Chapter 6 - Page 2

And on the second day the heat struck them, like a hand
laid over the mouth, just as they were walking to see the
tomb of Juliet. From that moment everything went wrong.
They fled from Verona. Harriet's sketch-book was stolen,
and the bottle of ammonia in her trunk burst over her
prayer-book, so that purple patches appeared on all her
clothes. Then, as she was going through Mantua at four in
the morning, Philip made her look out of the window because
it was Virgil's birthplace, and a smut flew in her eye, and
Harriet with a smut in her eye was notorious. At Bologna
they stopped twenty-four hours to rest. It was a FESTA, and
children blew bladder whistles night and day. "What a
religion!" said Harriet. The hotel smelt, two puppies were
asleep on her bed, and her bedroom window looked into a
belfry, which saluted her slumbering form every quarter of
an hour. Philip left his walking-stick, his socks, and the
Baedeker at Bologna; she only left her sponge-bag. Next day
they crossed the Apennines with a train-sick child and a hot
lady, who told them that never, never before had she sweated
so profusely. "Foreigners are a filthy nation," said
Harriet. "I don't care if there are tunnels; open the
windows. "He obeyed, and she got another smut in her eye.
Nor did Florence improve matters. Eating, walking, even a
cross word would bathe them both in boiling water. Philip,
who was slighter of build, and less conscientious, suffered
less. But Harriet had never been to Florence, and between
the hours of eight and eleven she crawled like a wounded
creature through the streets, and swooned before various
masterpieces of art. It was an irritable couple who took
tickets to Monteriano.

"Singles or returns?" said he.

"A single for me," said Harriet peevishly; "I shall
never get back alive."

"Sweet creature!" said her brother, suddenly breaking
down. "How helpful you will be when we come to Signor Carella!"

"Do you suppose," said Harriet, standing still among a
whirl of porters--"do you suppose I am going to enter that
man's house?"

"Then what have you come for, pray? For ornament?"

"To see that you do your duty."

"Oh, thanks!"

"So mother told me. For goodness sake get the tickets;
here comes that hot woman again! She has the impudence to bow."

"Mother told you, did she?" said Philip wrathfully, as
he went to struggle for tickets at a slit so narrow that
they were handed to him edgeways. Italy was beastly, and
Florence station is the centre of beastly Italy. But he had
a strange feeling that he was to blame for it all; that a
little influx into him of virtue would make the whole land
not beastly but amusing. For there was