"I never could touch it," Katrine said, with an emphatic shake of her head. "I should think a baby brought up on goat's milk would run round and bleat. Why, I think the idea of it is horrid!"
Her eyes sparkled and her whole air was full of a delicious animation, so that it was no wonder Jack threw back his head and laughed, as much in sheer admiration as from amusement. He was in high spirits this morning, the excitement of a mighty resolve stirring in his blood.
"How do you know that you haven't been having goat's milk at the hotel?" he demanded. "Aren't you afraid you'll begin to break out in a baa yourself all of a sudden?"
"Why, how rude you are!" she cried, her dimples deepening and shoaling. "Of course they wouldn't dare to give it to us, and we should know it if they did!"
The young people were being driven in a Neapolitan vettura to the tomb of Vergil. Jack had mentioned the spot that morning at breakfast as being well worth a visit, if only for the view, and said that the ladies ought to see it. Mrs. Fairhew had, for reasons perhaps not wholly unconnected with remembrances of her own youth and the late Mr. Fairhew, declined to make the jaunt, on the score that it was too hot and that she had a thousand trifles to attend to. She had refused her niece's prompt offer of assistance, and so left that young woman free to accept Jack's invitation that she take the drive with him.
Their talk was light enough, the lighter because Jack at least hardly dared to venture to be serious lest he betray how terribly in earnest he was. The sight of a little flock of goats, which had scattered at the pistol-like crack of their driver's whip, had given them a theme for a moment. The agile brown animals skipped along the gutters, assailed by the effervescent profanity of their conductor, a half-naked, slim-limbed lad browner than the beasts themselves; and with more detonations of the whiplash the carriage whirled up the hill with hardly diminished speed as the grade grew steeper. Through picturesque, squalid streets, braver in their poverty than many a splendid thoroughfare, through nooks that seemed to be private courtyards with entire families disposed about them, the carriage took its way noisily; it turned now to the left, now to the right, continually ascending; it brought them to the top of narrow ways down which they looked as through a kaleidoscope gleaming with a confusion of gay colors; it seemed about to land them on the roof of some building which lay directly before them, and then at the last moment whisked around some unseen corner and carried them still higher.
"Isn't it wonderful," Katrine said. "I never saw such a city. I feel almost as if we were in a flying-machine,—we keep going up so and see such wonderful sights all the time. Oh, do look down that street! Did you ever see such colors?"
"It is stunning," Castleport answered, his eyes on her face.
"You didn't look at it at all," she said half pouting, as the carriage whirled them past.
"Oh, I could see it all in your eyes," he returned. "You don't know what excellent mirrors they are."