They quitted the bridge, and turning to the left, moved down the street
which with difficulty finds space between the parapet of the river and
the shops of the mosaicists and dealers in statuary cramping it on the
other hand.

"Here's something distinctively Florentine too," said Colville. "These
table-tops, and paper-weights, and caskets, and photograph frames, and
lockets, and breast-pins; and here, this ghostly glare of undersized
Psyches and Hebes and Graces in alabaster."

"Oh, you mustn't think of any of them!" Mrs. Bowen broke in with horror.
"If your friend wishes you to get her something characteristically
Florentine, and at the same time very tasteful, you must go--"

Colville gave a melancholy laugh. "My friend is an abstraction, Mrs.
Bowen, without sex or any sort of entity."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Bowen. Some fine drops had begun to sprinkle the
pavement. "What a ridiculous blunder! It's raining! Effie, I'm afraid we
must give up your book for to-day. We're not dressed for damp weather,
and we'd better hurry home as soon as possible." She got promptly into
the shelter of a doorway, and gathered her daughter to her, while she
flung her sacque over her shoulder and caught her draperies from the
ground for the next movement. "Mr. Colville, will you please stop the
first closed carriage that comes in sight?"

A figure of _primo tenore_ had witnessed the manoeuvre from the box of
his cab; he held up his whip, and at a nod from Colville he drove
abreast of the doorway, his broken-kneed, tremulous little horse gay in
brass-mounted harness, and with a stiff turkey feather stuck upright at