fussy about my
overdoing it till we settled down at Sorrento. That's a place on the Bay
of Naples, and just the loveliest bit of it--oranges everywhere. It's
ten miles from Castellamare, the nearest railway-station, but the drive
along the edge of the bay, on a road cut into the cliffs hundreds of
feet up, makes you feel like heaven.

Vesuvius is quite near too, only that was no good, for the mater
wouldn't let me go there, which was a most aggravating shame, and a
terrible waste of opportunity, which I told her she would regret ever
after. The crater was as jolly as could be, making no end of a smoke,
and pouring out lava like a regular old smelting-furnace; but she said
she wasn't going to bring me out to Italy to cure a cold, only to have
me burnt up like one of those Johnnies they show you at Pompeii who were
caught years and years ago. As if I should have been such an ass as to
get caught myself.

What I was going to tell you about, however, was this. We had been at
Sorrento six or seven weeks, and I'd got to know the places round that
were worth seeing, and a lot of the people too, who jabbered at you
thirteen to the dozen, and only laughed when you couldn't make out what
they were saying. I'd picked up some of their words--enough to get what
I wanted with, and that's the best way to learn a language; a jolly
sight better than fagging along with a grammar and stupid exercises,
which are only full of things no fellow wants.

So the mater had got used to letting me go about alone, and one morning
she found she wanted some things from Naples, and wasn't feeling up to
the journey. She wondered at breakfast if she could dare to let me go
for her. I didn't seem eager, for if they think you particularly want to
do a thing, they are sure to try to stop you. So I sat quiet, though I
could hardly swallow my coffee--I was so keen to go.

However, she wanted the things badly, and at last she had to ask me if I
would go for her. It's always so: it doesn't matter how badly _you_ want
a thing, but when the mater or sister or aunt think they want some
idiotic trash that everybody in his senses would rather be without,
you've simply got to fetch it for them, or they'll die.

She rather spoilt it by giving me half an hour's jawing as to what I was
to do, to take care of this or that, and not to get lost or miss the
train--you know how they go on and spoil a fellow's pleasure--as if I
couldn't go to Naples and back without a wo