fortless. If I kissed it, it would be
cold. If I put my arms round it, it would be full of sharp edges which
would hurt. If I tried to get any emotion out of it, it would only
jingle."

"What do you want then?"

"Nothing. But if I must--let it be plain flesh and blood."

"Cannibal!" said my aunt.

We both laughed.

"But you can have plenty of flesh and blood, with money as well, for the
asking," she insisted; and thereupon my two cousins, Dora and Gwendolen,
entered the drawingroom and interrupted the conversation. They are both
bouncing, fresh-faced girls, in the early twenties. They ride and shoot
and bicycle and golf and dance, and the elder writes little stories for
the magazines. As I do none of these things, I am convinced they regard
me as a poor sort of creature. When they hand me a cup of tea I almost
expect them to pat me on the head and say, "Good dog!" I am long, lean,
stooping, hatchet-faced, hawknosed, near-sighted. I have not the breezy
air of the jolly young stockbrokers they are in the habit of meeting.
They rather alarm me. Moreover, they have managed to rear a colossal
pile of wholly incorrect information on every subject under the sun, and
are addicted to letting chunks of it fall about one's ears. This stuns
me, rendering conversation difficult.

As I had not seen Dora since her return from Rome, where she had spent
the early spring, I asked, in some trepidation, for her impressions.
Before I could collect myself, I was listening to a lecture on St.
Peter's. She told me it was built by Michael Angelo. I suggested that
some credit might be given to Bramante, not to speak of Rosellino,
Baldassare Peruzzi and the two San Gallo's.

"Oh!" said my young lady, with a superb air of omniscience. "It was
all Michael Angelo's design. _The others only tinkered away at it
afterwards_."

After receiving this brickbat I took my leave.

To console myself I looked up, during the evening, Michael Angelo's
noble letter about Bramante.

"One cannot deny," says he, "that Bramante was as excellent in
architecture as any one has been from the ancients to now. He placed the
first stone of St. Peter's, not full of confusion, but clear, neat, and
luminous, and isolated all round in such a way that it injured no
part of the palace, and was held to be a beautiful thing, as is still
apparent, in such a way that any one who has departed from the said
order of Bramante, as San Gallo has done, has departed from the tr