"So did Jack have them ready," put in Jerry imperturbably.
"Then it's doubly dreadful that they are not posted," retorted Mrs. Fairhew.
Jack leaned forward and settled a pink candle-shade that threatened a conflagration, and by a comment on the inflammability of these table ornaments managed to bring the conversation into safer channels.
In the course of the talk it transpired that the ladies had no very definite plans, except that Mrs. Fairhew had determined, despite the heat of the Italian summer, to visit an old school friend, whose husband was vice-consul at Naples.
"I fancy," she said, "that we shall go straight to Genoa. I'm going to make Katrine work, and to see that she does her duty by the galleries and things,—Florence and all the Tuscan cities, you know. Then Rome and the Campagna. It will be dreadfully hard on us both, I dare say, but we shall be upheld by the proud consciousness of doing our best."
She made a little gesture of comical despair, and her niece laughed.
"It would doubtless be intolerable to either of you without the other," said Jerry in one of his boyishly elaborate attempts to be gallant.
Mrs. Fairhew regarded him with a glance well-bred though quizzical, but evidently perceived that he was completely sincere in his desire to say something agreeable, and smiled, although less broadly than Katrine, who showed in her amusement a row of beautiful teeth.
"Won't it be pretty hot in the south?" asked Jack. "I've never been in Naples in summer, nor south of Rome, in fact; but I've always been told that it is too torrid for foreigners."
"Oh, we are used to it," Mrs. Fairhew returned. "Besides, it is after all the English that have spread the stories about Italy's being so hot. They've been kept at so low a temperature all their lives by their horrid fogs that they're the greatest babies imaginable about climate."