"No," said Miss Graham. "I can only remember the end of the war."
"How divinely young!" said Colville. "Well," he added, "I wish that French lady could have overheard us, Miss Graham. I think she would have changed her mind about Americans striking the note of personality in their talk."
"Oh!" exclaimed the girl reproachfully, after a moment of swift reflection and recognition, "I don"t see how you could let me do it! You don"t suppose that I should have talked so with every one? It was because you were another American, and such an old friend of Mrs.
Bowen"s."
"That is what I shall certainly tell the French lady if she attacks me about it," said Colville. He glanced carelessly toward the end of the room, and saw the young clergyman taking leave of Mrs. Bowen; all the rest of the company were gone. "Bless me!" he said, "I must be going."
Mrs. Bowen had so swiftly advanced upon him that she caught the last words. "Why?" she asked.
"Because it"s to-morrow, I suspect, and the invitation was for one day only."
"It was a season ticket," said Mrs. Bowen, with gay hospitality, "and it isn"t to-morrow for half an hour yet. I can"t think of letting you go.
Come up to the fire, all, and let"s sit down by it. It"s at its very best."
Effie looked a pretty surprise and a pleasure in this girlish burst from her mother, whose habitual serenity made it more striking in contrast, and she forsook Miss Graham"s hand and ran forward and disposed the easy-chairs comfortably about the hearth.
Colville and Mrs. Bowen suddenly found themselves upon those terms which often succeed a long separation with people who have felt kindly toward each other at a former meeting and have parted friends: they were much more intimate than they had supposed themselves to be, or had really any reason for being.
"Which one of your guests do you wish me to offer up, Mrs. Bowen?" he asked, from the hollow of the arm-chair, not too low, which he had sunk into. With Mrs. Bowen in a higher chair at his right hand, and Miss Graham intent upon him from the sofa on his left, a sense of delicious satisfaction filled him from head to foot. "There isn"t one I would spare if you said the word."
"And there isn"t one I want destroyed, I"m sorry to say," answered Mrs.
Bowen. "Don"t you think they were all very agreeable?"
"Yes, yes; agreeable enough--agreeable enough, I suppose. But they stayed too long. When I think we might have been sitting here for the last half-hour, if they"d only gone sooner, I find it pretty hard to forgive them."
Mrs. Bowen and Miss Graham exchanged glances above his head--a glance which demanded, "Didn"t I tell you?" for a glance that answered, "Oh, he _is_!" Effie Bowen"s eyes widened; she kept them fastened upon Colville in silent worship.
He asked who were certain of the company that he had noticed, and Mrs.
Bowen let him make a little fun of them: the fun was very good-natured.
He repeated what the German had said about the worldly ambition of American girls; but she would not allow him so great lat.i.tude in this.
She said they were no worldlier than other girls. Of course, they were fond of society, and some of them got a little spoiled. But they were in no danger of becoming too conventional.
Colville did not insist. "I missed the military to-night, Mrs. Bowen,"
he said. "I thought one couldn"t get through an evening in Florence without officers?"
"We have them when there is dancing," returned Mrs. Bowen.
"Yes, but they don"t know anything but dancing," Miss Graham broke in.
"I like some one who can talk something besides compliments."
"You are very peculiar, you know, Imogene," urged Mrs. Bowen gently. "I don"t think our young men at home do much better in conversation, if you come to that, though."
"Oh, _young_ men, yes! They"re the same everywhere. But here, even when they"re away along in the thirties, they think that girls can only enjoy flattery. _I_ should like a gentleman to talk to me without a single word or look to show that he thought I was good-looking."
"Ah, how could he he?" Colville insinuated, and the young girl coloured.
"I mean, if I were pretty. This everlasting adulation is insulting."
"Mr. Morton doesn"t flatter," said Mrs. Bowen thoughtfully, turning the feather screen she held at her face, now edgewise, now flatwise, toward Colville.
"Oh no," owned Miss Graham. "He"s a clergyman."
Mrs. Bowen addressed herself to Colville. "You must go to hear him some day. He"s very interesting, if you don"t mind his being rather Low Church."
Colville was going to pretend to an advanced degree of ritualism; but it occurred to him that it might be a serious matter to Mrs. Bowen, and he asked instead who was the Rev. Mr. Waters.
"Oh, isn"t he lovely?" cried Miss Graham. "There, Mrs. Bowen! Mr.
Waters"s manner is what I call _truly_ complimentary. He always talks to you as if he expected you to be interested in serious matters, and as if you were his intellectual equal. And he"s so _happy_ here in Florence!
He gives you the impression of feeling every breath he breathes here a privilege. You ought to hear him talk about Savonarola, Mr. Colville."
"Well," said Colville, "I"ve heard a great many people talk about Savonarola, and I"m rather glad he talked to me about American girls."
"American girls!" uttered Miss Graham, in a little scream. "Did Mr.
Waters talk to you about _girls_?"
"Yes. Why not? He was probably in love with one once."
"Mr. Waters?" cried the girl. "What nonsense!"
"Well, then, with some old lady. Would you like that better?"
Miss Graham looked at Mrs. Bowen for permission, as it seemed, and then laughed, but did not attempt any reply to Colville.
"You find even that incredible of such pyramidal antiquity," he resumed.
"Well, it _is_ hard to believe. I told him what that German said, and we agreed beautifully about another type of American girl which we said we preferred."
"Oh! What could it be?" demanded Miss Graham.
"Ah, it wouldn"t be so easy to say right off-hand," answered Colville indolently.
Mrs. Bowen put her hand under the elbow of the arm holding her screen.
"I don"t believe I should agree with you so well," she said, apparently with a sort of didactic intention.
They entered into a discussion which is always fruitful with Americans--the discussion of American girlhood, and Colville contended for the old national ideal of girlish liberty as wide as the continent, as fast as the Mississippi. Mrs. Bowen withstood him with delicate firmness. "Oh," he said, "you"re Europeanised."
"I certainly prefer the European plan of bringing up girls," she replied steadfastly. "I shouldn"t think of letting a daughter of mine have the freedom I had."
"Well, perhaps it will come right in the next generation, then; she will let her daughter have the freedom she hadn"t."
"Not if I"m alive to prevent it," cried Mrs. Bowen.
Colville laughed. "Which plan do you prefer, Miss Graham?"
"I don"t think it"s quite the same now as it used to be," answered the girl evasively.
"Well, then, all I can say is that if I had died before this chance, I had lived a blessed time. I perceive more and more that I"m obsolete.
I"m in my dotage; I prattle of the good old times, and the new spirit of the age flouts me. Miss Effie, do you prefer the Amer----"