clear, and he waited
for some amplification of it before he could answer.

"Have you got anything very important to do? Aren't you lonesome? Don't
you want to jump in and come home with us? Wish you would."

Gerald smiled again in his remote way, and looked as if he knew, as any
one would know, that this was not meant to be taken seriously.

"I have just seen a beautiful spectacle," he said, after a vague
head-shake that thanked her shadowily for an unreal invitation. "A game
of _pallone_, which is the nearest to your football that boys have
over here. Beautiful bronzed athletes at exercise, a delightful sight,
statues in motion. I go to see them whenever I can.--The days are
becoming very short, are they not?"

"Yes. Jump in and come home with us. Tell you what we'll do. I'll go
down into the kitchen and make some soda biscuits that we'll have hot
for supper--with maple syrup. We've had a big box of sugar come."

Gerald again smiled his civil, but joyless, smile, and after another
vague head-shake that thanked, but eluded the question, he said: "They
are very indigestible; hot bread is not good for the health. At least,
that is what they tell us over here. We keep our bread two days before
eating it, or longer. But I am afraid I am detaining you."

The horses were jingling their bits, frisking their docked tails. The
driver, checking their restless attempts to start, was giving them
smothered thunder in Italian. Gerald withdrew by a step from the danger
to his shins.

[Illustration: "I thought," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "that you were going
to come and take us sight-seeing"]

"Oh, jump in!" said Mrs. Hawthorne for the third time. And because his
choice lay between saying curtly, "Impossible!" and letting the
impatient horses proceed, or else obeying, Gerald, who hated being rude
to women, found himself irresolutely climbing in, just long enough, as
he intended, to explain that he could not and must not go home with them
to the hot biscuits and syrup.

The little third seat had been let down for him; his knees were snugly
wedged in between those of the ladies. Aurora was beaming over at him;
Estelle was beaming, too. Aurora's smile was a blandishment; Estelle's
was a light. The horses were flying toward the Lungarno. And he gave up;
he helplessly gave up trying to find an excuse for asking to be set down
again and allowed to go his lonely way.

It might be entertaining, he tried to think, to see what they had do