“Now--” Mr. Wake ended, as we drew near a long building that had medallions all along the front of it, made of the same sort of ware that I had seen in the fountain up on the Via Nazionale, “Now I’m going to take a hand. . . . And I know that with a little boosting and a little advice the young man will _get along_! He has the real stuff in him. Some of his sketches made me think of the early work of Davies. Going to keep him with me until he gets a hold, and longer if he’ll stay. Nice boy, _fine_ boy. . . . Look ahead of you, Jane, my child. . . . You see the round, blue and white plaques up there? Copied all over the world, those little white babies with their legs wrapped in swaddling clothes. They were made by della Robbia back in the fourteenth century.” I thought that was wonderful, and so different from our modern art, because if you were to hang up a Henry Hutt picture, even indoors, I don’t believe it would last fifty years. I said this to Mr. Wake, who entirely agreed with me. Then he told me that one of the reasons that the Italians made such beautiful things was that they took a long time to doing it. A man named Orcagna who is dead--it is discouraging to think that every one who is great seems to _have_ to be dead a long, long time--this man worked thirty years on a shrine that is in a church called Or San Michele. (It is a _beautiful_ shrine of marble and silver and precious stones and lovely little carved figures) And Giotto died before his tower was finished--it looks like a slim lily where it stands by the side of the big fat Duomo--and Raphael was killed by working too hard over his pictures, and wasn’t allowed to marry because the Pope thought he should give all of his time to his work, which seems so sad to me. . . . I kept thinking for a long time, after Mr. Wake told me that, of how Raphael’s sweetheart must have felt when Raphael was buried at thirty-seven, for that isn’t so very old, after all. As we stood there talking I saw Viola coming toward us, and after I had spoken quickly to Mr. Wake, I called to her, because I knew she was lonely. “This is Viola,” I said to Mr. Wake, “her last name is Harris-Clarke, you say them both,” and then I added, to Viola, “We’re going to see this church. Do you want to go with us?” “But how charming!” she murmured, “and this is Mr. Wake, of whom I have heard most _pleasant_ things?” Mr. Wake bowed from the waistline, but he didn’t seem especially pleased, or at all excited over the things she had heard of him and that did surprise me a lot! CHAPTER FOURTEEN STORIES, MUSIC AND TEA