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"
"No!" cried a voice from the top of the table. "Mr. Beebe, you
are wrong. The first fine afternoon your ladies must go to
Prato."
"That lady looks so clever," whispered Miss Bartlett to her
cousin. "We are in luck."
And, indeed, a perfect torrent of information burst on them.
People told them what to see, when to see it, how to stop the
electric trams, how to get rid of the beggars, how much to give
for a vellum blotter, how much the place would grow upon them.
The Pension Bertolini had decided, almost enthusiastically, that
they would do. Whichever way they looked, kind ladies smiled and
shouted at them. And above all rose the voice of the clever lady,
crying: "Prato! They must go to Prato. That place is too sweetly
squalid for words. I love it; I revel in shaking off the trammels
of respectability, as you know."
The young man named George glanced at the clever lady, and then
returned moodily to his plate. Obviously he and his father did
not do. Lucy, in the midst of her success, found time to wish
they did.


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