"Nothing. But if I must--let it be plain flesh and blood."

"Cannibal!" said my aunt.

We both laughed.

"But you can have plenty of flesh and blood, with money as well,
for the asking," she insisted; and thereupon my two cousins, Dora
and Gwendolen, entered the drawingroom and interrupted the
conversation. They are both bouncing, fresh-faced girls, in the
early twenties. They ride and shoot and bicycle and golf and
dance, and the elder writes little stories for the magazines. As
I do none of these things, I am convinced they regard me as a
poor sort of creature. When they hand me a cup of tea I almost
expect them to pat me on the head and say, "Good dog!" I am
long, lean, stooping, hatchet-faced, hawknosed, near-sighted. I
have not the breezy air of the jolly young stockbrokers they are
in the habit of meeting. They rather alarm me. Moreover, they
have managed to rear a colossal pile of wholly incorrect
information on every subject under the sun, and are addicted to
letting chunks of it fall about one's ears. This stuns me,
rendering conversation difficult.

As I had not seen Dora since her return from Rome, where she had
spent the early spring, I asked, in some trepidation, for her
impressions. Before I could collect myself, I was listening to a
lecture on St. Peter's. She told me it was built by Michael
Angelo. I suggested that some credit might be given to Bramante,
not to speak of Rosellino, Baldassare Peruzzi and the two San