“That's possible. There's plenty of room outside his old mental horizon. If it's honest love I should think he would die of astonishment to find such goods on himself.”
“Well, you see, he was not very well, and I was a kind of mother to him here,” Mrs. Mullet answered, as she wiped her eyes. “He was kind and thoughtful and so very handsome. I was really fond of him.”
Mrs. Mullet yielded again to her emotions. She was not a bad sort of a woman, after all.
True, she was still afflicted with a light attack of the beauty disease. But she had a heart in her. She was, too, “a well-fashioned, enticing creature,” as Samuel Pepys would have said. I didn't blame Muggs for leaping in love with her. It was as natural as for a boy to leap into a swimming-hole.
“What shall I do?” she asked, presently.
“Study art as hard as you can,” I said. “Botticelli may help you to forget Muggs. But don't fail to tell me what happens. I've got to know how Muggs gets along with his new affliction.”
She agreed to keep me posted, and left us.
A note came from Mrs. Fraley that afternoon. She wished to see me on a matter of business, and wouldn't we go and drink tea with them at five? They were spending the day in the Capitoline Museum, where Muriel was at work.
We couldn't drink tea with them, and so Betsey proposed that we walk to the museum and see what they wanted. We did it.
Miss Muriel was copying a figure of Socrates on the fragment of a frieze. The beauty disease had visibly progressed in her—hair a shade richer, eyes more strongly underscored. Old Socrates was so different, sitting in conversation and leaning forward on his staff. One bare foot rested comfortably on the other. They were a good-sized pair of industrious and reliable feet. He seemed to be addressing his argument to the young lady who sat before him. The expression of the big toe on his right foot indicated that it was not wholly unmoved by his words.