"It's a damned witty nickname."
"Chris, what language!"
"So you want to know why Addie is an Italian?"
She shrugged her shoulders, played the grown-up sister:
"I think you're silly, just like children. That nickname means nothing."
They burst with laughter once more:
"Don't you know what they do in Italy?"
"In Rome?"
She looked at them, her louts of brothers; she vaguely remembered incautiously-whispered remarks about Aunt Constance, about the time when she was still the wife of the Netherlands minister at Rome, of that old uncle De Staffelaer whom she had never known.
"Well, look here: what do you think the name means?..."