Out of indulgence to Dicky we lingered in Florence three or four days longer than was at all convenient, considering, as the Senator said, the amount of ground we had to cover before we could conscientiously recross the Channel.

But neither poppa nor momma were people to desert a fellow-countryman in distress in foreign parts, especially in view of this one's pathetic reliance upon our sympathy and support, as a family.
We all did our best toward the distraction of what momma called his poor mind, though I cannot say that we were very successful.

His poor mind seemed wholly taken up with one anticipative idea, and whatever failed to minister to that he hadn't, as poppa sadly said, any use for.

The cloisters of San Marco had no healing for his spirit, and when we directed his attention to the solitary painting on the wall with which Fra Angelico made a shrine of each of its monastic cubicles he merely remarked that it was more than you got in most hotels, and turned joylessly away.

Even the charred stick that helped to martyr Savonarola left him cold.