It was with intense surprise that George, one bright morning, bumped literally into Irma and her mother on one of the principal streets of Leghorn, on the west coast of Italy. (George preferred the more “mellifluent” name Livorno—Leghorn always reminded him in his subconscious mind of a kind of chicken, and he had an irresistible impulse to laugh, which would have been fatal to all true sentiment). After the conventional references to the small size of the world, after all, George inquired:
“What are you doing here, of all places? You never told me you expected to take in Italy.”
“We really didn’t think at first we would, George, but I wanted to see it so badly that mother finally gave in, and here we are! You don’t look overjoyed to see me, George, or are you overcome by the shock?”
“Nonsense, Irma; you surprised me, that’s all. I was in the clouds just now, reciting Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’ to myself, to the intense annoyances of all the Livornian traffic-policemen (I presume that’s what they call the creatures). Where are you staying, Mrs. Bench?”
“We’re at the Continental, George; do come up and see us some time. We don’t know a soul, and it’s terribly lonely.”
“Then I shall play the rôle of the Friend From Home to you and Irma, and show you with great and unabating gusto all my snapshots. How about that for a dull evening’s entertainment?”
“Splendid!” said Irma without much enthusiasm. George was always trying to be so infernally clever!
“I’ll come up to-night,” said George in a moment of inspiration, “with appropriate guide-books and illustrated slides.”
And he walked off down the street—but in the confusion he seemed to have forgotten the last few lines of Shelley’s lyric.