like a moving picture
gallery, we made the acquaintance of those painted carts which are
indigenous to the island. Quaintly rudimentary as carts, these
extraordinary vehicles are remarkable as works of art, and the Goddess
did exactly what I expected of her--wanted to buy one. With her usual
quick discrimination, she picked out a fine specimen, the wheels,
shafts, and underwork a mass of elaborate wood-carving, richly coloured,
the boldly painted panels representing a victory of Roger's, attended
with great slaughter. The little horse was jingling with bells, and
almost overweighted with his towering scarlet plumes.

"I must have that," exclaimed my impulsive Angel. "Please stop the car,
Brown, and ask the man how much he will sell it for, just as it
stands--harness and all, but not the horse."

The much-enduring Brown stopped, ran back, hailed the owner of the cart,
who was accompanied by a dove-eyed wife and seven Saracenic children all
piled in anyhow on top of each other like parcels. Never, probably, was
a man more surprised than by the question hurled at him, but Sicilians
retain too deep a strain of the oriental to show that they are
flustered. He said in a strange _patois_ that his cart was the pride and
joy of the household; that it had been decorated by the one man in
Sicily who had inherited the true art of historical cart-painting; that
it was one of the best on the island, and he had expected it to remain
an ornament to his family unto the third and fourth generations, but
that he would part with it for the sum of one thousand lira. I beat him
down until, with tears in his magnificent eyes, he consented to accept
two-thirds, which really was more than the cart was worth, or than he
had expected to get when he began to bargain. The cart was Miss
Randolph's, and later that day I arranged about having it taken to
pieces, boxed, and sent to New York. She was delighted with her
purchase, and in such a radiant mood that she thought everything and
everyone she saw perfect, from the men milking goats to the dramatically
talented _gardien_ of the beautiful old red-domed San Giovanni degli
Eremiti, once a mosque.

The German Emperor is rather a hero of hers, and when we left the car in
the street and visited the Palazzo Reale she was charmed to learn that
he had pronounced a view from a certain balcony the finest he had ever
seen, resting his elbows on the iron railing and gazing out over the
city for half an hou