"Duty is a very good reason," said Dolly. "Don't you see, you are sure of Mr. Shubrick, that in any case he will not do what he thinks wrong? I think you ought to be a very happy woman, Christina."
But the excursions were made without Mr. Shubrick's social or material help. They went to Capri; they visited the grottoes; nay, they made a party to go up Vesuvius. All that was to be seen, they saw; and, as Christina declared, they left nothing undone that they could do. Then came the breaking up.
"Are you expecting to go back to that stuffy little place at Sorrento?" Mr. Copley asked. It was the evening before their departure, and all the party were sitting, scattered about upon the verandah.
"Father!" cried Dolly. "It is the airiest, floweriest, sunniest, brightest, most delightful altogether house, that ever took lodgers in!"
"It certainly wasn't stuffy, Mr. Copley," said his wife.
"Dolly likes it because you couldn't get a glass of good wine in the house. Whatever the rest of humanity like, she makes war upon. I conclude you are reckoning upon going back there, my wife and daughter?"
"Are not you, Mr. Copley?" his wife asked.
"I must be excused."
"Then where are you going?"
"Home."