Paris they feared it;
at Modane they knew it; at Mezzago they concealed it, driving out to
Castagneto in two separate flys, the nose of the one almost touching
the back of the other the whole way. But when the road suddenly left
off at the church and the steps, further evasion was impossible; and
faced by this abrupt and difficult finish to their journey there was
nothing for it but to amalgamate.

Because of Mrs. Fisher's stick Lady Caroline had to see about
everything. Mrs. Fisher's intentions, she explained from her fly when
the situation had become plain to her, were active, but her stick
prevented their being carried out. The two drivers told Lady Caroline
boys would have to carry the luggage up to the castle, and she went in
search of some, while Mrs. Fisher waited in the fly because of her
stick. Mrs. Fisher could speak Italian, but only, she explained, the
Italian of Dante, which Matthew Arnold used to read with her when she
was a girl, and she thought this might be above the heads of boys.
Therefore Lady Caroline, who spoke ordinary Italian very well, was
obviously the one to go and do things.

"I am in your hands," said Mrs. Fisher, sitting firmly in her
fly. "You must please regard me as merely an old woman with a stick."

And presently, down the steps and cobbles to the piazza, and
along the quay, and up the zigzag path, Lady Caroline found herself as
much obliged to walk slowly with Mrs. Fisher as if she were her own
grandmother.

"It's my stick," Mrs. Fisher complacently remarked at intervals.

And when they rested at those bends of the zigzag path where
seats were, and Lady Caroline, who would have liked to run on and get
to the top quickly, was forced in common humanity to remain with Mrs.
Fisher because of her stick, Mrs. Fisher told her how she had been on a
zigzag path once with Tennyson.

"Isn't his cricket wonderful?" said Lady Caroline absently.

"The Tennyson," said Mrs. Fisher, turning her head and observing
her a moment over her spectacles.

"Isn't he?" said Lady Caroline.

"And it was a path, too," Mrs. Fisher went on severely,
"curiously like this. No eucalyptus tree, of course, but otherwise
curiously like this. And at one of the bends he turned and said to
me--I see him now turning and saying to me--"

Yes, Mrs. Fisher would have to be checked. And so would these
two up at the window. She had better begin at once. She was sorry she
had got off the wall. All she need h