“They were very beautiful,” said Betsey, “but they're a crippled lot now.” “Yes, most of them have artificial limbs,” I answered. “All they do now is to pose in vaudeville for the entertainment of humanity.” As we neared the room where I was to meet Mrs. Mullet we bade the young people go their way and look for us at the door about twelve-thirty. We found the lady copying the portraits of our first parents. Her breast began to heave in a storm of emotion as she looked at us. “Who are your friends?” I quickly asked, by way of diverting her thought. “This is Adam and Eve,” said she, almost tearfully. “I'm glad to see that they don't make company of us,” Betsey declared. “They receive everybody in that same suit of clothes,” I answered. “And Eve's entertainment is so simple--apples right off the tree!” “I don't see but that they look just as aristocratic as they would if they had sprung from poor but respectable parents,” said Betsey. “Adam looks like a rather shiftless, good-natured young fellow, easily led, but, on the whole, I like them both,” was my answer. “They're frank and open and aboveboard. If you're looking for your first ancestors and must have them, I don't think you could do better. Certainly Mr. Darwin has nothing to offer that compares with them.” Betsey and I had our little dialogues about many objects in our way, and now we had got Mrs. Mullet righted, so to speak, and on a firm working basis. She showed us through the gallery. I remember that she was particularly interested in the Botticelli paintings. Mrs. Mullet said that she adored the Madonna--a case of compound adoration, for in its adoring group Botticelli succeeded in painting the most inhuman piety that the world has seen. “Isn't that glorious?” Mrs. Mullet asked, as we stopped before his Venus--a tall lady standing on half a cockle-shell, neatly poised on breezy water. “She has crooked feet,” said Betsey. “Well, I guess yours would be crooked if you had been to sea on a cockle-shell,” I said, which will prove to the learned reader that we were about as ignorant of art as any in that hurrying crowd of misguided people. “Oh, I think it's a wonderful thing! Look at the colors!” Mrs. Mullet exclaimed. “But the toes are so long--they are rippling toes. Those on the right foot look as if they had just finished a difficult run on the piano,” Betsey insisted. “She might be called the Long-toed Venus,” I suggested. “But she isn't to blame for that. I suppose she was born with that infirmity.” So we crude and business-like Americans went on, as we flitted here and there, sipping the honey from each flower of art. Twelve-thirty had arrived, and I suggested to Betsey that she should meet the young people and go with them wherever they pleased, and that they could find me at the hotel at four. She left us, and I asked Mrs. Mullet what I could do for her. “I'm in perfectly awful trouble,” she sighed, with rising tears.