I always rather resented the advent of battleships and royal yachts and gaudy truck of that kind in our southern waters, but the private yachts inspired us with a pleasant mysterious interest that was not unwelcome. Once, when we were watching anxiously for my brother, during his venturesome sail from New York to Naples, and the children were cruising round the Bay not far from Naples, a large, beautiful yacht was seen to come in and cast anchor off Santa Lucia, and at once the greatest excitement prevailed on the Crawford felucca. Was that the _Alda_? Oh, surely it must be! At once the _Margherita_ headed for the port, and the nearer she came to the new arrival, the surer was everybody that the _Alda_—which none of them had seen, as Marion had just bought her—had reached port at last. How well she had stood the voyage! No sign of the heavy weather mentioned in the wire from Gibraltar! No sign of the Padrone either, but, of course, he would have had to go on shore to report himself and get his harbour papers from the Consul. What was this? Dark-faced sailors in fezes? How like Marion to pick up a Lascar crew in New York! Let us row round her and hail somebody. Good heavens! The first shout brought a dozen lovely Turkish ladies to the cabin windows, smiling, interested, only too ready to ask the pretty boatful on board. The children stared open-mouthed! Then a burst of uncontrollable laughter shook the _Margherita_ from stem to stern. Papa had certainly not brought a harem from New York! “A casa,” came the order to the grinning sailors, and the _Margherita_ turned tail and ran for home. There is a busy, unromantic seaport called Livorno, a long way up the coast from Naples, a Tuscan town of white streets and shadeless squares, all alive with commerce, and, until I came to years of reason, represented to me by the huge flapping straw hats, fine as silk and pale gold in colour, which we children regarded as signals of summer, when, on the first hot day, the ribbons that held them were tied under our chins, and we were admonished, on pain of sunstrokes and spankings, not to take them off. I had among my possessions a toy Swiss cottage all made of the same pretty straw, and I imagined that “Leghorn” was a straw city with bunches of red poppies and blue ribbons on the house-tops for ornament. It was rather a blow to discover, on being taken there when I was seven years old, that the only traces of my toy city were the thin golden strings which most of the women were plaiting with lightning quickness as they walked in the streets or sat in the doorways. [Illustration: LIVORNO. Photo by Brogi.]