& O. ship _Sutly_, six hours ahead of time (did you ever hear of
such a thing?), bearing our belated friends, the Jimmies, from
Alexandria. They had been booked for the _China_, which was wrecked,
so the _Sutly_ took her passengers. The Jimmies had bought their
passage for Venice, but we teased them to throw it up and come with
us, and such is our fascination that they yielded. The love which
reaches the purse is love indeed. So in a fever of joy we all caught
the nine-o'clock train for Naples.
They have a sweet little way on Italian railroads of making no
provision for you to eat. We did not know this, and our knowledge of
Italian was limited to _Quanto tempo?_ (How much time?) and _Quanto
costa?_ (How much is it?) So we punctuated the lovely journey among
the Italian hills, and between their admirable waterways, by hopping
off the train for coffee every time they said "Cinque minuti." It was
like a picnic train. Half the passengers were from the P. & O., and
knew the Jimmies, and the other half were from our Austrian Lloyd, and
knew us, so it was perfectly delicious to see every compartment door
fly open and everybody's friend appear with tea-kettles for hot water
in one hand and tea-caddies in the other, and to see people who hated
boiled eggs buying them, because they were about all that looked
clean; and to see staid Englishmen in knickerbockers and monocles with
loops of Italian bread over each tweed arm, and in both hands flasks
of cheap red Italian wine--oh, so good! and only costing fifty
centimes, but put up in those lovely straw-woven decanters which cost
us a real pang to fling out of the window after they were emptied.
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