“Go ’way with you! You know that if you feed me taffy enough you can make me see and say anything you want.”
“–a very intelligent woman. And I am so constituted that I simply cannot go on living in the same world with a really intelligent woman–my friend, besides–who does not see the difference between Raphael and Guido Reni, and likes one exactly as well as the other. I ache to change it!”
“Go ahead. We don’t want you to die. But I’m afraid it’ll take surgery. You’ll have to drill a hole in my thick head to get the things you mean into that good brain so full of real intelligence.”
“If you wouldn’t be flippant!”
“What’s that?”
“If you would bring reverence to the study of things done by great people, and that people of great taste and learning have collected for our joy and improvement!”
“See here! Don’t you want me to have a little fun while we do Florence? I don’t see how I can stand it, if we’re to be solemn as those old saints with mouldy green complexions.”
“We’re not to be solemn. I have done these galleries 104solemnly times enough, Heaven knows. But we’re to be attentive, respectful, of an open and receptive mind. We’re not to say outrageous things in the mere desire to shock our guide, or tease him.”
“You don’t mean to say you think that I–?”
“It’s not funny.”