“Dear Mr. Wake:
“I do hope that you will be very happy this Christmas and always!
“Your friend,
“Jane Jones.”
I snipped a paragraph from Miss Sheila’s last letter, for he seemed to like hearing about her, and talking of her, and the paragraph was about him.
“I am sure,” she had written, “that the Mr. Wake of whom you write so often, must be a real addition to your Florentine life. I did, very much, like his story of the wedding of Lorenzo, The Magnificent.”
(He was one of the Medici)
“I saw it, dear, as you said he made you see it. . . . And wouldn’t Florence be a nice city to be married in? I think if I had all my life to do over, I would go to a Padre in Florence, with some unlucky man, and pay a lot of scheming little wretches to throw roses before me as I left the church. . . . You see what a romantic mood has attacked your old friend? I think I must need a tonic! Please write me the titles of your Mr. Wake’s books; I am ashamed to say that I haven’t read them, but I want to, and I shall—”
It did please him, I saw him read it three times that very evening; twice while Mr. Hemmingway was trying to remember the first time that he had ever seen a plum pudding brought in, on the center of a blazing platter; and the third time, while Viola was describing the last Christmas and dragging in through it a long description of a lodge in the Adirondacks.
But to get on, or rather go back and start where I should, Miss Julianna had a very fine dinner because of our party, and she sat down with us, which wasn’t always her custom—she often helped in the kitchen—and Mr. Hemmingway had raked up some greenish black dress clothes from somewhere, and Miss Bannister had her hair on as nearly straight as I had ever seen it, and Miss Meek wore a purple velvet dress with green buttons and a piece of old lace on it, which I had never before seen, but which she had spoken of in a way that made me know that she thought it very fine.
Of course Leslie was beautiful—she had on a new dress made of several shades of light blue chiffon, and this fluttered and changed as she walked—and there was a silver ribbon girdle on it, and silver ribbons knotted here and there over the shining white satin lining, and she wore silver slippers, and blue stockings with silver lace inserts, and she had a silver bandeau on her hair. I told her she was lovely.