“Well, that is all for clothes,” I stated, “and I’m going to help her buy them.”
“Can you get more than one frock with that?” asked Sam, and I told him that she certainly could, for only the day before Leslie and I had shopped. She had helped me to buy the things I was going to take home to Mother, Roberta, the twins, and Daddy, and we had got lovely things at most reasonable prices. Hand-embroidered, hand-made night dresses could be bought for a dollar and a half; waist patterns wonderfully embroidered, for two dollars; laces (and the laces were beautiful), for about half what one would pay at home—I had bought Mother a set of broad Irish lace collars and cuffs for four dollars—and quite everything was like that, one paid less, and got more.
“Leslie got uncurled ostrich feather fans for some of her friends,” I went on, “she said for half what she would have to pay for the cheapest at home—they were twelve and fifteen dollars, I think—and she got leather frames and hand-bound books too, that were beautiful.” Then I told Sam that I had found for Father a handtooled card case that I wanted him to see, and he said he wanted to, and then he said he was miserable.
“Why?” I asked, and he told me because I was going away.
“That won’t stop our being friends,” I answered, and I pretended a cheerfulness that I really didn’t feel.
“No,” he answered, “it mustn’t. I’m going to work hard,” he continued, “and I’m coming over to New York in a year or so for a one man show—” (I suppose I looked as if I didn’t understand—for I didn’t—and he explained) “That means,” he said, “an exhibition of my work, all by itself—Mr. Wake, bless him, thinks I can swing it, and when I come over I’ll come to see you. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
“Will you really?” I questioned, because I did want to be very sure, and he said he really would.
“But then,” I said, “you’ll probably go again—”
“Um, probably. . . . I used to travel with a banjo tucked under one arm, and a palette under the other. . . . But I see where, in a couple of years, things are going to be more complicated, if I can manage what I want to—”
I didn’t understand him, but I let it go, because Mr. Wake and Viola had come out of the Cathedral which dominates the wind-swept Piazza at Fiesole, and Mr. Wake came over to tell Sam to take me in and show me the bust of a Bishop and his monument that were made by Mino da Fiesole, and that Mr. Wake liked very much.