have to drill a hole in my thick head to get the things you mean
into that good brain so full of real intelligence."

"If you wouldn't be flippant!"

"What's that?"

"If you would bring reverence to the study of things done by great
people, and that people of great taste and learning have collected for
our joy and improvement!"

"See here! Don't you want me to have a little fun while we do Florence?
I don't see how I can stand it, if we're to be solemn as those old
saints with mouldy green complexions."

"We're not to be solemn. I have done these galleries solemnly times
enough, Heaven knows. But we're to be attentive, respectful, of an open
and receptive mind. We're not to say outrageous things in the mere
desire to shock our guide, or tease him."

"You don't mean to say you think that I--?"

"It's not funny."

"It mayn't be funny--but it's fun! Go on and lecture. You haven't got a
bit of fun in you."

"Yes, I have!" said Gerald, and with a creeping smile--grudging at
first, then brighter--looked Mrs. Hawthorne in the eye, while such fun
as lived in him traveled over the bridge of their glances, and she was
permitted to get a glimpse of his underlying relish.

"All I ask of you, Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, finally, "is that you will
not let your innocence on these subjects appear when you are with
others. I don't say pretend. Just keep still, be silent! It does not
matter when you are with me. When you are with me I beg of you to be
yourself. But with others.... You would become the talk of the town,
and--" he shuddered, "I should most horribly hate it!"

* * * * *

"Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, with a quiver of annoyance in his voice a few
days later, "did I not implore you not to let it be known in Florence
how you are affected by the proudest treasures of her world-famous
collections?"

"Yes, you told me. But I didn't promise."

"And now I am asked--with laughter and mockery--whether I have seen Mrs.
Hawthorne giving an imitation of a Madonna by Simma Bewey, and heard
Mrs. Hawthorne on the subject of G. Ottow and Others."

"Didn't you say--with laughter? Well, then, it's all right. Don't you
care. I just got to training and did it to make them a little sport.
Didn't they tell you about my Native of Italy eating Macaroni?"

"Mrs. Hawthorne, you are just a bad big school-girl--a bad big
school-girl--"

"'Hark, from the tomb!'" said Mrs. Hawthorne, in lieu of