All about the edge of the long tapis vert which lay before the handsome building at the end of the garden—a building which they supposed housed some lucky park official—stood at intervals fine standard roses. Now one unlucky day Peripatetica descried aphides upon 235the delicate shoots and young buds of these standards. That was sufficient. An aphis, to her rose-growing mind, is a noxious wild beast, and promptly stripping off her gloves she ravened among them. “Perhaps you’d better leave them alone,” warned Jane in a whisper. “The gardeners look so surprised.” “By no means!” objected Peripatetica in lofty obstinacy, with a backward glance of contempt at the visibly astonished attendants. “The city no doubt pays them well to grow roses, and I mean to shame them for this indecent neglect of their duties. Besides, I am enjoying it immensely; I’ve been hungering and thirsting for a little gardening.” That very day it was conveyed to their intelligence—or their lack of it—that they had not been enjoying the Giardino Inglese, a dull park which lay almost opposite, but had been calmly annexing the private grounds of Prince Travia. He, however, being a model of princely courtesy, was glad to have the foreign ladies amuse themselves there as much as they liked. Only once more did they see it; on the day of departure, when they blushingly left a tip in the hands of the handsome old silver-staffed portiere, who had truly looked like a nobleman’s servant, and behaved like one as he saluted them with unprotesting dignity each time they had passed in and out of that beauteous spot in which they had no right to be. There were many other gardens in Palermo, but none so fair. The green world was so enchanting in this glowing spring that a day of villegiatura was necessary between every two days of sight-seeing, and having been banished from the Travia garden by their own innate sense of decency, they took lunch in their 236pockets and set out for the famous Villa Giulia which had aroused such enthusiasm in Goethe.