ke a
turn about with me."

His younger sister, while he got up, leaned forward a little, looking
round her, but she gave for the moment no further sign of complying with
his invitation.

"Where shall we find you, then, if Peter comes?" asked the other Miss
Dormer, making no movement at all.

"I daresay Peter won't come. He'll leave us here to cool our heels."

"Oh Nick dear!" Biddy exclaimed in a small sweet voice of protest. It
was plainly her theory that Peter would come, and even a little her fond
fear that she might miss him should she quit that spot.

"We shall come back in a quarter of an hour. Really I must look at these
things," Nick declared, turning his face to a marble group which stood
near them on the right--a man with the skin of a beast round his loins,
tussling with a naked woman in some primitive effort of courtship or
capture.

Lady Agnes followed the direction of her son's eyes and then observed:
"Everything seems very dreadful. I should think Biddy had better sit
still. Hasn't she seen enough horrors up above?"

"I daresay that if Peter comes Julia'll be with him," the elder girl
remarked irrelevantly.

"Well then he can take Julia about. That will be more proper," said Lady
Agnes.

"Mother dear, she doesn't care a rap about art. It's a fearful bore
looking at fine things with Julia," Nick returned.

"Won't you go with him, Grace?"--and Biddy appealed to her sister.

"I think she has awfully good taste!" Grace exclaimed, not answering
this inquiry.

"_Don't_ say nasty things about her!" Lady Agnes broke out solemnly to
her son after resting her eyes on him a moment with an air of reluctant
reprobation.

"I say nothing but what she'd say herself," the young man urged. "About
some things she has very good taste, but about this kind of thing she
has no taste at all."

"That's better, I think," said Lady Agnes, turning her eyes again to the
"kind of thing" her son appeared to designate.

"She's awfully clever--awfully!" Grace went on with decision.

"Awfully, awfully!" her brother repeated, standing in front of her and
smiling down at her.

"You are nasty, Nick. You know you are," said the young lady, but more
in sorrow than in anger.

Biddy got up at this, as if the accusatory tone prompted her to place
herself generously at his side. "Mightn't you go and order lunch--in
that place, you know?" she asked of her mother. "Then we'd come back
when it was ready."

"My dear child, I