Now, being Americans, and therefore accustomed to the most obliging behaviour on the part of the male sex, it never occurred to them that Pluto might be ungallant enough to object to their taking a hand in. But he did—as they might have foreseen would be likely in a person so unmannerly as to snatch lovely daughters from devoted mothers. It began on the ocean. On quite a calm evening a wave, passing from under the side of the ship, threw its crest back—perhaps to look at the stars—and fell head over heels into their open port. Certainly as much as two tons of green and icy Atlantic entered impulsively, and by the time they were dried out and comforted by the tight-corseted, rosy, sympathetic Lemon every object they possessed was a mere bunch of depressed rumples. Throughout the rest of the voyage they presented the unfortunate appearance of having slept in their clothes, including their hats. These last, which they had believed refreshingly picturesque, or coquettish, at starting, had that defiantly wretched aspect displayed by the broody hen after she has been dipped in the rain-barrel to check her too exuberant aversion to race-suicide. That was how Pluto began, and it swiftly went from bad to worse. Three large tourist ships discharged bursting cargoes of humanity upon Naples on one and the same day, and the hotel-keepers rose to their opportunity and dealt guilefully with the horde clamouring as with one voice for food and shelter. That one’s hard-won shelter was 18numbered 12 bis (an artful concealment of the unlucky number 13) was apparently an unimportant detail. It was shelter, though even a sea-sodden mind should have seen something suspicious in those egregious frescoes of fat ladies sitting on the knife edge of crescent moons with which Room 13 endeavoured to conceal its real banefulness. Even such a mind should have distrusted that flamingly splendid fire-screen in front of a walled-up fireplace; should have scented danger in that flamboyant black and gold and blue satin furniture of the vintage of 1870. There was plainly, to an observant eye, something sinister and meretricious in so much dressiness, but Jane and Peripatetica yielded themselves up to that serpent lodging without the smallest precaution, and lived to rue their impulsive confidence.