"He lived before Savonarola, about a hundred years. So that when Savonarola used to walk about through these rooms and corridors, he saw the same pictures we are now looking at."
"I say, uncle, don't you think I am having the best part of this, after all?" brightly asked Malcom, the following day, as Mr. Sumner entered the wide sunny room where he was lying on the sofa, propped up by cushions, while Barbara, Bettina, and Margery were clustered about him with their hands full of photographs of Fra Angelico's paintings, and all trying to talk at once. "The girls have told me everything; and I am almost sure I shall never mistake a Fra Angelico picture. I know just what expression he put into his faces, just how quiet and as-if-they-never-could-be-used his hands are, and how straight the folds of his draperies hang, even though the people who wear them are dancing. I know what funny little clouds, like bundles of cigars, his Madonnas sit upon up in the heavens.
"I am not quite sure, uncle dear, but I like your instructions best when second-hand," he laughingly added. "Betty has made me fairly love the old fellow by her stories of his unearthly goodness. Was it not fine to refuse money for his work, and to decline to be made archbishop when the Pope asked him; and to recommend a brother monk for the office? I think he ought to be called Saint Angelico."
FRA ANGELICO. UFFUZI GALLERY, FLORENCE. GROUP OF ANGELS. FROM CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.
"Some people have called him the 'St. John of Art,'" Mr. Sumner replied, with a bright smile at Malcom's enthusiasm. "I am not sure but yours is the better name, however."
About this time people who frequented the Cascine Gardens and other popular drives in and about Florence began to notice with interest an elegant equipage containing a tall, slender, pale young man, two beautiful, brown-eyed girls, and oftentimes either a gray-haired woman in black or a sunny-haired young girl. It had been purchased by Howard, and daily he wished Barbara and Bettina to drive with him. Indeed, it now seemed as if the young man's thoughts were beginning to centre wholly in this household; and suddenly warned by a few words spoken by Malcom, Mrs. Douglas became painfully conscious that a more than mere friendly interest might prompt such constant and lavish attentions. With newly opened eyes, she saw that while Howard generously gave to them all of such things as he could in return for their hospitality, yet there was a something different in his manner toward Barbara and Bettina. Their room was always bright and fragrant with the most costly flowers, and not a wish did they express but Howard was eager to gratify it.
She was troubled; and since the air of Florence was beginning to take on the chill of winter—to become too cold for such an invalid as Howard—she ventured one day, when they happened to be alone together, to ask him if he would soon go farther south for the winter.