The things we do!

"Well, then," the bonnet begins close up to the hat, "tell me, sir, is it
true that you were so very much epris of the Miss Freemans at Rome; and
that afterwards you were so wonderfully attentive to the third Miss
Baliol? Did you draw her portrait? You know you drew her portrait. You
painters always pretend to admire girls with auburn hair, because Titian
and Raphael painted it. Has the Fornarina red hair? Why, we are at
Croydon, I declare!"
"The Fornarina"--the hat replies to the bonnet, "if that picture at the
Borghese Palace be an original, or a likeness of her--is not a
handsome woman, with vulgar eyes and mouth, and altogether a most
mahogany-coloured person. She is so plain, in fact, I think that very
likely it is the real woman; for it is with their own fancies that men
fall in love,--or rather every woman is handsome to the lover. You know
how old Helen must have been."
"I don't know any such thing, or anything about her. Who was Helen?" asks
the bonnet; and indeed she did not know.


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