Page:The Author of Beltraffio, Pandora, Georgina's Reasons, The Path of Duty, Four Meetings (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1885).djvu/107

Rh here," she said. "I am afraid I shall have such a time putting my people through."

"Putting them through?"

"Through the Custom-house. We have made so many purchases. Well, I have written to a friend to come down, and perhaps he can help us. He is very well acquainted with the head. Once I'm chalked, I don't care. I feel like a kind of black-board by this time, any way. We found them awful in Germany."

Vogelstein wondered whether the friend she had written to were her lover, and if she were engaged to him, especially when she alluded to him again as "that gentleman that is coming down." He asked her about her travels, her impressions, whether she had been long in Europe, and what she liked best, and she told him that they had gone abroad, she and her family, for a little fresh experience. Though he found her very intelligent, he suspected she gave this as a reason because he was a German and she had heard that Germans were fond of culture. He wondered what form of culture Mr. and Mrs. Day had brought back from Italy, Greece, and Palestine (they had travelled for two years and been everywhere), especially when their daughter said: "I wanted father and mother to see the best things. I kept them three hours on the Acropolis. I guess they won't forget that!" Perhaps it was of Phidias and Pericles they were thinking, Vogelstein reflected, as they sat ruminating in their rugs. Pandora remarked also that she