I meant to have sent you a dozen letters between my last one and this, but we have been so busy that I simply could not write. I thought I was a particularly strong person, but I give you my word, Carin, that at the end of a day of sight-seeing I am glad to eat my dinner and slip into my bed. However, there is usually something required of me between the eating of the dinner and the seeking of my couch, for we have been entertaining much, and have been much entertained.
We left London late in May and sailed to Genoa, and since then we have been seeing Italy. As it chanced, Aunt Lorena fell in with some old friends who have been living for years near Fiesole, and they decided to journey with us. This has given us the entrée to many homes which we should otherwise not have seen, and it has all been very gay and diverting.
Never have I loved any place as I do Italy. Such beauty, such pathos! I cannot express all I feel, though my diary shall some day show you that I have tried. But more of that some other time, dear girl. I insist that we must be together this winter for a while. Am I right in thinking you will go home for the winter, and that you are to have the delicious experience of preparing your trousseau there in your own dear old home? I want to help with that. I have hunted out a few little things that may find a place in it, and I want to use my needle in your service.
Mr. Hargreaves has been everywhere with us. I thought it odd of him to accompany us to Venice and to Rome, since he had been in both places only a few months ago. But it was his affair. There was nothing to keep him from visiting both places again if he chose. Of course he has added to my pleasure, being nearer my age than any of the others. Uncle and Aunt Lorena appear to have much satisfaction from his presence, too. They like him immensely and talk about him a great deal. They think him brilliant, but I am not sure that I do. His mind clings too long to one subject. I like a little more agility. Weren’t you always amused at the way the minds of Mary Cecily and her brother danced from subject to subject? It was touch and go with them. All they needed was half a sentence—they understood the rest before it was spoken.
I think myself that no one ought to visit Venice except with her own true love. To float over those moonlit canals to the sound of music, between those regal, slumbering palaces in the company of mere casual acquaintances or elderly relatives is too much to ask of anyone.
We four, uncle, auntie, Mr. Hargreaves and I, were much in the gondolas, going now here, now there, seeing strange old things and dreaming old dreams. Not at all, I am sure, because he cares for me, but just because the surroundings were too much for him, Mr. Hargreaves was inclined to be—well, a trifle sentimental. But I couldn’t endure that. Having the wrong man make love is worse than going without—Oh, much! But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I took it all as a joke, and told him to hold Aunt Lorena’s hand; that she was a much more sentimental person than I.
He sent me flowers every morning, but I wouldn’t keep them. There was a sweet English girl there who was not well, and I made her take most of them. The rest I threw in the canal—not as an insult to the flowers or their giver, but because, when I was gondola riding, it gave me pleasure to throw out a rose now and then and see it drift with the tide. Aunt Lorena wasn’t sure that I was being kind to her friend, but I was, really. It wouldn’t have been at all kind to let him think I cared when I didn’t, would it, dear?
We met a bright young fellow the other day who had studied at the Academy of Design with Keefe, and he said he thought Keefe had decided to go into landscape work instead of portraits, after all, which seems rather odd considering what a success he was making with portraits. I said:
“Why do you think he changed?”
“Oh, it’s hard to say,” he answered. “Keefe doesn’t seem the fellow he used to be. You remember how jolly he was, and how he loved company? It is different with him now. He keeps much to himself and works beyond all reason. I believe in being industrious, but there’s no use in being a fanatic about work.”