John showed no surprise at the boy being with us; indeed I never thought it necessary to explain that I had originally purposed to leave him behind.
Our journey, though necessarily prolonged by the shortness of its stages, was safely accomplished.

John bore it as well as I could have hoped, and though his body showed no signs of increased vigour, his mind, I think, improved in tone, at any rate for a time.

From the evening on which he had shown me the terrible discovery in the Via del Giardino he seemed to have laid aside something of his care and depression.

He now exhibited little trace of the moroseness and selfishness which had of late so marred his character; and though he naturally felt severely at times the fatigue of travel, yet we had no longer to dread any relapse into that state of lethargy or stupor which had so often baffled every effort to counteract it at Posilipo.

Some feeling of superstitious aversion had prompted me to give orders that the Stradivarius violin should be left behind at Posilipo.