“I mean my dear,” said he, “that we are going to take a knapsack, a tambourine and a flute, and appropriate ribbons for our costumes, and beg our way through southern Europe.” He explained and developed his plan, the result of his meditations, in his laughing picturesque way. They were doing nothing but eating expensive fog in November London. A diet of sunshine and garlic would be cheaper. They would walk under the olive-trees and drift about on lagoons, and whisper with dead ages in the moonlit gloom of crumbling palaces. They would go over hills on donkeys. They would steep their souls in Perugino, Del Sarto, Giorgione. They would teach the gaunt Italian flea to respect British Keating's powder. They would fraternise with the beautiful maidens of Arles and sit on the top of Giotto's Campanile. They would do all kinds of impossible things. Afford it? Of course they could. Had he not received his just dues from the princess and sold two pictures a week or two ago? At this point he fell thinking for a couple of dreamy minutes. “I meant to give you a carriage, dear,” he said at last in mild apology. “I'm afraid it will have to be a third-class one.” “A fourth or fifth would be good enough for me,” cried Aline. “Or I could walk all the way with you. Don't I know you have planned it out just for my sake?” “Rubbish, my dear,” said Jimmie, holding the precious wine to the light. “I'm taking you because I don't see how I can leave you behind. You have no idea what an abominable nuisance you'll be.” Aline laughed a joyous laugh which did Jimmie good to hear, and came behind his chair and put her arms about his neck, behaving foolishly as a young girl penetrated with the sense of the loved one's goodness is privileged to do. What she said is of infinitesimal importance, but it lifted care from Jimmie's heart and made him as happy as a child. Like two children, they discussed the project; and Aline fetching from the top shelf of the bookcase in Jimmie's bedroom a forlorn, dusty, yellow-paged Continental Bradshaw, twenty years old, they looked up phantom trains that had long ceased running, speculated on the merits of dead-and-gone hotels, and plunged into the fairyland of anachronistic information.