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Page 73
"Who showed you the way to the steamer----"
"And hung around doing things the whole enduring time," continued my
parent, as Mark Antony's daughter turned her head aside, and Drusus, the
brother of Tiberius, frowned upon our passing.
"He must have been our man!" cried both the Misses Bingham, with
excitement.
"In the manner of Taddeo Gaddi," interrupted the guide, surprising us on
the flank with a Holy Family.
"All right," said the Senator. "Well, this fellow proposed to bring our
party oysters on the steamer, and we took him, of course, for the
steward's tout----"
"Exactly what we thought."
"Since _you_ are going to tell the story, Alexander, I may remind you
that he said they were the best in the world," remarked momma, with
several degrees of frost.
"My dear, the anecdote is yours. But you remember I told him they
wouldn't be in it with Blue Points."
"Now _what_," exclaimed Miss Nancy, with excitement, "did he ask you for
them?"
"Three francs a head, Nancy, wasn't it, Mrs. Wick? And you gave the
order, and the man disappeared. And you thought he'd gone to get them;
at least, we did. Nancy here had perfect confidence in him. She said he
had such dog-like eyes, and we were both perfectly certain they would be
served when the steamer stopped at the Blue Grotto----" Miss Cora paused
to smile.
"But they weren't," suggested momma feebly.
"No, indeed, and hadn't the slightest intention of being." Miss Nancy
took up the tale. "Not until we were taking off our gloves in the hotel
verandah, and making up our minds to a good hot lunch, did those oysters
appear--exactly half a dozen, and bread and butter extra! And we
couldn't say we hadn't ordered them. And the lunch was only two francs
fifty, _complet_. But we felt we ought to content ourselves with the
oysters, though, of course, you wouldn't with gentlemen in your party.
Now, what course _did_ you pursue, Mrs. Wick?"
"Really," said momma distantly, "I don't remember. I believe we had
enough to eat. Surely that is little Moses being taken from the
bulrushes! How it adds to one's interest to recognise the subject."
"By B. Luti," responded Miss Nancy. "I _hope_ he isn't very well known,
for I never heard of him before. Now, there's a Domenichino; I can tell
it from here. I do love Domenichino, don't you?"
I suppose the Senator knew that momma didn't love Domenichino, and would
possibly be at a loss to say why; at all events, he remarked that,
talking of Capri, he hoped the Miss Binghams had not felt as badly about
inconveniencing the donkeys that took them to the top of the cliff as
momma had. "Mrs. Wick," he informed them, "rode an ass by the name of
Michael Angelo, perfectly accustomed to the climate, and, do you believe
it, she held her parasol over that animal's head the whole way." At
which everybody laughed, and momma, invested with an original and
amiable weakness, was appeased.
"Of Michelangelo we have not here much," said the guide patiently.
"Drawings yes, and one holy Family--magnificent! But all in another room
w'ich----"
"Now what Bramley said about the Ufizzi was this," continued the
Senator. "'You'll see on those walls,' he said, 'the best picture show
in the world, both for pedigree and quality of goods displayed. I'd go
as far as to say they're all worth looking at, even those that have been
presented to the institution. But don't you look at them,' Bramley said,
'as a whole. You keep all your absorbing-power for one apartment,' he
said--'the Tribune. You'll want it.' Bramley gave me to understand that
it wasn't any use he didn't profess to be able to describe his sublimer
emotions, but when he sat down in the Tribune he had a sort of
instinctive idea that he'd got the cream of it--he didn't want to go any
further."
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