did, and Nick Lansing was assailed by the scruples his wife had foreseen. Strefford, coming back one evening from the Lido, reported having recognized the huge outline of the Ibis among the pleasure craft of the outer harbour; and the very next evening, as the guests of Palazzo Vanderlyn were sipping their ices at Florian's, the Hickses loomed up across the Piazza.
Susy pleaded in vain with her husband in defence of his privacy. "Remember you're here to write, dearest; it's your duty not to let any one interfere with that. Why shouldn't we tell them we're just leaving!"
"Because it's no use: we're sure to be always meeting them. And besides, I'll be hanged if I'm going to shirk the Hickses. I spent five whole months on the Ibis, and if they bored me occasionally, India didn't."
"We'll make them take us to Aquileia anyhow," said Strefford philosophically; and the next moment the Hickses were bearing down on the defenceless trio.
They presented a formidable front, not only because of their mere physical bulk—Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were equally and majestically three-dimensional—but because they never moved abroad without the escort of two private secretaries (one for the foreign languages), Mr. Hicks's doctor, a maiden lady known as Eldoradder Tooker, who was Mrs. Hicks's cousin and stenographer, and finally their daughter, Coral Hicks.
