once?"

"H-m, I'm not sure. Is it intended for a portrait of Queen Margherita?"

"Right you are! Of course that's what it is. It's a picture of the
queen, done by hand with pen and ink; but that's not all. If you should
take a magnifying glass, you would see that every line is a line of
writing--fine, fine pen-writing, the very finest possible, and if you
begin reading at this pearl of her crown, and just follow through all
the quirligiggles and everything to the end, you will have read the
whole history of Italy in a condensed form! Isn't it wonderful? Don't
you think it extraordinary, a real curiosity? Don't you think I was
right to buy it?"

"My opinion on that point, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, would rather depend on
what you paid for it."

"Oh, would it?" She lost impetus, and gave a moment to reflection.
"Well, I shall never know, then, for I'm not going to tell you. One's
enough blaming me for extravagance."

"My dear Mrs. Hawthorne, pray don't suppose me bold enough to--"

"Oh, you're bold enough, my friend. But while I like my friends to speak
their minds, I've had just enough of it for one day, d' you see? I've
had enough, in fact, to make me sort of homesick."

She looked it, and not as far as could be from tears. The small vexation
of his failure to think her treasure worth anything she might have paid
for it, the intimation that he might join the camp of the enemy in
finding her extravagant, had acted apparently as a last straw.

"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, I beg of you not to feel homesick!" he cried,
compunctious and really eager. "It's such a poor compliment to Florence
and to us, you know, us Florentines, who owe you so much for bringing
among us this winter your splendid laughter and good spirits and the
dimples which it does us so much good to see."

"No," she said ruefully, "you can't rub me the right way till I'm
contented here as I was yesterday. Florence is all right, and the
Florentines are mighty polite; but--" She looked at the fire a moment,
while he tried, and failed, to find something effectively soothing to
say. "In the State of Massachusetts there's a sort of spit running into
the sea, and on a sand hill of this there's a little shingled house that
never had a drop of paint outside of it nor of plumbing inside; but
there's an old well at the back, deep as they dig them, with, on the
hottest day, ice-water at the bottom. The yard is pretty well scratched
up by the hens, but there are a few thin