The Four Corners Abroad

"Bah!" exclaimed Nan. "Don't hand us out any more bouquets, Carter, we have not places to put them when we are traveling. What are they all doing next door?" The train being rather crowded, the party had to divide, Carter and Mr. Kirk finding place in another carriage, the twins with their mother, Miss Helen and the Pinckneys being next to the three older girls, who were established on a seat opposite three quiet German women.

"The twins are eating chocolate, I believe," Carter said, "at least Jean was. Your mother is talking to Mr. Pinckney and your aunt to Miss Dolores. Hal and I have had a smoke, and I left Hal scribbling things in his note-book with a far-away look in his eyes; so, seeing I was not of any special use, I wandered here to cast myself on your tender mercies. What shall I do when you all leave me? I've half a mind to go back, too."

"And not go to Sicily and Greece? Oh, Carter," Nan protested.

"Well, I am a sociable beast and can't see much fun in traveling alone. If I can find a decent fellow to travel with me, well and good. Hal can't stay. He took his holiday early that he might come with me. I don't see why you all have to leave so soon when you could spend the summer over here as well as not. You don't have to get back before school begins, do you?"

"Yes, we shall have to. At least, so far as we are concerned, it wouldn't matter, but mother wants to go back to see about things on the place, and we don't want her to go without us. She is too precious to be parted from. We had enough of that business last year. Now we all, mother included, have made up our minds that we are not going to be parted unless it is absolutely necessary. We shall trot around together from this on."

"Suppose you were in my shoes, and had to live away from your mother and family," said Carter soberly.

"We'd have to do as you do; grin and bear it."

Carter looked a little wistful, for his life was spent apart from his people, as his health did not permit him to live in Richmond where his parents were. "I wish you would all come out to California again," he said.

"Perhaps we shall, some time, but I don't think it will be next winter. Mother may go to Florida or Asheville after Christmas to bridge over the worst of the year, but the rest of us have got to buckle down to hard study."

Here Mr. Kirk sauntered down the corridor to join his cousin, and they stood talking for a few minutes before returning to their places. A little later they appeared again. "It will soon be time to get our first glimpse of Vesuvius," said Carter, "so don't miss it."

From this time on the girls were wildly enthusiastic. First Vesuvius' "misty rim" appeared, and not long after they were all driving through the picturesque, if dirty streets of the city. Exclamations of delight accented the drive. It was, "Oh, look at that!" and "Oh, see there!" all the way to the very door of the hotel, and then as they stood looking off at the magnificent sweep of bay before them, with Capri and Ischia in the distance, no one made a movement to go in but stood murmuring, "How beautiful!"

With natural youthful energy, the young people were not to be persuaded from starting off at once to explore, and that very evening did indeed climb as far as the villa Floridiana, from which they could look down upon the town with its beautiful surroundings. The climb served as an outlet to superfluous energies, and they came back ready to make plans while they had dinner.

They all trooped to the Aquarium first thing the next morning where Jean and Jack were so entertained they could hardly be dragged away.

"It's like being really in the waters under the earth," said Jack. "I think the octopus is so horrible." She stood regarding it with fascinated eyes.

"If you think it is so horrible what makes you stand and gaze at it?" asked Mary Lee.

"Because I can't help it," returned Jack transfixed.

"It's a place I'd like to come to every day," admitted Mary Lee. "Everything is so wonderfully arranged, and as Jack says you feel as if you were really in a room under the water. I love the living coral."

"And those creer, creer crabs are so interesting," put in Jean.

"Creer, creer crabs does sound rather interesting," said Mr. Kirk laughing.

"Did you ever see such wonderfully colored creatures as some of these are?" said Nan, peering through the glass into the watery home of some of the beautiful Mediterranean fish. "What's Jo doing, Carter?"

"She is amusing herself with the electric fish. She seems to find it more alluring than some of these beauties."

"Shocking!" exclaimed Nan, "though it's hard to shock Jo," she went on with an attempt at a pun.

Carter groaned. "If that's the way it's going to affect you we'd better get out as soon as possible."

"Come over here and see these lovely medusæ," said Miss Helen.

"It's a great place, isn't it?" said Carter joining her. "I'd no idea it would be so tremendously interesting."

"It is the greatest place of its kind in the world, I suppose. Its equipments are very complete, and it is resorted to for study by marine biologists all over the world. The Mediterranean is a marvelous source of supply, and the specimens are constantly being added to."

"Wouldn't have missed it for a good deal," remarked Mr. Pinckney trotting up. "We'll have to come here often, youngsters," he nodded to the twins. "When the others are off looking at their old churches and dried up specimens we'll come here and see these fine wet ones, won't we?" And the twins were only too ready to agree to this.

The young men were possessed with a desire to see the castles of San Martino and St. Elmo that afternoon, but started off alone, while the others took carriages and drove about the city, watching the life in the narrow little streets where gay colored flowers on the balconies, and bits of scarlet or blue clothing, hung from the windows, added to the charm of color.

"I think the cool way in which they carry on their household affairs, their trades or anything at all in the streets, is too funny for words," said Jo. "Do look at that old woman cooking macaroni over a handful of charcoal, Nan. Doesn't she remind you of one of the witches in Macbeth?"

"And see that baby with scarce a stitch to cover his dear fat little brown body. And oh, the flowers, the flowers!"

"Nan, Nan, see there's a street with steps all the way up the middle and the donkeys are going up the steps just as easy," cried Jack. "I see a man mending shoes right out on the pavement."

"And a girl with something to sell, something to eat," said Jean. "I wonder what it is."

"Nothing you would like, probably," Nan told her. "Oh, there is a funeral procession. What a queer looking lot of people, and what a gorgeous coffin."

"It is probably empty," Miss Helen told her. "They seldom bear the body in procession, for it is generally taken to the cemetery beforehand."

"Who are the men wearing the white things with holes for their eyes? It looks like a sheet and pillow-case party," declared Jo.

"Those are probably members of the brotherhood to which the dead man belonged," Miss Helen returned.

"It is certainly a great show, like some of the old pictures you see in the galleries," said Nan.

They watched the curious procession move on and then turned their attention to such passing scenes as a man with a tray of selected cigar ends which he had picked up in the streets and which he was offering to buyers, or to a row of booths where fish, meat and macaroni were being cooked and finding a ready sale. In between the moving throng the patient panniered donkeys threaded their way, those laden with vegetables of different hues adding more color to the scene. It was a lively show, sometimes amusing, sometimes pathetic, always interesting, as every one declared.

A morning at the Museum, an afternoon prowling around the shops, looking up souvenirs, a tour of the principal churches for some of the party while the others went again to the Aquarium, took them to their third day which was set apart for an excursion to Pompeii.

"The education I am receiving!" remarked Jo to Nan when they passed in through the entrance of the ancient city. "I have always had a very hazy idea of what Pompeii was like, though I have lately learned when it existed. In fact I was hazy about so many things that are now clear facts in my mind, that I expect to overpower my family completely when I get back. I hope my father won't consider that I have completed my education entirely. Perhaps I'd better refrain from showing off, or he may jerk me out of school for the rest of time. Isn't it fun to get your history lessons in this way?"

"Don't mention it," returned Nan. "Our history lessons are so full of illustrations that we'd be idiots if we didn't absorb facts with every breath. Let me see, how long was the place covered up?"

"Oh, for a mere matter of fifteen centuries I believe. It was first mentioned in history in 310 B. C., so Baedeker says. Nice old place, eh?"

"Don't speak of it in that flippant way," returned Nan. "See, Jo, we are going to have that nice-looking guide. Keep your ears open and don't break in upon my efforts to gain fresh knowledge."

For the rest of the morning the party followed their intelligent guide, a young man who spoke English well, and who informed them that he was from Sorrento, but had been in America for several years.

"It's the most uncanny thing to be walking through these streets and go poking into the houses of a dead city," remarked Nan to her aunt. "I'm glad you told us to be sure to read 'The Last Days of Pompeii,' for I can see it all in my mind's eye much more vividly. I fancy Nydia feeling her way through these places and I can imagine just what went on in these houses now I have read Bulwer's descriptions."

"Impressive, very impressive," asserted Mr. Pinckney gazing at the great amphitheatre. "One doesn't feel in the least old, my dear Mrs. Corner, when he is brought face to face with such antiquity. Why, I am a mere infant compared to it." He chuckled mirthfully.

Jean and Jack amused themselves by skipping back and forth over the stepping-stones set across some of the narrow streets, and were charmed with the little lizards which darted out from between the old stones, the sole residents of that ancient and populous town. Mary Lee looked down at the ruts made by the chariot wheels and remarked, "Just think of all the poor animals that must have perished in that dreadful time."

"As for the rest," as Jo said, "they were walking exclamation points. To come upon a town buried for centuries, and then to walk into its kitchens to see its pots and pans, to come upon those great baths and to go poking around the carefully retired courts and bedrooms, dear me, it does set one to conjecturing and exclaiming."

"I love the color, the decorations, the statues and all that," said Nan. "I'm glad they had tried to make it look something as it used to, and have reëstablished gardens so as to give you an idea of what it was like in the long ago."

Believing that the luncheon hour would not find them ready to leave the ruins they had provided themselves with lunch so they could stay as late as they cared to, the evening light giving an added fascination to the silent city.