9/52 She can't sing." New Year's calls were then the custom, and more than three hundred men paid their respects to Mr.and Mrs.Botta on the New Year's Day I spent with them. And everyone looked, as Theodore Hook said, as if he were somebody in particular. At one of these "Saturday Evenings," a stranger walked through her rooms, with hands crossed under his coat and humming execrably as he wandered along. The gentle hostess went to him with her winning smile and inquired, "Do you play also ?" That proves her capacity for sarcasm and criticism which she seldom employed. She conversed remarkably well, but after all it was what she did not say that proved her greatness and self-control. |