"Well, what do the others say? You, Marion, for example?"
"Oh, it might be worth trying," responded Marion, and when no one really disagreed with Richard, he felt that the matter was settled as he wished.
The next day Aunt Caroline and Uncle Jim devoted themselves to the Accademia. With Ellen and Marion, Irma did walk through the Accademia, with its countless pictures, a complete exhibition of the renowned Sienese school, but there were very few paintings before which she cared to linger.
"You won't go shopping with me?" asked Aunt Caroline, as she turned away. "They make fine old furniture here and beautiful carved frames."
"Yes, and genuine old masters,—madonnas, bambinos, and all the saints," said Marion. "Some one has been telling me about them."
"Ah, but I am not looking for an old master," said Aunt Caroline, "and I shall like the furniture all the better if it isn't old."
The rest of this morning the young people strolled along the narrow picturesque streets, occasionally going inside some old building where Richard knew there was something to see, or standing at a corner, he would give them the details of some bloody street combat between Guelphs and Ghibellines. Once he took them up into a high building, from which they viewed the old city wall, and from the same window he pointed toward the field of Montaperto where the Sienese completely routed their great enemies, the Florentines.
"The battlefield is six miles away," he explained. "I am only pointing in its general direction. It's hard to believe that the Sienese killed twelve thousand Florentines and made six thousand prisoners, though that was when Siena had a hundred thousand inhabitants, instead of twenty-five thousand, as now."