pantomime. They did not try to underbid each other, and they were
perfectly good-humored; as soon as he had made his choice, the rejected
multitude returned to their places on the curbstone, pursuing the
successful aspirant with inscrutable jokes as he drove off, while the
horses went on munching the contents of their leathern head-bags, and
tossing them into the air to shake down the lurking grains of corn.

"It _is_ like Europe; your friends were right," said Mr. Arbuton as they
escaped into the cathedral from one of these friendly onsets. "It's
quite the atmosphere of foreign travel, and you ought to be able to
realize the feelings of a tourist."

A priest was saying mass at one of the side-altars, assisted by acolytes
in their every-day clothes; and outside of the railing a market-woman,
with a basket of choke-cherries, knelt among a few other poor people.
Presently a young English couple came in, he with a dashing India scarf
about his hat, and she very stylishly dressed, who also made their
genuflections with the rest, and then sat down and dropped their heads
in prayer.

"This is like enough Europe, too," murmured Mr. Arbuton. "It's very good
North Italy; or South, for the matter of that."

"O, is it?" answered Kitty, joyously. "I thought it must be!" And she
added, in that trustful way of hers: "It's all very familiar; but then
it seems to me on this journey that I've seen a great many things that I
know I've only read of before"; and so followed Mr. Arbuton in his tour
of the pictures.

She was as ignorant of art as any Roman or Florentine girl whose life