“Yes. Lady Caroline speaks the kind of Italian cooks understand. I am prevented going into the kitchen because of my stick. And even if I were able to go, I fear I shouldn’t be understood.” “But—” began Mrs. Arbuthnot. “But it’s _too_ wonderful,” Mrs. Wilkins finished for her from the table, delighted with these unexpected simplifications in her and Rose’s lives. “Why, we’ve got positively nothing to do here, either of us, except just be happy. You wouldn’t believe,” she said, turning her head and speaking straight to Mrs. Fisher, portions of orange in either hand, “how terribly good Rose and I have been for years without stopping, and how much now we need a perfect rest.” And Mrs. Fisher, going without answering her out of the room, said to herself, “She must, she shall be curbed.” Chapter 8 Presently, when Mrs. Wilkins and Mrs. Arbuthnot, unhampered by any duties, wandered out and down the worn stone steps and under the pergola into the lower garden, Mrs. Wilkins said to Mrs. Arbuthnot, who seemed pensive, “Don’t you see that if somebody else does the ordering it frees us?” Mrs. Arbuthnot said she did see, but nevertheless she thought it rather silly to have everything taken out of their hands. “I love things to be taken out of my hands,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “But we found San Salvatore,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, “and it is rather silly that Mrs. Fisher should behave as if it belonged only to her.” “What is rather silly,” said Mrs. Wilkins with much serenity, “is to mind. I can’t see the least point in being in authority at the price of one’s liberty.” Mrs. Arbuthnot said nothing to that for two reasons—first, because she was struck by the remarkable and growing calm of the hitherto incoherent and excited Lotty, and secondly because what she was looking at was so very beautiful.