Florence had gone back to summer the next day. The heat was intense, the streets were deserted, the very blue of the sky seemed to burn, all the poor green things to have the life drawn out of them by the scorching sun. There was a little loggia at Miss Cartwright's Casa Giulia, where Jack and his aunt could have managed to keep themselves cool if Miss Preston would have permitted it, but she routed them out more than once. Heat or no heat she had no compassion for idleness, and she came tramping up the stairs with bundles of book labels for the Church library, with horrible knitted garments which she had dragged from wintry receptacles, with all kinds of out-of-season duties which were to rouse Miss Cartwright. She was one of those people whose presence is a perpetual rebuke; it is impossible to fulfil their requirements, you feel yourself making feeble excuses, and going down, down, down, lower and lower in your own opinion and in theirs. "Why do you let her tyrannise over you?" said Jack indignantly. It is to be feared that he called her an old cat, but all the same he was himself conscious of this uncomfortable sinking in her presence. "She does not always do things in the pleasantest manner," said Miss Cartwright gently, "but she is so conscientious and so useful that it is impossible not to admire her. There is a great deal of misery in Florence, and I am sure I often feel how selfish and idle it must seem to her when I sit in this pretty loggia out of the reach of it all, while she is always toiling and planning. Indeed, Jack, if you only knew half she did, you would appreciate her better." "Heaven forbid!" said the young man fervently. Even Cartouche, who had made his way up to the loggia, was too sleepy to do anything but snap at persevering flies; the others sat lazily pretending to read or work; every now and then Miss Cartwright asked questions about Phillis; it was all dreamy and quiet. From where they sat they could see other loggias--people at their windows, women coming out on flat shady roofs to water their plants, odd little nests of chimneys like honeycombs, pigeon-holes, mysterious gratings, a curious kind of roof-life of which they made part and which had its interests. In those sunny countries it takes little to make a picture; here the business is elaborate, but there sun and sky do so much that you want little more--a scarlet flower in a pot, a clambering vine, and the effect is given. Jack lay back idly wondering at the beauty of an old house wall opposite on which the sun poured in golden splendour, and the rich shadows of the eaves marked bold outlines against the sky, when Miss Preston's voice behind made him start. "If you are busy I am sorry to interrupt you, Mary," she began, with a searching glance at Miss Cartwright, who was hastily settling her cap, and trying to look as if she had not been asleep, "but it is necessary that some one should take back the books to the library this afternoon."