Doctor Taylor had ordered rooms for us in a family hotel well spoken of by Americans, and was at the station to conduct us to our quarters.
I was deposited upon a sofa, when my wraps were removed, and lay there, fairly wearied out by the railway journey. The room was fireless and carpetless. I could feel the chill of the stone flooring and the bare walls through the blankets in which I was swathed by distressful Rose, who “guessed these Eyetalians hadn’t the first notion of what American comfort is!” Three long French casements afforded a full view of leaden, low-stooping skies and straight sheets of rain. When a fire of sticks, besmeared with resin, was coaxed into a spiteful flare, the smoke puffed as spitefully into the room, and drifted up to the ceiling twenty feet overhead. Invited by my ever-hospitable husband to seat himself near an apology for a cheery hearthstone—less pitiful to him after his ten years’ residence in Italy than to us, the new arrivals—our friend fell into social chat of ways and means. The carpet would be down to-morrow; the sun would shine to-morrow; I would be rested to-morrow.
He broke off with a genial laugh there, to impart a bit of information we were to prove true to the utmost during the next year:
“Everything is ‘domano’ with Italians. I think the babies are born with it in their mouths. One falls into the habit with mortifying ease.”
I am afraid I dozed for a few minutes, lulled by the patter of rain and the low-toned talk going on at the far (literally) side of the apartment. A lively visitor used to wonder if we “could see across it on cloudy days without an opera-glass.”
This was the next sentence that reached me:
“Thus far, we have met with discouragement. March is the most trying month to weak lungs in America. And ever since we landed in Liverpool we have had nothing but March weather. I think now we shall push on to Algiers”—glancing ruefully at the murky windows. “Upon one thing I am determined—to find a land where there is no March, as we know the month. For one year I want to secure that for my wife’s breathing apparatus.”
“I know of but one such region.” The answer was in the slight drawl natural to the George Taylor I used to know; the speaker stared sombrely into the peevish fire.
“And that?” interrogated the other, eagerly.
The drawl had now a nasal touch befitting the question: