"Half the time. Do you ever have day dreams?" he asked Effie, pressing her cheek against his own.
"I don't know what they are," she murmured, with a soft little note of polite regret for her ignorance, if possibly it incommoded him.
"You will by and by," he said, "and then you must look out for them. They're particularly bad in this air. I had one of them in Florence once that lasted three months."
"What was it about?" asked the child.
Imogene involuntarily bent forward.
"Ah, I can't tell you now. She's trying to hear us."
"No, no," protested the girl, with a laugh. "I was thinking of something else."
"Oh, we know her, don't we?" he said to the child, with a playful appeal to that passion for the joint possession of a mystery which all children have.
"We might whisper it," she suggested.
"No; better wait for some other time." They were sitting near a table where a pencil and some loose leaves of paper lay. He pulled his chair a little closer, and, with the child still upon his knee, began to scribble and sketch at random. "Ah, there's San Miniato," he said, with a glance from the window. "Must get its outline in. You've heard how there came to be a church up there? No? Well, it shows the sort of man San Miniato really was. He was one of the early Christians, and he gave the poor pagans a great deal of trouble. They first threw him to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre, but the moment those animals set eyes on him they saw it would be of no use; they just lay down and died. Very well, then; the pagans determined to see what effect the axe would have upon San Miniato: but as soon as they struck off his head he picked it up, set it back on his shoulders again, waded across the Arno, walked up the hill, and when he came to a convenient little oratory up there he knelt down and expired. Isn't that a pretty good story? It's like fairies, isn't it?"