In the end the day was delightful. The Dean preferred his niece as a listener to his sons, and as Mrs. Lightbody had been unable to come, he was not driven by her irritating crusade on behalf of the boys' amusement to insisting upon their attention. The result was that they vanished soon after lunch to hunt butterflies, while the Dean expounded his theory of Old Silchester. Jasmine sat back enjoying the perfume of hot grass, the murmurous air, the gentle fluting of a faint wind, while the Dean proved conclusively that the Saxon invasion utterly swept away every trace of Roman civilization in Britain. The Dean's shadow while he wandered backward and forward among the scanty remains grew longer, and beneath his exposition the Roman Empire, so far as its effect on England was concerned, went down like the sun. Jasmine had been asleep, and she woke up suddenly in the fresh airs of sunset. Half a mile away the boys were coming back over the expanse of grey-green grass to display their captures. "And how pathetic it is," the Dean was saying, "to think of this outpost of a mighty empire succumbing so easily to those invaders from over the German ocean. The last time they excavated here at all systematically, they turned over some of the rubbish heaps of the camp. Curiously enough they actually found the skins of the nutty portion of the pine-cone from _Pinus Pinea_, which is eaten to this day in southern Italy." "_Pinocchi!_" cried Jasmine, leaping to her feet in excitement. "Yes, _pinocchi_," the Dean confirmed. "The soldiers must have had packets of them sent from Rome by their sweethearts and wives and mothers. And that is one more proof that they remained strangers, whereas the Saxons bred themselves into the soul of the country." While they jogged back in the waggonette through the twilight, Jasmine dreamed of those dead Roman soldiers, and herself longed for freshly roasted _pinocchi_. The boys jabbered about butterflies. The Dean went to sleep. "I'm enjoying myself here comparatively," said Jasmine to herself that night. "But only comparatively. I still love Italy best." But she was enjoying herself, and she hoped that she should not have to leave Silchester yet awhile. _Chapter Eight_