e a cork leg to put on, and some
people have false teeth; and they wouldn't any of them come hobbling
or mumbling out without them, unless there was a fire or an
earthquake, I suppose."

Glossy Megilp's arguments and analogies perplexed Desire, always.
They sometimes silenced her; but they did not always answer her. She
went back to what they had been discussing before.

"To 'lay down the shubbel and the hoe,'--here's your poker, under
the table-flounce, Glossy,--and to 'take up the fiddle and the bow,'
again,--I think it's real nice and beautiful for Hazel--"

"To 'go where the good darkies go'?"

"Yes. It's the _good_ of her that's got her in. And I believe you
and Florence both would give your best boots to be there too, if it
_is_ behind. Behind the fixings and the fashions is where people
_live_; 'dere's vat I za-ay!'" she ended, quoting herself and Rip
Van Winkle.

"Maybe," said Florence, carelessly; "but I'd as lief be _in_ the
fashion, after all. And that's where Hazel Ripwinkley never will
get, with all her taking little novelties."

Meanwhile, Hazel Ripwinkley was deep in the delights of a great
portfolio of rare engravings; prints of glorious frescoes in old
churches, and designs of splendid architecture; and Mrs. Geoffrey,
seeing her real pleasure, was sitting beside her, turning over the
large sheets, and explaining them; telling her, as she gazed into
the wonderful faces of the Saints and the Evangelists in Correggio's
frescoes of the church of San Giovanni at Parma, how the whole dome
was one radiant vision of heavenly glory, with clouds and angel
faces, and adoring apostles, and Christ the Lord high over all; and
that these were but the filling in between the springing curves of
the magnificent arches; describing to her the Abbess's room in San
Paolo, with its strange, beautiful heathen picture over the mantel,
of Diana mounting her stag-drawn car, and its circular walls painted
with trellis-work and medallioned with windows, where the heads of
little laughing children, and graceful, gentle animals peeped in
from among vines and flowers.

Mrs. Geoffrey did not wonder that Hazel lingered with delight over
these or over the groups by Raphael in the Sistine Chapel,--the
quiet pendentives, where the waiting of the world for its salvation
was typified in the dream-like, reclining forms upon the still,
desert sand; or the wonderful scenes from the "Creation,"--the
majestic "Let there be Light!" and t