"I do believe she is afraid Mabel will cast the evil eye on her doll,"
said Katy at last, with a sudden understanding as to what this
pantomime meant.
"Why, you silly thing!" cried the outraged Amy; "do you suppose for one
moment that my child could hurt your dirty old dolly? You ought to be
glad to have her noticed at all by anybody that's clean."
The sound of the foreign tongue completed the discomfiture of the
little Italian. With a shriek she fled, and all the other children
after her; pausing at a distance to look back at the alarming creatures
who didn't speak the familiar language. Katy, wishing to leave a
pleasant impression, made Mabel kiss her waxen fingers toward them.
This sent the children off into another fit of laughter and chatter,
and they followed our friends for quite a distance as they proceeded on
their way to the hotel.
All that night, over a sea as smooth as glass, the "Marco Polo" slipped
along the coasts past which the ships of Ulysses sailed in those old
legendary days which wear so charmed a light to our modern eyes. Katy
roused at three in the morning, and looking from her cabin window had a
glimpse of an island, which her map showed her must be Elba, where that
war-eagle Napoleon was chained for a while. Then she fell asleep again,
and when she roused in full daylight the steamer was off the coast of
Ostia and nearing the mouth of the Tiber. Dreamy mountain-shapes rose
beyond the far-away Campagna, and every curve and indentation of the
coast bore a name which recalled some interesting thing.
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