In my embarrassment I rose and offered the bread and butter to Cecilia, who declined it. The austerity of her rejection rather unnerved me.
"To think, that with all the opportunities for adventure that offer in this day and generation, any one should waste time on the idiotic worship of a lot of silly moulders of literary patisserie! It is beyond me, Mr. Ames, and when I recall that your late father commanded a cavalry regiment in the Civil War, I fall back upon the privilege of my age to beg that you will hereafter give the Asolando a wide berth."
"I assure you, Miss Hollister, that I have no wish to become an habitué of the place. And yet you will pardon me if I repeat that, but for it, I should not now be enjoying the hospitality of Hopefield Manor."
She lifted her head from her cup and bowed; but I was immediately interested in the fact that her niece was speaking.
"I think Aunt Octavia is hard on the Asolando," she was saying. "Aunt Octavia is interested in the revival of romance, and romance without poetry seems to me wholly impossible. The Asolando makes no pretensions to be more than an incident in a real movement whose aim is the diffusion of poetic fire,--it is merely a shrine where the divine lamp is never allowed to fail or falter."
"And if, Cecilia Hollister, you think that sandwiches named for Browning's poems or macaroons dedicated to Walter Pater can assist foolish virgins in keeping their lamps filled, I give you the word of an old woman that you are in danger of a complete loss of your mind. The age is decadent, and I know no better way of restoring the race to its ancient vim and energy than by sending men back to the camp and field or to sail the high seas in new armadas. The men of this age have become a lot of sordid shopkeepers, and to my moral sense the looting of cities is far more honorable than the creation of trusts and the manipulation of prices, though I cannot deny that but for my late father's zeal in destroying his competitors in the baby-buggy business we might not now be enjoying the delicate fragrance of caravan tea."
I continued to flounder in my anxiety to determine just how Miss Hollister wished to be taken. She spoke with the utmost seriousness and with the earnestness of deep conviction. If the aims of the Asolando were absurd, what might be said of the declarations of this old lady in favor of a return to the age of sword and buckler!