"It doesn't keep always raining there, and I can take walks, and I understand everything that people say."
All that day they sped southward, and with every hour came a change in the aspect of their surroundings.
Now they made brief stops in large busy towns which seemed humming with industry.
Now they whirled through grape countries with miles of vineyards, where the brown leaves still hung on the vines.
Then again came glimpses of old Roman ruins, amphitheatres, viaducts, fragments of wall or arch; or a sudden chill betokened their approach to mountains, where snowy peaks could be seen on the far horizon.
And when the long night ended and day roused them from broken slumbers, behold, the world was made over!
Autumn had vanished, and the summer, which they thought fled for good, had taken his place.
Green woods waved about them, fresh leaves were blowing in the wind, roses and hollyhocks beckoned from white-walled gardens; and before they had done with exclaiming and rejoicing, the Mediterranean shot into view, intensely blue, with white fringes of foam, white sails blowing across, white gulls flying above it, and over all a sky of the same exquisite blue, whose clouds were white as the drifting sails on the water below, and they were at Marseilles.
It was like a glimpse of Paradise to eyes fresh from autumnal grays and glooms, as they sped along the lovely coast, every curve and turn showing new combinations of sea and shore, olive-crowned cliff and shining mountain-peak.
With every mile the blue became bluer, the wind softer, the feathery verdure more dense and summer-like.
Hyeres and Cannes and Antibes were passed, and then, as they rounded a long point, came the view of a sunshiny city lying on a sunlit shore; the train slackened its speed, and they knew that their journey's end was come and they were in Nice.
The place seemed to laugh with gayety as they drove down the Promenade des Anglais and past the English garden, where the band was playing beneath the acacias and palm-trees.
On one side was a line of bright-windowed hotels and pensions, with balconies and striped awnings; on the other, the long reach of yellow sand-beach, where ladies were grouped on shawls and rugs, and children ran up and down in the sun, while beyond stretched the waveless sea.
The December sun felt as warm as on a late June day at home, and had the same soft caressing touch.
The pavements were thronged with groups of leisurely-looking people, all wearing an unmistakable holiday aspect; pretty girls in correct Parisian costumes walked demurely beside their mothers, with cavaliers in attendance; and among these young men appeared now and again the well-known uniform of the United States Navy.
"I wonder," said Mrs. Ashe, struck by a sudden thought, "if by any chance our squadron is here."
She asked the question the moment they entered the hotel; and the porter, who prided himself on understanding "zose Eenglesh," replied,—
"Mais oui, Madame, ze Americaine fleet it is here; zat is, not here, but at Villefranche, just a leetle four mile away,—it is ze same zing exactly."
"Katy, do you hear that?" cried Mrs. Ashe.
"The frigates are here, and the
'Natchitoches' among them of course; and we shall have Ned to go about with us everywhere.
It is a real piece of good luck for us. Ladies are at such a loss in a place like this with nobody to escort them.
I am perfectly delighted."
"So am I," said Katy.
"I never saw a frigate, and I always wanted to see one.
Do you suppose they will let us go on board of them?"
"Why, of course they will."
Then to the porter, "Give me a sheet of paper and an envelope, please.—I must let Ned know that I am here at once."
Mrs. Ashe wrote her note and despatched it before they went upstairs to take off their bonnets.
She seemed to have a half-hope that some bird of the air might carry the news of her arrival to her brother, for she kept running to the window as if in expectation of seeing him.
She was too restless to lie down or sleep, and after she and Katy had lunched, proposed that they should go out on the beach for a while.
"Perhaps we may come across Ned," she remarked.
They did not come across Ned, but there was no lack of other delightful objects to engage their attention.
The sands were smooth and hard as a floor.
Soft pink lights were beginning to tinge the western sky.
To the north shone the peaks of the maritime Alps, and the same rosy glow caught them here and there, and warmed their grays and whites into color.
"I wonder what that can be?" said Katy, indicating the rocky point which bounded the beach to the east, where stood a picturesque building of stone, with massive towers and steep pitches of roof.
"It looks half like a house and half like a castle, but it is quite fascinating, I think.
Do you suppose that people live there?"
"We might ask," suggested Mrs. Ashe.
Just then they came to a shallow river spanned by a bridge, beside whose pebbly bed stood a number of women who seemed to be washing clothes by the simple and primitive process of laying them in the water on top of the stones, and pounding them with a flat wooden paddle till they were white.
Katy privately thought that the clothes stood a poor chance of lasting through these cleansing operations; but she did not say so, and made the inquiry which Mrs. Ashe had suggested, in her best French.
"Celle-la?" answered the old woman whom she had addressed.
"Mais c'est la Pension Suisse."
"A pension; why, that means a boarding-house," cried Katy.
"What fun it must be to board there!"
"Well, why shouldn't we board there!" said her friend.
"You know we meant to look for rooms as soon as we were rested and had found out a little about the place.
Let us walk on and see what the Pension Suisse is like.
If the inside is as pleasant as the outside, we could not do better, I should think."