The Christmas holidays were fast approaching, and Maureen, Henrietta, Daisy and Dominic were to meet the beloved Rector in Rome. Maureen's heart beat high with delight. Henrietta and Daisy were also excited, but not to the same degree.
At last the day when they were to start arrived. They were to be exactly four weeks away. Henrietta enjoyed the travelling very much. They got to Rome at midnight of the second day.
CHAPTER XXVI. THE LESSON NOT YET LEARNED.
Now many of the girls who read this story will doubtless imagine that Henrietta Mostyn has learned her lesson and will in future be at least an ordinarily good girl, not breaking out into any violent crises of bad temper and naughtiness. But the girls who do think so do not quite realise Henrietta's nature.
For the first couple of days she was delighted with the life at the charming hotel where Mr. O'Brien had taken rooms for his party. The foreign food was also agreeable to her palate. She could talk as much as she pleased, and she certainly did chatter to her heart's content, but the beauty and the glory and the greatness of Rome were not for one like Henrietta.
The great Church of St. Peter's puzzled her, but aroused no respect. The pictures at the Vatican which so enraptured Maureen and Dominic wearied her to distraction. The different churches they visited were all beautiful to Maureen, Dominic, and Mr. O'Brien, but go where they would, see what they might, the only thing that really pleased Henrietta was her food, her admirable food, and the different dresses that the ladies wore who came in and out of the hotel.
As to everything else, it became a weariness of the flesh to the poor child. She did not like the innumerable shops with their lovely photographs and pieces of rare vertu exposed to view, but she gloated over the shops which displayed chocolates, cakes, and other dainty sweetmeats. She liked, too, to see the shops full of colour. She wanted brightness. She had a perfect passion for sweets and very gay beads and for brightness. In short, Henrietta was nothing less than a vigorous little cuckoo hatched in the wrong nest.
She was still, it is true, anxious to please Maureen, but otherwise she was sick of Rome.