to discover America.  The Senator also remarked that you could see from the position of the statue, right there in full view of the travelling public, that the Genoese thought a lot of Columbus; relied upon him, in fact, as their biggest attraction.  Momma examined him from the carriage.  She said it was most gratifying to see him there in his own home, so to speak; but her enthusiasm did not induce her to get out.  Momma’s patriotism has always to be considered in connection with the state of her nerves.

The state of all our nerves was healed in a quarter of an hour.  The Senator showed his coupons somewhat truculently, but they were received as things of price with disarming bows and real gladness.  We were led through rambling passages into lofty white chambers, with marble floors and iron bedsteads, full of simplicity and cleanliness, where we removed all recollections of Paris without being obliged to consider a stuffy carpet or satin-covered furniture.  Italy, in the persons of the portier and the chambermaid, laid hold of us with intelligible smiles, and we were charmed.  Inside, the place was full of long free lines and cool polished surfaces, and pleasant curves.  Outside, a thick-fronded palm swayed in the evening wind against a climbing hill of many-tinted, many-windowed houses, in all the soft colours we knew of before.  When the portier addressed momma as “Signora” her cup of bliss ran over, and she made up her mind that she felt able, after all, to go down to dinner.

Remembering their sentiments, we bowed as slightly as possible when we saw the Miss Binghams across the table, and the Senator threw that into his voice, as he inquired how they liked la belle Italie so far, and whether they had had any trouble with their trunks coming in, which might have given them to understand that his politeness was very perfunctory.  If they perceived it, they allowed it to influence them the other way, however.  They asked, almost as cordially as if we were middle-class English people, whether we had actually survived that trip to Versailles, and forbore to comment when we said we had enjoyed it, beyond saying that if there was one enviable thing it was the American capacity for pleasure.  Yet one could see quite plainly that the vacuum caused by the absence of the American capacity for pleasure was filled in their case by something very superior to it.

“This city new to you?” asked the Senator as the meal progressed.

“In a sense, yes,” replied Miss Nancy Bingham.

“We’ve never studied it before,” said Miss Cora.

“I suppose it has a fascination all its own,” remarked momma.

“Oh, rather!” exclaimed Miss Nancy Bingham, and I reflected that when she was in England she must have seen a great deal of school-boy society.  I decided at once, noting its effect upon the lips of a middle-aged maiden lady, that momma must not be allowed to pick up the expression.