"
"If you call names," said Jimmy, "you can go on by yourself. He
added, "So there!"
"It's part of the game, silly," explained Gerald kindly. "You can be
Captain tomorrow, so you'd better hold your jaw now, and begin to
think about what names you'll call us when it's your turn."
Very slowly and carefully they went down the steps. A vaulted
stone arched over their heads. Gerald struck a match when the last
step was found to have no edge, and to be, in fact, the beginning of
a passage, turning to the left.
"This," said Jimmy, "will take us back into the road."
"Or under it," said Gerald. "We've come down eleven steps."
They went on, following their leader, who went very slowly for
fear, as he explained, of steps. The passage was very dark.
"I don't half like it!" whispered Jimmy.
Then came a glimmer of daylight that grew and grew, and
presently ended in another arch that looked out over a scene so like
a picture out of a book about Italy that everyone's breath was taken
away, and they simply walked forward silent and staring. A short
avenue of cypresses led, widening as it went, to a marble terrace
that lay broad and white in the sunlight. The children, blinking,
leaned their arms on the broad, flat balustrade and gazed.
Immediately below them was a lake just like a lake in "The
Beauties of Italy" a lake with swans and an island and weeping
willows; beyond it were green slopes dotted with groves of trees,
and amid the trees gleamed the white limbs of statues.
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