a piece of paper he took out of the
basket and a cabbage and onions he put in, and then it went swinging
upwards and he picked up his barrow again, and we rattled on and left
him shouting and pushing his hat back--it was not a soft felt but a
bowler--to look up at the other windows. In spite of the bowler it was a
picturesque and Neapolitan incident, and it left us much divided as to
the contents of the piece of paper.

"My idea is," said the Senator, "that the young woman in the red jersey
was the hired girl and that note was what you might call a clandestine
communication."

"Since we are in Naples," remarked Mr. Dod, "I think, Senator, your
deduction is correct. Where we come from a slavey with any self-respect
would put her sentiments on a gilt-edged correspondence card in a
scented envelope with a stamp on the outside and ask you to kindly drop
it into the pillar box on your way to business; but this chimes in with
all you read about Naples."

"Perfectly ridiculous!" said momma. "Mark my words, that note was either
a list of vegetables wanted, or an intimation that if they weren't going
to be fresher than the last, that man needn't stop for orders in
future. And in a country as destitute of elevators as this one is I
suppose you couldn't keep a servant a week if you didn't let her save
the stairs somehow. But I must say if I were going to have cabbage and
onions the same day I wouldn't like the neighbours to know it."

I entirely agreed with momma, and was reflecting, while they talked of
something else, on the injustice of considering ours the sentimental
sex, when the Senator leaned forward and advised me in an undertone to
make a note of the market basket.

"And take my theory to account for the piece of paper," said he; "your
mother's may be the most likely, but mine is _what the public will
expect_."

And always the shadows of the narrow streets crooked in the end into a
little plaza full of sun and beggars, and lemonade stands, and hawkers
of wild strawberries, and when the great bank of a flower-stall stood
just where the shadow ended sharply and the sun began, it made something
to remember. After that our way lay through a suburban parish _fete_,
and we pursued it under strings and strings of little glass lanterns,
red, and green, and blue, that swung across the streets; and there were
goats and more children, and momma vainly endeavoured to keep off the
smells with her parasol. Then a region of doc