ed
kind of way, of its own impressiveness. I felt sure that, if I could
only remember, I must have studied heaps of things about this place at
school; and the town was full of students who were probably studying
them, with more profit, now. They were very Italian, very good-looking,
very young youths, indeed; and they were all so interested in us that it
seemed ungrateful not to pay more attention to them than to their
background. They grouped round our automobile with a crowd of less
interesting people, when we had stopped before a hotel, and some of the
students came so close in the hope of seeing what was behind the
motor-veils, that Maida was embarrassed, and Mamma and I pretended to
be.

XIV

A CHAPTER OF SUNSHINE AND SHADOW

Mamma's lunch was spoiled because, in pronouncing "campanile" for the
first time, she rhymed it with the river Nile, and realized what she had
done when some one else soon after inadvertently said it in the right
way. She didn't get over this for a long time, so the landlord profited,
and must have been pleased, as all the Italians at the table d'hote took
twice of everything. Those who were not officers were middle-aged men
with fat smiles which made them look like what I call "drummers," and
Sir Ralph wastes time in naming commercial travellers. He and Mr.
Barrymore explained that, at all these quiet provincial hotels with
their domed roofs and painted ceilings, their long tables and great
flasks of wine hung in metal slings, more than half the customers come
every day to eat steadily through cheap monthly subscriptions.

"They can live like fighting cocks for next to nothing," said Sir Ralph.
"If _The Riviera Sun_ ever suffers an eclipse, I shall probably end my
days in a place like this, Pavia for choice, because then I can make my
friends at home believe that I live here to worship the Certosa."

Now to make up for her slip about the campanile, Mamma began to talk
about the Certosa as if it were an intimate friend of hers; but though
she hurried to get out the word while Sir Ralph's pronunciation of it
still echoed under the painted dome, her first syllable was shaped so
much like a "Shirt" that I had to take a drink of water quickly. It is a
funny thing, if people have no ear for music, and can't tell one tune
from another, they don't seem to _hear_ foreign words rightly, and so,
when they speak, their pronunciation is like "Yankee Doodle" disguised
as "God Save the King."