits rose in the rapid motion through the warm dry air; she lost herself in the brilliant day, in the passing glimpses of the laughing sea, in the hot pine scent from above the road. She shook her parasol gaily, with a smiling “Buon Giorno,” at a group of Italian peasant girls swinging along, slowly and erect, to market; the flowers which she had tied round its handle swayed and quivered, sending their perfume over to Giles, who sat opposite her. She did not look at him; it seemed as though she had determined to forget everything—everything but the throb of the warm life that stirred around her.
As they rose a slight hill, they passed a man with a gun slung over his shoulder by a strap. Side-whiskered, with a hard felt hat and a nondescript dog, he was going out to shoot singing birds.
“Le sport!” said Giles, with a disgusted shrug of his shoulders.
“The brute!” said Jocelyn, her face crimson with sudden anger. “I should like to wring his neck, only”—recovering herself slightly under the surprise in her aunt’s and Nielsen’s faces, “it looks so dirty.”
Giles glanced at her sympathetically—he knew her great love for all birds and animals, and understood.
“You must not be angry with the poor man,” said Nielsen, “they are not a sportin’ people, the Italians, don’t you know.”
But Jocelyn’s feelings were still ruffled.
“I hate people who drop their final g’s,” she said.