A modern trio in an old townHaviland-Taylor, Katharine
General
A modern trio in an old town
Haviland-Taylor, Katharine
Americans -- Italy -- Fiction; Florence (Italy) -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Out in the bay my ship was moored, and I was to go on it that night so
that Miss Meek and Sam might go back to Florence. I didn’t want to.
I had to think of mother very hard to keep from crying. It is really
complicated to love several countries and many friends, for it makes so
much tugging and not a little hurt.
I said that just before I said good-by.
Then Sam, who had been coughing quite a little, and always before he
spoke, asked me if I had my tickets, and I said--for the fortieth time
anyway--that I had, and Miss Meek said, “Look at the birds circling
around the ship. Jolly, what?”
“They follow it,” I said.
“A lot will follow that ship,” said Sam.
And then Miss Meek kissed me, and Sam said, “Look here, dear, if you
can kiss Mr. Hemmingway, I guess you might take a chance on me?”
And I said I guessed so, and I kissed him. And Miss Meek wiped her
eyes, and kept saying, “No end jolly, a sea trip, don’t you know?”
And I said, “Yes,” and I kept my hand in Sam’s, and Sam didn’t say
anything. But he did _look_ quite a lot of things.
And then somehow, I was on board, and alone, and at last in my
stateroom which I was to share with an American woman from Florence who
was going home to visit her mother.
It was honestly a relief to have the good-bys over. And after I took
off my hat and coat, and had hung up the things from my suitcase in a
half of the small cupboard, I got out the book that the choir had given
me before I left. It is a very nice book made of puffy leather, and it
has “My Trip Abroad” written across it in gold letters, and of course I
had written in it, because that was what was expected.
I opened it and read:
“The Madonna of the Chair is in the Pitti Gallery, and it is by
Raphael. The Gallery is very big. It took Sam and me four hours
to go through it.”
Below this:
“Sam and I walked to-day, up near Fiesole, and we saw the Villa
Medici where the Princess Mary and Viscount Lascelles visited
Lady Sybil Scott, at the end of their honeymoon. It is a lovely
place. It seems to be so nice that they could be there.”
Then--over the page--I found a note about the Riccardi Palace.
“There is a picture in the chapel of the Riccardi Palace,” I
had written, “that was painted by candle light by a man named
Gozzoli, who has been dead for several years. It is a fine
picture and has lots of gold in it and the portraits of the
Medicis who lived in the palace. Sam and I went down near the
Arno and bought buns after seeing it, which was very inspiring.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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