"If we'd known you wanted to come," explained Mrs. Merrithew heartily, "we could have brought you in the boat." That was the way she oftenest spoke of it, and other times it was the gondola.
Peter explained his old acquaintance with the charging saint and his curiosity about the lady, but when the custodian had brought a silver paper screen to gather the little light there was upon the mellow old Carpaccio, he looked upon her with a vague dissatisfaction.
"It's the same dragon and the same young man," he admitted. "I know him by the hair and by the determined expression. But I'm not sure about the young lady."
"You are looking for a fairy-tale Princess," Miss Dassonville declared, "but you have to remember that the knight didn't marry this one; he only made a Christian of her."
They came back to it again when they had looked at all the others and speculated as to whether Carpaccio knew how funny he was when he painted Saint Jerome among the brethren, and whether in the last picture he was really in heaven as Ruskin reported.
"So you think," said Peter, "she'd have been more satisfactory if the painter had thought Saint George meant to marry her?"
"More personal and convincing," the girl maintained.
"There's one in the Belle Arti that's a lot better looking to my notion," contributed Mrs. Merrithew.
"Oh, but that Princess is running away," the girl protested.
"It's what any well brought up young female would be expected to do under the circumstances," declared the elder lady; "just look at them fragments. It's enough to turn the strongest."