The hotel had a little courtyard, with an orange tree in the middle and palms in pots, and we came down the wide marble stairs, past the statues on the landing, and the paintings on the walls, to find dinner laid on round tables out there, I remember.

A note of momma's occurs here to the effect that there is a great deal too much fine art in Italian hotels, with a reference to the fact that the one at Naples had the whole of Pompeii painted on the dining room walls.

She considers this practice embarrassing to the public mind, which has no way of knowing whether to admire these things or not, though personally we boldly decided to scorn them all.

This, however, has nothing to do with poppa and the commercial traveller.

We knew he was a commercial traveller by the way he put his toothpick in his pocket, though poppa said afterwards that he was not exceptionally endowed for that line of business.