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So we decided, after all, to risk the highway from Parma to Dertona and from there make our way across the Ligurian Mountains to Vada Sabatia and from there along the highway to Marseilles, where we should be able to hide in the slums among the mixture of all races in that lively city; and where Agathemer was sure he could turn gems into cash without danger or suspicion.
He was holding one foot dangerously high in the air, and the movement caused him to upset the child's balance, so that his upper part promptly disappeared beneath the frothing suds. A wild splashing and yell from Vada warned her father of the threatened tragedy, and Jamie was hauled up, coughing and spluttering.
He quotes an old prophecy, attributed to Merlin, and with a sort of wonder, as if recollecting that England owed so much of its literary learning to that country; and the prophecy says that after long years Oxford will pass into Ireland 'Vada boum suo tempore transibunt in Hiberniam. When I read this, I could not but indulge the pleasant fancy that in the days when the Dublin University shall arise in material splendour, an allusion to this prophecy might form a poetic element in the inscription on the pedestal of the statue which commemorates its first Rector.
The damo for so a sweetheart is termed in Tuscany trembles until he has gained the approval of his future mother-in-law, and forbids the girl he is courting to leave her house to talk to him at night: Dice che tu tì affacci alia finestra; Ma non tì dice che tu vada fuora, Perchè, la notte, è cosa disonesta. All the language of his love is respectful.
"You found any gold?" inquired Vada, repeating a question she had so often heard her mother put. "'Es any dold?" echoed Jamie, from his height above Scipio's head. "No, kiddies," the man replied, with a slight sigh. "Oh," said Vada. But his answer had little significance for her. "Where's your momma?" inquired Scipio, after a pause.
He stood for a moment drinking in the cool night air. Yes, he felt happier than he had done for days. Nor could he have said why. It was surely something to do with Jessie's letter, and yet the letter seemed to offer little enough for hope. He was going to part with Vada, a thought which filled him with dismay, and yet there was hope in his heart.
"Pop-pa," they shouted, with all the power of their childish lungs. The men released them, and, with a rush, they hurled themselves upon the small person of their father. Scipio set a bundle he was carrying upon the floor and scrambled Jamie into his arms and kissed him. Then he kissed Vada.
At any rate he bowed politely, asked me whence we came, when we had left Rome, and the latest news. He commended our speed and our having overcome the difficulties of the coast road between Genoa and Vada Sabatia.
"Wher' did you hear of the prospect?" Bill demanded shrewdly. But little Vada broke in. Her interest had been diverted by the word prospect. "Wot's 'prospect'?" she demanded. Bill laughed without any change of expression. "Prospect is wher' you expect to find gold," he explained carefully. The child's eyes widened, and she was about to speak. Then she hesitated, but finally she proceeded.
"Why, child, what do you know about funerals?" asked grandmother, while the clergyman, of course, laughed. "'Vada took me and Beth once to a big mercession, and we went into a big church and the folks all went up and looked at somebody, just like to-night. 'Vada said it was a big gun's funeral, just like you and your wife, you know," she concluded cheerfully, nodding to the clergyman.
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