"Lovely flowers ye have there, Lady Nugent, positive blaze o' colour. How do you do it? Now, that scamp of a gardener of mine----" He sits back again, tellin' Herself how John O'Callaghan had left his chrysanthemums go to ruination wid blight. Her Ladyship takes wan look at the flowers, her eyebrows go up, she turns as red as a bateroot and bites her lip, but says nothin'. God bless her! I backed away, breathin' aisy once more, but at that minuite down the stairs comes our brave Alice, the Belgium refuge, all of a lather, gabbing like a turkey in the foreign tongue, and runs straight for the dinin'-room door. 'Tis a mercy I have the quick wit; I pulled down the Colonel's dhress-sword from where it hung on the wall and headed her off, wavin' it at her the way I'd draw the stroke of it across her windpipe. She wint leppin' back up the stairs like a mountainy hare among the rocks, thinkin', mebbe, the German Huns was come at her again out of the wine-cellar. An hour later I heard owld Sir Pat's car lavin' the front door, so I sheathed me sword an' let her out of her bedroom where she had herself locked in. A strong shindy the gurrl raised, an' Herself forced me to buy her a new hat out of me wages, seein' that her owld wan was desthroyed by dint of the soakin' an' crushin' it had in the flower bowl; but sorra the bit did I care, for I passed John O'Callaghan beyond in Michaelstown on Sunday, an' divil a word said he, but scowled at me in a way that did my heart good to see. XX A CHANGE OF FRONT We fell asleep with goose feathers of snow whirling against the carriage windows, and woke to see a shot-silk sea flinging white lace along a fairy coast on one side and pink and yellow villas nesting among groves of palm and orange on the other. "Of course this sort of thing doesn't happen in real life," said Albert Edward, flattening his proboscis against the pane. "Either it's all a dream or else those oranges will suddenly light up; George Grossmith, in a topper and spats, will trip in from the O.P. side; girls will blossom from every palm, and all ranks get busy with song and prance--tra-la-la!" The Babe kicked his blankets off and sat up. "Nothing of the sort. We've arrived in well-known Italy, that's all. Capital--Rome. Exports--old masters, chianti and barrel-organs. Faces South and is centrally heated by Vesuvius." We rattled into a cutting, the sides of which were decorated with posters: "Good Healt at the England," "Good Luck at Tommy," and drew up in a flag-festooned station, on the platform of which was a deputation of smiling signorinas who presented the Atkinses with postcards, fruit and cigarettes, and ourselves with flowers. "Very _bon_--eh, what?" said the Babe as the train resumed its rumblings. "All the same I wish we could thank them prettily and tell them how pleased we are we've come. Does anybody handle the patter?"