"Here's an idea. What if we
popped off to Rome to-morrow--straight to the Vyses' hotel? For
I do know what I want. I'm sick of Florence. No, you said you'd
go to the ends of the earth! Do! Do!"
Miss Bartlett, with equal vivacity, replied:
"Oh, you droll person! Pray, what would become of your drive in
the hills?"
They passed together through the gaunt beauty of the square,
laughing over the unpractical suggestion.
Chapter VI: The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert
Eager, Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss
Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in
Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them.
It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a
youth all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his
master's horses up the stony hill. Mr. Beebe recognized him at
once. Neither the Ages of Faith nor the Age of Doubt had
touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany driving a cab. And it was
Persephone whom he asked leave to pick up on the way, saying
that she was his sister--Persephone, tall and slender and pale,
returning with the Spring to her mother's cottage, and still
shading her eyes from the unaccustomed light.
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