And I answered very sharply:  “What a disagreeable man you are.  I’m not frightened at all.”  I said it in a dreadful tone, and how his face changed.  He looked so strangely.  Everybody was still but Albert, and he said, “Why, Mae, you are very rude to Mr. Mann.”  Even then I didn’t apologize.  So here we are at sword’s points, and all the rest sympathizing with my foe, who is only on the defensive.  Why am I such a belligerent?  I can’t conceive where I got my nature, unless from that very disagreeable dear old grandpapa of papa’s, who fought the whole world all his life.  But how egotistic I am, even to my mother.  Of course you want to know how we are lodged and clothed and fed.  We have taken apartments, as I presume Albert wrote you, on the Via San Nicolo da Tolentino, quite near the Costanzi hotel, which is in the height of the fashion as a hotel; near too, which is better, to Mr. Story’s studio and the old Barberini palace and the Barberini square and fountains.  Off behind, is that terrible church of the Cappucini, with its cemetery underneath of bones and skulls and such horrors.  I like the apartments very much, principally because I have made three staunch friends and one good enemy, in the kitchen.  The padrona,—­she’s the woman who keeps the house, and serves us, too, in this case—­though Mrs. Jerrold has a maid to wait on the table and care for our rooms—­well, the padrona is my first friend.  Her cousin, a handsome southern Italian, is here on a visit, and she is not only my friend, but my instructress.  She tells me lovely stories about her home and the peasants and their life, while I sit on the floor with Giovanni,—­friend number three and eldest son of the padrona,—­and even Roberto, my enemy, the crying baby of three years, hushes his naughty mouth to listen to Lisetta, for that is the cousin’s name.  I am so glad I studied Italian as hard as I did for my music, for it comes very easily to me now, and already I slip the pretty words from my halting tongue much more smoothly and quickly than you would imagine I could.  Mrs. Jerrold isn’t quite satisfied, and would prefer the Costanzi, only she doesn’t believe in letting us girls stay at large hotels.  She and Edith are shocked at my kitchen tastes, so that I generally creep off quietly and say nothing about it.  It is strange for me to have to keep anything secret, but I am learning how.

As for our clothes, O, mamma, Edith is ravishing in a deep blue-black silk, with a curly, wavy sort of fringe on it, and odd loopings here and there where you don’t expect to find them.  What can’t a Parisian dressmaker do?  They have such a wonderful idea of appropriateness, it seems to me.  Now, at home you know we girls always wear the same sort of thing, but Madame H——­ says no, Edith, and I should dress very differently; and now Edith’s clothes all have a flow, and sweep, and grace about them, and her silks rustle in a stately way as she walks, while my dresses haven’t any trimming to speak of, but are cut in a clinging, square