“That was the writer’s name. You know the books I mean?”
“I have read a work or two of Antonia’s, yes. She lives near Florence, you know, on another of these little hills.”
“Oh, does she!”
“Her name is Mrs. Grangeon. She is an Englishwoman, with an extraordinary sense of, and feeling for, Italy. She is, at her best, a poet; at her worst, slightly deficient, perhaps, in humor. But her passion for Italy is genuine, and I have no doubt she sees it as glowing as the pictures she makes of it.”
“Her books are ‘grand, John’! If I never had come here, I never should have appreciated them or her–making up that wonderful world, all pomegranates and jasmin-stars, and curls like clustering blue-black grapes, and staturesque limbs, out of the back of her head. Yes, and the golden dust of centuries, and time’s mellow caressing touch–oh, I wish I could remember it all!”
“Mrs. Hawthorne, we must take you in hand. Be it ours to initiate you. Come, what have you been to see?”
“Treasures of art? We haven’t had time yet. We’ve been getting a house fit to live in. When you asked me how I liked Florence, I ought to have begun by that end. I love my house, Mr. Foss. I love my garden. I love the Lungarno. And the Casheeny. And Boboly. And the drive up here. And the stores! I positively dote on those little bits of stores on the jewelers’ bridge.”
64“Well, well, that’s quite enough to begin with.”
“Now that we’re going to have some time to spare, we mean to go sight-seeing like other folks.”
“How I wish, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, that I were not such a busy man! But”–Mr. Foss had a look of bright inspiration–“should I on that account be dejected? Here is Mr. Fane–”