Dolly's heart jumped at the invitation; music and the Sistine Chapel! But it did not suit her to make an inconvenient odd one in a partie carrée, among strangers. She declined.
"I said I would go," said Mrs. Thayer. "Since the gentlemen have come to take you, I think you had better. Dolly will not mind losing you for an hour or two."
Which Dolly eagerly confirmed; wondering much at the same time to see Christina hesitate, when her lover, as she said, might come at any minute.
She, too, finally resolved against it, however; and when Mrs. Thayer and the gentlemen had gone, and Mr. Thayer had withdrawn, as his custom was, to his own apartment, the two girls took possession of the forsaken drawing-room. It was a pretty room, very well furnished, and like every other part of the present home of the Thayers, running over with new possessions in the shape of bits of art or antiquity, pictures, and trinkets of every kind, which they were always picking up. These were an infinite amusement to Dolly; and Christina was good-humouredly pleased with her pleasure.
"There's no fun in being in Rome," she remarked, "if you cannot buy all you see. I would run away if my purse gave out."
"But there is all that you cannot take away," said Dolly. "Think of what your mother has gone to this evening."
"The Sistine Chapel," said Christina. "I don't really care for it. Those stupid old prophets and sybils say nothing to me; though of course one must make a fuss about them; and the picture of the Last Judgment, I think, is absolutely frightful."
But here Dolly's eyes arrested her friend.
"Well, I tell you the truth; I do think so," she said. "I may tell the truth to you. I do not care one pin for Michael Angelo."
"Mayn't you tell the truth to anybody?"