oiler, but mark! I will confess to you that, considering how we run to
and fro, it never would have entered into the extravagance of my love to
set up a pony for Penini. When I heard of it first, I opened my eyes
wide, only no amount of discretion on my part could enable me to take
part against both Pen and Robert in a matter which pleases Pen. I hope
they won't combine to give me an Austrian daughter-in-law when Peni is
sixteen. So I say 'Yes,' 'Yes,' 'Certainly,' and the pony is to be
bought, and carried to Rome (fancy that!), and we are to hunt up some
small Italian princes and princesses to ride with him at Rome (I object
to Hatty Hosmer, who has been thrown thirty times[70]). In fact, Pen has
been very coaxing about the pony. He has beset Robert in private and
then, as privately, entreated me, 'if papa spoke to me about the pony,
not to _discourage_ him.' So I discouraged nobody, but am rather
triumphantly glad, upon the whole, that we have done such a very
foolish, extravagant thing.

Robert will have told you, I am sure, what a lovely picture Mr. Wilde,
the American artist (staying with the Storys), has made of Penini on
horseback, and presented to me. It is to be exhibited in the spring in
London, but before then, either at Rome or Florence, we will have a
photograph made from it to send you. By the way, Mr. Monroe failed us
about the photograph from the bust. He said he had tried in vain once,
but would try again. The child is no less pretty and graceful than he
was, and he rides, as he does everything, with a grace which is
striking. He gallops like the wind, and with an absolute
fearlessness--he who is timid about sleeping in a room by himself, poor
darling. He has had a very happy time here (besides the pony) having
made friends with all the contadini, who adore him, and helped them to
keep the sheep, catch the stray cows, drive the oxen in the grape-carts,
and to bring in the vintage generally, besides reading and expounding
revolutionary poems to them at evening. The worst of it was, while it
lasted, that he ate so many grapes he could eat nothing else whatever.
Still, he looks rosy and well, and there's nothing to regret....

Robert has let his moustache and beard grow together, and looks very
picturesque. I thought I should not like the moustache, but I do. He is
in very good looks altogether, though, in spite of remonstrances, he has
given up walking before breakfast, and doesn't walk at any time half