“It’s in my pocket,” I told him, and we stopped and I fumbled around until I found the large, stiff square. “There--” I said. Mr. Wake took it. “No doubt you think me a strange old chap,” he said. “Oh, no,” I answered, “a great many people are interested in writing nowadays.” “It isn’t that, but your fairy godmother brought to my mind the years when I believed in fairies. . . . A very nice writing, isn’t it? I think it is most charming, don’t you, Jane?” “See how it looks on the page,” I said, taking it from him quickly, and then the letter from its envelope. “It _is_ pretty, isn’t it?” “‘Dear, dear Child:--’” he read, and then suddenly, as if he were irritated, or had been hurt sharply, added, “Here, here--I don’t want to be reading your letters! And my soul, I must be getting you home! I’ve a dinner engagement over South of the Arno, and I will have to speed up a bit--” And we did. * * * * * At dinner Leslie was uppish and unpleasant. I think she was still smarting from Mr. Paggi’s attack, and that her pride was so shaken she had to pretend some of the assurance that she had lost that afternoon. Anyway, something made her get into a very elaborate dinner dress, and put a high, Spanish comb in her hair, and wear her big, platinum-set ring of diamonds, and a little flexible pearl-set bracelet, and a platinum chain with pearls on that. She looked beautiful, but Mother never thought it was in good taste to wear things that are unsuitable, and I don’t either. Leslie sailed in after Beata had brought in the soup, and Miss Meek, with whom Leslie had struck up a feud at the first meal, burst out with, “Oh, my eye! Look at the Queen of Sheba!” which seemed to make Leslie awfully mad, so when Miss Bannister asked me what I had done during the afternoon, I told every one--to change the current--in spite of the fact that Miss Bannister had said, “One of my deaf days, and it doesn’t matter in the least, don’t you know. Only asked to be polite. Pass the bread.” “Mr. Wake?” said Leslie, after I had told of my walk, and the Loggia dei Lanzi and the Sabine story. “And he took you into an alley restaurant to eat? How _odd_!” “Perhaps the poor old bounder is jolly hard up,” said Miss Meek, who tries to be kind to people she likes. “It wasn’t that,” I said, and I said it sharply, for I was getting more and more out of temper with Leslie. “We were hunting around for _atmosphere_; you ought to know what it is, _Miss_ Parrish, you talk about it enough. . . . He has a villa out the Fiesole way and I guess a person with a villa wouldn’t worry about a few cents, although I would like him _just_ as well if he had to!” “_That’s_ the staunch-hearted flapper!” put in Miss Meek, as Leslie murmured, “So many of the climbing sort rent fearful little places--really no more than chicken coops, and then call them villas! _So_ amusing--”