After some delay--owing to Tony's inability to balance the chafing-dish on Cristoforo Colombo's back--they filed from the gateway, an imposing cavalcade.

The ladies were on foot, loftily oblivious to the fact that three empty saddles awaited their pleasure.

Constance, a gesticulating officer at either hand, was vivaciously talking Italian, while Tony, trudging behind, listened with a sombre light in his eye.

She now and then cast a casual glance over her shoulder, and as she caught sight of his gloomy face the animation of her Italian redoubled.

The situation held for her mischief-loving soul undreamed-of possibilities; and though she ostensibly occupied herself with the officers, she by no means neglected the donkey-man.
During the first few miles of the journey he earned his four francs.
Twice he reshifted the pack because Constance thought it insecure (it was a disgracefully unprofessional pack; most guides would have blushed at the making of it); once he retraced their path some two hundred yards in search of a veil she thought she had dropped--it turned out that she had had it in her pocket all of the time.