On a small plateau near by a thousand cyclamen, white and pink, had lifted their wings as if to fly away. Off went Pierre to get them for Eva. [Illustration: ON THE WAY TO THE DESERTO] "Have you ever seen the bears in the canes yourself?" pursued Eva. "I've seen them in many places besides canes," answered Rod, grimly. "I too have seen bears," Eva went on. "At Berne, you know." "The Punta Palmas bears are quite the same," commented Dallas. "When they see Mr. Rod coming they sit up on their hind legs politely. And he throws them apples." "No apples; they won't grow there," said Rod, regretfully. "Only oranges." "Do you make the saw-mill go yourself--with your own hands?" pursued Eva. "Not now. I did once." "Wasn't it very hard work?" "That? Nothing at all. You should have seen us grubbing up the stumps--Tipp and I!" "Mr. Tipp is perhaps your partner?" said Dallas. "Yes; Jim Tipp. Tipp and Rod is the name of the firm." "Tipp--and Rod," repeated Dallas, slowly. Then with quick utterance, as if trying it, "Tippandrod." Pierre was now returning with his flowers. As he joined them, round the corner of their zigzag, from a pasture above came a troop of ponies that had escaped from their driver, and were galloping down to Sorrento; two and two they came rushing on, too rapidly to stop, and everybody pressed to one side to give them room to pass on the narrow causeway. Pierre jumped up on the low stone wall and extended his hand to Eva. "Come!" he said, hastily. Rod put out his arm and pushed each outside pony, as he passed Eva, forcibly against his mate who had the inside place; a broad space was thus left beside her, and she had no need to leave the causeway. She had given one hand to Pierre as a beginning; he held it tightly. Mademoiselle meanwhile had climbed the wall like a cat. There were twenty of the galloping little nags; they took a minute or two to pass. Rod's out-stretched hands, as he warded them off, were seen to be large and brown. Eva imagined them "grubbing up" the stumps. "What is grubbing?" she said. "It is writing for the newspapers in a street in London," said Pierre, jumping down. "And you must wear a torn coat, I believe." Pierre was proud of his English. He presented his flowers. Mademoiselle admired them volubly. "They are like souls just ready to wing their way to another world," she said, sentimentally, with her head on one side. She put her well-gloved hand in Eva's arm, summoned Pierre with an amiable gesture to the vacant place at Eva's left hand, and the three walked on together. The Deserto, though disestablished and dismantled, like many another monastery, by the rising young kingdom, held still a few monks; their brown-robed brethren had aided Pierre's servant in arranging the table in the high room which commands the wonderful view of the sea both to the north and the south of the Sorrento peninsula, with Capri lying at its point too fair to be real--like an island in a dream.