Mae Madden | Page 6

grove of oranges, moonlight and a
boat if it please you."
"By the way," suggested Albert, "about our plans; we really should

begin to agitate the matter at once."
"Yes, to do our fighting on shipboard. Let us agree to hoist the white
flag the day we sight land, else we shall settle down into a regular War
of the Roses and never decide," laughed Norman.
"As there are six minds," continued Albert, "there will have to be some
giving up."
"Why do you look at me?" enquired Mae. "I am the very most unselfish
person in the world. I'll settle down anywhere for the winter, provided
only that it is not in Rome."
"But that is the very place," cried Edith, and Albert, and Mrs. Jerrold
from her camp-chair.
"O, how dreadful! The only way to prevent it will be for us to stand
firm, boys, and make it a tie."
"But Norman is especially eager to go to Rome," said Edith, "and that
makes us four strong at once in favor of that city."
"But is not Rome a fearful mixture of dead Caesar's bones and dirty
beggars? And mustn't one carry hundreds of dates at one's fingertips to
appreciate this, and that, and the other? Is it not all tremendously and
overwhelmingly historical, and don't you have to keep exerting your
mind and thinking and remembering? I would rather go down to
Southern Italy and look at lazzaroni lie on stone walls, in red cloaks, as
they do in pictures, and not be obliged to topple off the common Italian
to pile the gray stone with old memories of some great dead man.
Everything is ghostly in Rome. Now, there must be some excitement in
Southern Italy. There's Vesuvius, and she isn't dead--like Nero--but a
living demon, that may erupt any night, and give you a little red grave
by the sea for your share."
"She's not nearly through yet," laughed Edith, as Mae paused for
breath.

"I'm only afraid," said Mae, "that after I had been down there a week, I
should forget English, buy a contadina costume, marry a child of the
sun, and run away from this big world with its puzzles and lessons, and
rights and wrongs. Imagine me in my doorway as you passed in your
travelling carriage, hot and tired on your way-- say to Sorrento. I would
dress my beautiful Italian all up in scarlet flowers and wreathe his big
hat and kiss his brown eyes and take his brown hand, and then we
would run along by the bay and laugh at you stiff, grand world's folks
as we skipped past you."
"We shall know where to look for you, if ever you do disappear," said
Norman Mann.
"But, my dear Mae," added Albert, "though this is amusing, it is utterly
useless."
"Amusing things always are," said Mae.
"The question is, shall we or shall we not go to Rome for the winter?"
"Certainly, by all means, and if I don't like it, I'll run away to Sorrento,"
and Mae shook her sunny head and twinkled her eyes in a fascinating
sort of way, that made Eric feel a proud brotherly pleasure in this saucy
young woman, and that gave Norman Mann a sort of feeling he had had
a good deal of late, a feeling hard to define, though we have all known
it, a delicious concoction of pleasure and pain. His eyes were fixed on
Mae, now. "What is it?" she asked. "You will like Rome, I am sure."
"No, I never like what I think I shall not."
"It might save some trouble, then, if I ask you now if you expect to like
me," said he, in a lower tone. "Why certainly, I do like you very much,"
she replied, honestly. "What a stupid question," he thinks, vexedly.
"Why did I tell him I liked him?" she thinks, blushingly. So the waves
of anxiety and doubt begin to swell in these two hearts as the outside
waves beat with a truer sea-motion momently against the steamer's
side.
Between days of sea-sickness come delightful intervals of calm sea and

fresh breezes, when the party fly to the hurricane deck to get the very
quintessence of life on the ocean wave. One morning Mrs. Jerrold and
Edith were sitting there alone, with rugs and all sorts of head devices in
soft wools and flannels, and books and a basket of fruit. The matron of
the party was a tall, fine-looking woman, a good type of genuine New
England stock softened by city breeding. New Englanders are so many
propositions from Euclid, full of right angles and straight lines, but
easy living and the dressmaker's art combine to turn the corners gently.
Edith was like her mother, but softened by a