"We're not to be solemn. I have done these galleries solemnly times enough, Heaven knows. But we're to be attentive, respectful, of an open and receptive mind. We're not to say outrageous things in the mere desire to shock our guide, or tease him." "You don't mean to say you think that I--?" "It's not funny." "It mayn't be funny--but it's fun! Go on and lecture. You haven't got a bit of fun in you." "Yes, I have!" said Gerald, and with a creeping smile--grudging at first, then brighter--looked Mrs. Hawthorne in the eye, while such fun as lived in him traveled over the bridge of their glances, and she was permitted to get a glimpse of his underlying relish. "All I ask of you, Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, finally, "is that you will not let your innocence on these subjects appear when you are with others. I don't say pretend. Just keep still, be silent! It does not matter when you are with me. When you are with me I beg of you to be yourself. But with others.... You would become the talk of the town, and--" he shuddered, "I should most horribly hate it!" * * * * * "Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, with a quiver of annoyance in his voice a few days later, "did I not implore you not to let it be known in Florence how you are affected by the proudest treasures of her world-famous collections?" "Yes, you told me. But I didn't promise." "And now I am asked--with laughter and mockery--whether I have seen Mrs. Hawthorne giving an imitation of a Madonna by Simma Bewey, and heard Mrs. Hawthorne on the subject of G. Ottow and Others." "Didn't you say--with laughter? Well, then, it's all right. Don't you care. I just got to training and did it to make them a little sport. Didn't they tell you about my Native of Italy eating Macaroni?" "Mrs. Hawthorne, you are just a bad big school-girl--a bad big school-girl--" "'Hark, from the tomb!'" said Mrs. Hawthorne, in lieu of anything more scintillating. "A bad big school-girl, and I will have nothing more to do with you. If you delight in being the talk of the town, all you have to do is allow your friend Mr. Hunt in his spare hours to take you to see such things as I have not yet had the honor of showing you." "Blessed if I--Look here, you aren't mad in earnest? Sooner'n lose you, I won't say another word. There! I've been Tchee-mah-boo-eh's Madonna for the last time. Don't be cross with little T. T.--Talk of the Town!" "If you had any discrimination, any reticence ..." "No reticence? Does that mean can't keep anything to myself? You don't know me!" "You even tell your age." "You aren't going to find fault with me for _that_?" "Yes. At your age one should know better. It is part of your general and too great frankness." They upon occasions came near quarreling, but not seriously, her disposition to quarrel was so small. Yet, two could not be outspoken and one of them irritable, and those rocks never even be grazed.