e. At the end of the hour we
spent there it had the same effect upon him as upon Colonel Bramley, he
did not wish to go any further; and we parted from the Miss Binghams,
who did. As I said good-bye to Miss Cora she gave my hand a subtly
sympathetic pressure, whispered tenderly, "He's very nice," and
roguishly escaped before I could ask who was, or what difference it
made. Having thought it over, I took the first opportunity of inquiring
of Dicky how much of his private affairs he had unburdened to Miss Cora.
"Oh," said he, "hardly anything. She knows a former young lady friend of
mine in Syracuse--we still exchange Christmas cards--and that led me on
to say I thought of getting married this winter. Of course I didn't
mention Isabel."

CHAPTER XVIII.

Out of indulgence to Dicky we lingered in Florence three or four days
longer than was at all convenient, considering, as the Senator said, the
amount of ground we had to cover before we could conscientiously recross
the Channel. But neither poppa nor momma were people to desert a
fellow-countryman in distress in foreign parts, especially in view of
this one's pathetic reliance upon our sympathy and support, as a family.
We all did our best toward the distraction of what momma called his poor
mind, though I cannot say that we were very successful. His poor mind
seemed wholly taken up with one anticipative idea, and whatever failed
to minister to that he hadn't, as poppa sadly said, any use for. The
cloisters of San Marco had no healing for his spirit, and when we
directed his attention to the solitary painting on the wall with which
Fra Angelico made a shrine of each of its monastic cubicles he merely
remarked that it was more than you got in most hotels, and turned
joylessly away. Even the charred stick that helped to martyr Savonarola
left him cold. He said, indifferently, that it was only the natural
result of mixing up politics and religion, and that certain Chicago
ministers who supported Bryan from the pulpit might well take warning.
But his words were apathetic; he did not really care whether those
Chicago ministers went to the stake or not. We stood him before the
bronze gates of Ghiberti, and walked him up and down between rows of
works in _pietra dura_, but without any permanent effect, and when he
contemplated the consecrated residences of Cimabue and Cellini, we could
see that his interest was perfunctory, and that out of the corner of his
eye he reall