“As there are six minds,” continued Albert, “there will have to be some giving up.”
“Why do you look at me?” enquired Mae. “I am the very most unselfish person in the world. I’ll settle down anywhere for the winter, provided only that it is not in Rome.”
“But that is the very place,” cried Edith, and Albert, and Mrs. Jerrold from her camp-chair.
“O, how dreadful! The only way to prevent it will be for us to stand firm, boys, and make it a tie.”
“But Norman is especially eager to go to Rome,” said Edith, “and that makes us four strong at once in favor of that city.”
“But is not Rome a fearful mixture of dead Caesar’s bones and dirty beggars? And mustn’t one carry hundreds of dates at one’s finger-tips to appreciate this, and that, and the other? Is it not all tremendously and overwhelmingly historical, and don’t you have to keep exerting your mind and thinking and remembering? I would rather go down to Southern Italy and look at lazzaroni lie on stone walls, in red cloaks, as they do in pictures, and not be obliged to topple off the common Italian to pile the gray stone with old memories of some great dead man. Everything is ghostly in Rome. Now, there must be some excitement in Southern Italy. There’s Vesuvius, and she isn’t dead—like Nero—but a living demon, that may erupt any night, and give you a little red grave by the sea for your share.”
“She’s not nearly through yet,” laughed Edith, as Mae paused for breath.
“I’m only afraid,” said Mae, “that after I had been down there a week, I should forget English, buy a contadina costume, marry a child of the sun, and run away from this big world with its puzzles and lessons, and rights and wrongs. Imagine me in my doorway as you passed in your travelling carriage, hot and tired on your way—say to Sorrento. I would dress my beautiful Italian all up in scarlet flowers and wreathe his big hat and kiss his brown eyes and take his brown hand, and then we would run along by the bay and laugh at you stiff, grand world’s folks as we skipped past you.”
“We shall know where to look for you, if ever you do disappear,” said Norman Mann.
“But, my dear Mae,” added Albert, “though this is amusing, it is utterly useless.”