"The driver will swindle you."
"I'll risk that," he answered. "Just now we're lucky if we get a carriage at all." He reached up and prodded the jehu in the ribs with his cane. "How much to the Hotel Vesuvius?" he demanded, loudly.
The man woke up and flourished his whip, at the same time bursting into a flood of Italian.
The girls listened carefully. They had been trying to study Italian from a small book Beth had bought entitled "Italian in Three Weeks without a Master," but not a word the driver of the carriage said seemed to have occurred in the vocabulary of the book. He repeated "Vesuvio" many times, however, with scornful, angry or imploring intonations, and Louise finally said:
"He thinks you want to go to the volcano, Uncle. The hotel is the Vesuve, not the Vesuvius."
"What's the difference?"
"I don't know."
"All right; you girls just hop in, and leave the rest to me."
He tumbled them all into the vehicle, bag and baggage, and then said sternly to the driver:
"Ho-tel Ve-suve—Ve-suve—ho-tel Ve-suve! Drive there darned quick, or I'll break your confounded neck."