Part One
Chapter 2: In Santa Croce with No Baedeker
(continued)
Miss Lavish--for that was the clever lady's name--turned to the
right along the sunny Lung' Arno. How delightfully warm! But a
wind down the side streets cut like a knife, didn't it? Ponte
alle Grazie--particularly interesting, mentioned by Dante. San
Miniato--beautiful as well as interesting; the crucifix that
kissed a murderer--Miss Honeychurch would remember the story. The
men on the river were fishing. (Untrue; but then, so is most
information.) Then Miss Lavish darted under the archway of the
white bullocks, and she stopped, and she cried:
"A smell! a true Florentine smell! Every city, let me teach you,
has its own smell."
"Is it a very nice smell?" said Lucy, who had inherited from her
mother a distaste to dirt.
"One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one
comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!" bowing right and
left. "Look at that adorable wine-cart! How the driver stares at
us, dear, simple soul!"
So Miss Lavish proceeded through the streets of the city of
Florence, short, fidgety, and playful as a kitten, though without
a kitten's grace. It was a treat for the girl to be with any one
so clever and so cheerful; and a blue military cloak, such as an
Italian officer wears, only increased the sense of festivity.
"Buon giorno! Take the word of an old woman, Miss Lucy: you will
never repent of a little civility to your inferiors. That is the
true democracy. Though I am a real Radical as well. There, now
you're shocked."
"Indeed, I'm not!" exclaimed Lucy. "We are Radicals, too, out and
out. My father always voted for Mr. Gladstone, until he was so
dreadful about Ireland."
"I see, I see. And now you have gone over to the enemy."
"Oh, please--! If my father was alive, I am sure he would vote
Radical again now that Ireland is all right. And as it is, the
glass over our front door was broken last election, and Freddy is
sure it was the Tories; but mother says nonsense, a tramp."
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