“But we are simple people; our plain cooking would not satisfy the ladies,” she protested, distressed. But the ladies felt that a crust and an egg in their own sitting-room would be more satisfying than all the triumphs of hotel chefs out in the wet. And to bread and eggs they resigned themselves. Instead came a five-course banquet, served by beaming Butler Maria in a dazzling new grass-green bodice—soup and macaroni, meat and vegetables, perfect in seasoning and succulence, crisp salad from the garden, and with it the demanded poached eggs which were to have constituted the whole dinner, almond pudding with a wondrous sauce; dates, oranges, sugary figs beaded on slivers of bamboo, mellow red wine. It seemed a very elastic two lire which could cover all that, as Frau Schuler said it did! Truly the Fraulein Niece was an artist. Peripatetica and Jane thereafter dined at home in tea gowns and luxury—and the pudding sauces grew more bland and wonderful every night. Also eggs continued to give originality by the vagaries of their appearance. As Peripatetica said, “they just ran along anyhow, and jumped on at any course they took a fancy to!” And to see where they were going to land—in the soup, the vegetables, the salad, the stewed fruit of dessert—or what still other and stranger companionships they might form, lent a sort of prize-packet excitement to each succeeding course. Dinner at the Villa Schuler, with little Vesuvius glowing warmingly through all his fiery eyes and steaming out spicy 88incense of lemon and mandarin peel, the soft low lamplight, the gleam of Maria’s smile and green bodice, the blessed remoteness from all tourist gabble, was truly a cosy function. They took to making elaborate toilets in honour of it, adding their Taormina acquisitions of old lace and jewels to Maria’s round-eyed amazement. When Jane burst out in an Empire diadem, and Peripatetica not to be outdone donned a ravishing lace cap, their status as good republicans was forever lost in the villa. Maria spread the tale of this splendour abroad, firmly convinced that these lodgers were incognito members of the most exalted nobility of distant “Nuova Yorka.” The tongues which could not pronounce their harsh foreign names insisted on labelling them the “Big and Little Princess”—and no protests could bring their rank down lower than “the most gentle Countesses,” upon their washing-bills.