le yawn. "I only hope there'll be
some fun in it. Confound you, Hat, go to bed!"

CHAPTER V

After the Fosses had helped the lessees of the Haughty Hermitage to make
it habitable; found for them a coachman who had a little French and,
when told what they desired to buy, would take them to the proper shops;
provided them with a butler to the same extent a linguist, through whom
Estelle, who in Paris had ambitiously studied a manual of conversation,
could give her orders, they not unnaturally became less generous of
their company.

But they were not permitted to make the intervals long between visits.
The coachman wise in French was perpetually driving his spanking pair to
their gates, delivering a message, and waiting to take them down for
lunch or dinner with their joyfully welcoming and grateful friends. It
was not at all unpleasant. It was not prized preciously,--there was too
much of it and too urgently lavished,--but the lavishers were loved for
it by two women neither dry-hearted nor world-hardened. Leslie fell into
the way, when she was in town and had time, of running in to Aurora's,
where it would be cheerful and she looked for a laugh.

Leslie, having reached, as she considered, years of discretion, thought
fit to disregard the Florentine rule that young unmarried women must not
walk in the streets unattended. She had balanced the two inconveniences:
that of staying at home unless some one could go out with her, and that
of being spoken to in the street, and decided that it was less
unpleasant to hear a strange young man murmur as she passed, "Angel of
paradise!" or "Beautiful eyes!"--no grosser insult had ever been offered
her,--than to be bothered by a servant at her heels. The fact that she
looked American and was understood to be following the custom of her own
country secured her against any real misinterpretation.

It was chilly, Novemberish, and within the doors of Florentine domiciles
rather colder, for some reason, than in the open air. The Fosses kept
their house at a more human temperature than most people, but yet after
years of Italy did not heat very thoroughly: one drops into the way of
doing as others do, and grows accustomed to putting up with cold in
winter. Leslie often expressed the opinion that in America people really
exaggerate in the matter of heating their houses. Nevertheless, just for
the joy of the eyes and, through the eyes, of the depressed spirit, she
was glad to-day