“This is rich fruity port,” said he, filling the glasses. “Evans, the grocer, told me I should get nothing like it at the price in London. You are to drink it. It will do you good.”
Aline, still penitent, obeyed meekly.
“How could you be so extravagant, Jimmie?” she said in mild protest. “It must have cost quite three shillings.”
“And sixpence,” said Jimmie, unabashed. He lifted up his glass. “Now here's to our Wanderjahr, or as much of it as we can run to.”
“Whatever do you mean, Jimmie?”
“I mean my dear,” said he, “that we are going to take a knapsack, a tambourine and a flute, and appropriate ribbons for our costumes, and beg our way through southern Europe.”
He explained and developed his plan, the result of his meditations, in his laughing picturesque way. They were doing nothing but eating expensive fog in November London. A diet of sunshine and garlic would be cheaper. They would walk under the olive-trees and drift about on lagoons, and whisper with dead ages in the moonlit gloom of crumbling palaces. They would go over hills on donkeys. They would steep their souls in Perugino, Del Sarto, Giorgione. They would teach the gaunt Italian flea to respect British Keating's powder. They would fraternise with the beautiful maidens of Arles and sit on the top of Giotto's Campanile. They would do all kinds of impossible things. Afford it? Of course they could. Had he not received his just dues from the princess and sold two pictures a week or two ago? At this point he fell thinking for a couple of dreamy minutes.
“I meant to give you a carriage, dear,” he said at last in mild apology. “I'm afraid it will have to be a third-class one.”
“A fourth or fifth would be good enough for me,” cried Aline. “Or I could walk all the way with you. Don't I know you have planned it out just for my sake?”
“Rubbish, my dear,” said Jimmie, holding the precious wine to the light. “I'm taking you because I don't see how I can leave you behind. You have no idea what an abominable nuisance you'll be.”