d cried to the
others to follow her. The house was built, as I said, like many houses
in Sorrento, on the edge of a rocky cliff, from which there was fair,
unhindered view over the whole panorama of sea and land. The sun was
descending the western sky, and the flood of Italian light seemed to
transfigure the world. Between the verandah and the absolute edge of
the rocks, the space was filled with beds of flowers and shrubbery; and
a little a one side, so as not to interrupt the view, were fig-trees
and pomegranate-trees and olives. Dolly ran down the steps into the
garden, and the rest of the party could not but come after her. Dolly's
face was flushed with delight.

"Did anybody ever see such colours before?" she cried. "Oh, the
colours! Look at the blue of the water, down there in the shade; and
then see that delicious green beyond, set off by its fringe of white
foam; and then where the sun strikes, and where the clouds are
reflected."

"It is just what you have been seeing in the bay of Naples," said Mrs.
Copley.

"And Vesuvius, mother! Do look at Vesuvius; how noble it is from here,
and in this light."

"We had Vesuvius at Naples too," said Mrs. Copley. "It is a wonder to
me how people can be so fond of being near it, when you never know what
tricks it will play you."

"Mother, dear, the lava _never_ comes so far as this, in the worst
eruptions."

"The fact that it never did does not prove what it may do some time."

"You are not afraid of it, surely?" said Mr. Copley.

"No," said his wife. "But I have no pleasure in looking at anything
that has done, and is going to do, so much mischief. It seems to me a
kind of monster."

"You cannot be fond of the sea, at that rate, Mrs. Copley," Lawrence
observed.

"No, you are right," she said. "The only thing I like about it is, that
it is the way home."

"You don't want to see the way home just now, my dear," said Mr.
Copley. "You have but now got to the place of your desires."

"If you ask me what that is, it is Boston," said Mrs. Copley.

But, however, for a while she did take satisfaction in the quiet and
beauty and sweet air of Sorrento. Dolly revelled in it all. She was
devoted to her mother and her mother's pleasure, it is true; and here
as at Rome and Naples she was thus kept a good deal in the house.
Nevertheless, here, at Sorrento, she tempted her mother to go out. A
little carriage was procured to take her to the edge of one of the
ravines which