st him his friend?

* * * * *

"Ah, dear old fellow--enough!" said Hallin at last--"take me back to
Italy! You have told me so little--such a niggardly little!"

"I told you that we went and I came back in a water-spout," said Aldous;
"the first rain in Northern Italy for four months--worse luck! 'Rain at
Reggio, rain at Parma.--At Lodi rain, Piacenza rain!'--that might about
stand for my diary, except for one radiant day when my aunt, Betty
Macdonald, and I descended on Milan, and climbed the Duomo."

"Did Miss Betty amuse you?"

Aldous laughed.

"Well, at least she varied the programme. The greater part of our day in
Milan Aunt Neta and I spent in rushing after her like its tail after a
kite. First of all, she left us in the Duomo Square, running like a
deer, and presently, to Aunt Neta's horror, we discovered that she was
pursuing a young Italian officer in a blue cloak. When we came up with
the pair she was inquiring, in her best Italian, where the 'Signor' got
his cloak, because positively she must have one like it, and he, cap in
hand, was explaining to the Signorina that if she would but follow him
round the corner to his military tailor's, she could be supplied on the
spot. So there we all went, Miss Betty insisting. You can imagine Aunt
Neta. She bought a small shipload of stuff--and then positively skipped
for joy in the street outside--the amazed officer looking on. And as for
her career over the roof of the Duomo--the agitation of it nearly
brought my aunt to destruction--and even I heaved a sigh of relief when
I got them both down safe."

"Is the creature all tricks?" said Hallin, with a smile. "As you talk of
her to me I get the notion of a little monkey just cut loose from a
barrel organ."

"Oh! but the monkey has so much heart," said Aldous, laughing again, as
every one was apt to laugh who talked about Betty Macdonald, "and it
makes friends with every sick and sorry creature it comes across,
especially with old maids! It amounts to genius, Betty's way with old
maids. You should see her in the middle of them in the hotel _salon_ at
night--a perfect ring of them--and the men outside, totally neglected,
and out of temper. I have never seen Betty yet in a room with somebody
she thought ill at ease, or put in the shade--a governess, or a
schoolgirl, or a lumpish boy--that she did not devote herself to that
somebody. It is a pretty instinct; I have often wondered whethe