erhaps they were. "Devil," however, was another matter.

"I wonder who's indoors," said Mac, getting up. Thus roused, I heard
voices inside, with laughter from Bill. The next moment the door opened
and Benvenuto Cellini and Giuseppe Mazzini were discovered behind it.

"What, visitors?" said Mac, touching the dimples in their cheeks; and
they nodded and looked at each other in a very taking way they had. Bill
came in hastily. "They came in this afternoon," she explained, "and
asked most solemnly if they might have some tea. Ma was gone to New
York, they said, and she might be late."

"'That so?" said Mac. "Well, we'll have 'em to dinner as well. What
'say, you chaps? Will you have dinner with us?"

Again they nodded and looked at each other, and Ben remarked gravely
that they were hungry.

We went off to have a wash and a change.

They certainly were two pretty little men as they stood there in red
jerseys and blue corduroy knickers. My friend's custom of snatching open
the piano and heralding dinner with a furious tornado of chords pleased
them vastly.

"What's that for?" Beppo inquired expectantly.

"Chop," said Mac, rumpling their hair. "Pipe all hands to the galley.
Here comes the salt horse and the hard tack."

"Their father isn't a deck-swab," I remarked mildly.

"Perhaps not," he retorted, "but pipe all hands etcetera is in that
comic opera I'm illustrating and doing the costumes for, and I've got it
on the brain. Have you noticed," he went on, "that Carville seems to
have no professional slang?"

"He's not typical of his class," I admitted. "Any more than his wife is
of her's, I suppose. Moreover, he knows we know nothing of his work and
explains it in simple language. Does it not occur to you," I inquired,
"that his avoidance of slang and dialect and foreign words and profanity
is part of the freedom of the other side of the wall? Think of what we
have lived through in the last twenty years! We have listened to a tale
of the ends of the earth and the teller of it neither foams at the mouth
nor talks in a strange technical jargon nobody ever spoke and nobody can
understand. Without naming any names, isn't it a relief? Isn't it
refreshing? After the terrible experiences we have had in the past!"

"Did mother tell you to come in?" he asked the children after nodding to
me.

"Yes," said Beppo, thrusting out his chin and working his neck slowly as
Bill tied a napkin round it. And he went on in a thin,