“Thank you,” I said, and then I went back to the foot I had originally been standing on.
“My friends, the Wiltons, want me to go to Mentone with them,” she stated as she picked up a little brush she has for her eyebrows and began to use it, “and their plans sound rather jolly, and so I’ve taken them up. . . . I’m really sorry not to see you entirely settled, but there’ll be some one on board who is going up, no doubt.”
“I suppose so,” I answered in a flat tone that I use while miserable. Then I wondered what in the world would happen if there was no one on board who was headed for Florence, because the only Italian I knew was, “La luna bella,” which is “The beautiful moon,” and I didn’t see what that would do on a railroad train, and especially since I was going to travel by day.
“How do you say Florence in Italian?” I asked, after I changed feet again.
“Firenze,” Mrs. Hamilton responded, as she powdered the back of her hands, “and don’t worry, we’ll surely locate some one who will care for you—”
But that only half cheered me, because I had been but a day out of Boston when I realized that Mrs. Hamilton is like a lot of people who talk a good deal. She is a good promiser, and she promises so much that she can’t do a third of all she intends to. Really the only thing she did do that she had forecast doing, was getting seasick, and she, herself, didn’t entirely cause that. A couple of days of rough weather helped her.
However, to go back, I blamed her unjustly this time, for while I was idling around the deck after dinner, wishing that I had nothing on my mind to keep me from enjoying the salt tang in the air, and the pretty phosphorescent, silver lights that gleam in the water where the prow of the boat cuts it, she came toward me, and said she had found some one who would help me reach Florence safely.
“A Mr. Terrance Wake,” she said, “probably you’ve never heard of him, but he is rather noted. . . . Writes on art, all that sort of thing, and has a perfect love of a villa near Florence. . . . He says he’ll he delighted to be of any service to you—”
“Well, if he’ll just let me follow him, it’ll be all right,” I answered, and Mrs. Hamilton laughed.
“Funny child,” she said, and then, “I must go in; I was dummy. . . . I’ll present Mr. Wake in the morning—”