e does the ordering
it frees us?"

Mrs. Arbuthnot said she did see, but nevertheless she thought it
rather silly to have everything taken out of their hands.

"I love things to be taken out of my hands," said Mrs. Wilkins.

"But we found San Salvatore," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, "and it is
rather silly that Mrs. Fisher should behave as if it belonged only to
her."

"What is rather silly," said Mrs. Wilkins with much serenity, "is
to mind. I can't see the least point in being in authority at the
price of one's liberty."

Mrs. Arbuthnot said nothing to that for two reasons--first,
because she was struck by the remarkable and growing calm of the
hitherto incoherent and excited Lotty, and secondly because what she
was looking at was so very beautiful.

All down the stone steps on either side were periwinkles in full
flower, and she could now see what it was that had caught at her the
night before and brushed, wet and scented, across her face. It was
wistaria. Wistaria and sunshine . . . she remembered the
advertisement. Here indeed were both in profusion. The wistaria was
tumbling over itself in its excess of life, its prodigality of
flowering; and where the pergola ended the sun blazed on scarlet
geraniums, bushes of them, and nasturtiums in great heaps, and
marigolds so brilliant that they seemed to be burning, and red and pink
snapdragons, all outdoing each other in bright, fierce colour. The
ground behind these flaming things dropped away in terraces to the sea,
each terrace a little orchard, where among the olives grew vines on
trellises, and fig-trees, and peach-trees, and cherry-trees. The
cherry-trees and peach-trees were in blossom--lovely showers of white
and deep rose-colour among the trembling delicacy of the olives; the
fig-leaves were just big enough to smell of figs, the vine-buds were
only beginning to show. And beneath these trees were groups of blue
and purple irises, and bushes of lavender, and grey, sharp cactuses,
and the grass was thick with dandelions and daisies, and right down at
the bottom was the sea. Colour seemed flung down anyhow, anywhere;
every sort of colour, piled up in heaps, pouring along in rivers--the
periwinkles looked exactly as if they were being poured down each side
of the steps--and flowers that grow only in borders in England, proud
flowers keeping themselves to themselves over there, such as the great
blue irises and the lavender, were being jostled by small, shining