--"_Battoni!_"

"Well, what about him?" replies Algy, turning his head, but not showing
much inclination to slacken his speed or to join Frank and me.

"The Magdalen man--you know--I mean the man that painted the Magdalen,
and whose name I could not recollect last night, Algy. Barbara! how fast
you are walking!" (speaking rather reproachfully)--"stop a moment! I
want to introduce you to Mr. Musgrave."

Thus adjured, they have come to a halt, and the presentation is made.

"Surely," think I, glancing at Barbara's face, slightly flushed by the
heat, and still gently grave with the sobriety of expression left by
devotion, "he _must_ see the likeness now!" To insure his having the
chance of telling her that he does, I fall behind with Algy.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Claret cup has washed the dust from our throats; cold lamb and
mayonnaise have restored the force of body and equanimity of mind which
the exhausted air and long-drawn Gregorian chants of Tempest Church
destroyed. Frank is lunching with us. He had accompanied us to our own
gates, and had then made a feint of leaving, but I had pressed him, with
an eagerness proportioned to the seriousness of my design upon him, to
accompany us, and he had yielded with a willing ease.

I cannot help thinking that Algy does not look altogether pleased with
the arrangement, but after all, it is _my_ house, and not Algy's. It is
the first time that I have entertained a guest since the far-off
childish birthdays, when the neighbors' little boys and girls used to be
gathered together to drink tea out of the doll's tea service. In the
afternoon, we all walk to church again, and in the same order. Barbara
and Algy in front, Frank and I behind. I had planned differently, but
Algy is obtuse, Barbara will come into the manoeuvres, and Frank seems
simply indifferent. So it happens, that all through the park, and up the
bit of dusty white road we are out of ear-shot of the other two.

"A sky worthy of Dresden!" says Mr. Musgrave, throwing back his head and
looking up at the pale blue sultriness above our heads--the waveless,
stormless ether sea--as we pace along, with the church-bells' measured
ding-dong in our ears, and the cool ripe grasses about our feet.

"_Dear_ Dresden!" say I, pensively, with a sigh of mixed regret and
remorse, as I look back on the sunshiny hours that at the time I thought
so long, in that fair, white foreign town.

"Dear Linkesches Bad!" says Frank, sighing