There are steep streets called gradoni, which climb up from the old town below to the new town above; their slope is assisted by shallow steps at intervals. So shallow are the steps that you hardly notice each as you take it. Not until you arrive at the top and look down on the ascending way do you perceive how its climbing was assisted. Of like nature is the ascending alley of human penetration. At the top is the daylight; in the analogy, perceptiveness quite achieved.
In her ascending alley Betty should, by the end of February, have got far enough not to have taken Miranda Venables to lunch at the Trattoria Buonaventura with her friends Gina Lunelli and Morello, the painter. She met Miranda on Santa Lucia. Miranda remarked:
'I say, I'm jolly glad I've met you. I've lost Prudence. Mother sent me out with her to look at churches and things, because my ignorance is a disgrace, and Prudence stayed so long looking at some rotten mosaic things that I had to come out. Then we somehow missed each other, and I've been playing about alone. I say, I should think it would do if you showed me things, if I must see them. But there's nothing to see, is there? Nothing but the Aquarium, and I've seen that. Well, anyhow, I'll come round a bit with you, shall I, and then I can say I've seen something. Mother goes about with Murray; rotten book; I hate it. You haven't got it about you, have you?' she added suspiciously.
'No. You see, I'm a mine of information in myself. It is so nice to be well informed, isn't it?'
Miranda observed, between compliment and irony:
'You know an awful lot, I suppose.'
Betty nodded.
'One picks things up—one likes to learn. We might have a really instructive morning, only it's time for lunch. You'd better come and have lunch too. The Trattoria Buonaventura, in the Toledo—do you know it? No, probably not. I'm going to meet some friends there.'
'Well, I'll come. But it's only half-past twelve; it's a funny time for lunch.'