"But pick it up, and don't stand idling there like a flamingo."
Lucy picked up the book and glanced at the title listlessly, "Under a Loggia". She no longer read novels herself, devoting all her spare time to solid literature in the hope of catching Cecil up. It was dreadful how little she knew, and even when she thought she knew a thing, like the Italian painters, she found she had forgotten it. Only this morning she had confused Francesco Francia with Piero della Francesca, and Cecil had said, "What! you aren't forgetting your Italy already?" And this too had lent anxiety to her eyes when she saluted the dear view and the dear garden in the foreground, and above them, scarcely conceivable elsewhere, the dear sun.
"Lucy—have you a sixpence for Minnie and a shilling for yourself?"
She hastened in to her mother, who was rapidly working herself into a Sunday fluster.
"It's a special collection—I forget what for. I do beg, no vulgar clinking in the plate with half-pennies; see that Minnie has a nice bright sixpence. Where is the child? Minnie! That book's all warped. (Gracious, how plain you look!) Put it under the Atlas to press. Minnie!"
"Oh, Mrs. Honeychurch———" from the upper regions.
"Minnie, don't be late. Here comes the horse"
