“You have an extraordinary way of putting things,” remarked Mrs. Portheris to her nephew.  “Very extraordinary.  But I am glad to hear that you agree with me,” and she looked as if she did not understand momma’s acquiescent smile.

We went our several ways to see the baths, and the Comic Theatre, the bakehouse and the gymnasium; and I had a little walk by myself in the Street of Abundance, where the little empty houses waited patiently on either side for those to return who had gone out, and the sun lay full on their floors of dusty mosaic, and their gardens where nothing grew.  It seemed to me, as it seems to everybody, that Pompeii was not dead, but asleep, and her tints were so clear and gay that her dreams might be those of a ballet-girl.  A solitary yellow dog chased a lizard in the sun, and the pebbles he knocked about made an absurdly disturbing noise.  Beyond the vague tinted roofless walls that stretched over the pleasant little peninsula, the blue sea rippled tenderly, remembering much delight, and the place seemed to smile in its sleep.  It was easy to understand why Cicero chose to have his villa in the midst of such light-heartedness, and why the gods, perhaps, decided that they had lent too much laughter to Pompeii.  I made free of the hospitality of Cornelius Rufus and sat for a while in his exedra, where he himself, in marble on a little pillar in the middle of the room, made me as welcome as if I had been a client or a neighbour.  We considered each other across the centuries, making mutual allowances, and spent the most sociable half-hour.  I take a personal interest in the city’s disaster now—­it overwhelmed one of my friends.

CHAPTER XVII.

On the Lungarno in Florence, in the cool of the evening, we walked together, the Senator, momma, Dicky, and I. Dicky radiated depression, if such a thing is atmospherically possible; we all moved in it.  Mr. Dod had been banished from the Portheris party, and he groaned over the reflection that it was his own fault.  At Pompeii I had exerted myself in his interest to such an extent that Mr. Mafferton detached himself from Mrs. Portheris and attached himself to momma for the drive home.  Little did I realise that one could be too agreeable in a good cause.  Dicky insinuated himself with difficulty into Mr. Mafferton’s vacant place opposite Mrs. Portheris, and even before the carriages started I saw that he was going to have a bad time.  His own version of the experience was painful in the extreme, and he represented the climax as having occurred just as they arrived at the hotel.  The unfortunate youth must have been goaded to his fate, for his general attitude toward matters of orthodoxy was most discreet.

“There is something Biblical,” said Mrs. Portheris (so Dicky related), “that those Pompeiian remains remind me of, and I cannot think what it is.”

“Lot’s wife, mamma?” said Isabel.