[The Emancipated by George Gissing]@TWC D-Link bookThe Emancipated CHAPTER IX 16/25
She met Jacob's smile, and involuntarily checked it by her gravity. "We might have asked the Denyers as well," said Cecily, "and have had another carriage, or gone by train." Mr.Bradshaw chuckled for some minutes at this proposal, but his wife would not allow him to pursue the jest. They lunched at the Hotel Diomede before entering the precincts of the ruins.
Mr.Bradshaw had invariably a splendid appetite, and was by this time skilled in ordering the meals that suited him.
The few phrases of Italian which he had appropriated were given forth _ore rotundo_, with Anglo-saxon emphasis on the _o_'s, and accompanied with large gestures. His mere appearance always sufficed to put landlords and waiters into their most urbane mood; they never failed to take him for one of the English nobility--a belief confirmed by the handsomeness of his gratuities.
Mrs.Bradshaw was not, perhaps, the ideal lady of rank, but the fine self-satisfaction on her matronly visage, the good-natured disdain with which she allowed herself to be waited upon by foolish foreigners, her solid disregard of everything beyond the circle of her own party, were impressive enough, and exacted no little subservience. Strong in the experience of two former visits, Mr.Bradshaw would have no guide to-day.
Murray in hand, he knew just what he wished to see again, and where to find it. As Miriam was at Pompeii for the first time, he took her especially under his direction, and showed her the city much as he might have led her over his silk-mill in Manchester.
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