“Yes, and the Satterlees I’m sure will come. And Mrs. Seymour and her daughter that I said I’d help with the church fair. And the minister; what was it? Spottiswood.”
“And won’t the Mr. Hunt come that you seemed to be having such a good time with?”
“Yes, he’ll come. He’ll come to-morrow, I shouldn’t wonder. Then that thinnish fellow with the hair like a hearth-brush–did you meet him? Mr. Fane, a great friend of the Fosses. He’s coming to take us sight-seeing.” She yawned a wide, audible yawn. “I only hope there’ll be some fun in it. Confound you, Hat, go to bed!”
74CHAPTER V
After the Fosses had helped the lessees of the Haughty Hermitage to make it habitable; found for them a coachman who had a little French and, when told what they desired to buy, would take them to the proper shops; provided them with a butler to the same extent a linguist, through whom Estelle, who in Paris had ambitiously studied a manual of conversation, could give her orders, they not unnaturally became less generous of their company.
But they were not permitted to make the intervals long between visits. The coachman wise in French was perpetually driving his spanking pair to their gates, delivering a message, and waiting to take them down for lunch or dinner with their joyfully welcoming and grateful friends. It was not at all unpleasant. It was not prized preciously,–there was too much of it and too urgently lavished,–but the lavishers were loved for it by two women neither dry-hearted nor world-hardened. Leslie fell into the way, when she was in town and had time, of running in to Aurora’s, where it would be cheerful and she looked for a laugh.
Leslie, having reached, as she considered, years of discretion, thought fit to disregard the Florentine rule that young unmarried women must not walk in the streets unattended. She had balanced the two inconveniences: that of staying at home unless some one could go out with her, 75and that of being spoken to in the street, and decided that it was less unpleasant to hear a strange young man murmur as she passed, “Angel of paradise!” or “Beautiful eyes!”–no grosser insult had ever been offered her,–than to be bothered by a servant at her heels. The fact that she looked American and was understood to be following the custom of her own country secured her against any real misinterpretation.
It was chilly, Novemberish, and within the doors of Florentine domiciles rather colder, for some reason, than in the open air. The Fosses kept their house at a more human temperature than most people, but yet after years of Italy did not heat very thoroughly: one drops into the way of doing as others do, and grows accustomed to putting up with cold in winter. Leslie often expressed the opinion that in America people really exaggerate in the matter of heating their houses. Nevertheless, just for the joy of the eyes and, through the eyes, of the depressed spirit, she was glad to-day of the big fire dancing and crackling in Aurora’s chimney-place.
The upstairs sitting-room, where the ladies generally sat, might look rather like a day nursery; yet after one had accepted it, with its chintz of big red flowers and green foliage, its rich strawberry rug and new gold picture-frames, it did seem to brighten one’s mood. How think grayly amid that dazzle and glow any more than feel cold before that fire?