Harry Joscelyn; vol. 2 of 3

“What can I do for you?” he said, with a dignified inclination of his head; after the first glance his look softened. He was used to see a great many people, and it was a compliment to Harry’s appearance that it interested the Vice-Consul. He almost smiled upon him, with a benignity in which he did not very often indulge.

Then it was that Harry’s real difficulties began; but how thankful he was that it was a true story he was telling, and not a fictitious account of himself!

“I came to tell you, Sir,” he said, “of something that occurred last night—a scrape—that is to say a row I got into. I suppose I must call it a row.”

“It is a great pity when strangers get into rows in a foreign town, Mr.——Oliver. I think you said Oliver?”

What a fool I was thought Harry!—as he did after every new production of that name; but his last chance of reclaiming his own was now over.

“What you say is quite true,” he said, “and I should not have been such a fool but for urgent cause. I knocked down a fellow who was annoying a lady. He deserved a great deal more than I gave him; if he had been an Italian I might have hesitated, but he was an Englishman. So I just knocked him down.”

“Very wrong, very wrong,” said the Vice-Consul, “and a curious way of showing your preference for your fellow-countrymen. But you had better tell me all about it. When did this occur, and where?”

Harry described the place as well as he could. “There was a lot of them,” he said. “The Italians—if they were Italians—gave way when I spoke to them. I’ll do them that justice. The English fellow, I did not say anything to him. I was not going to argue with a brute like that. I just quietly knocked him down. It was a young lady and a woman with her. You see, if I had stood there talking, the others might have been up to us, and have given her more annoyance. I daresay it did not hurt the fellow much; and if he’s a man he’ll take it quietly, for he deserved it; but I thought it was perhaps best to let you know.”

The Vice-Consul had started slightly when Harry described, as well as he could, the locality in which this incident took place. Now he asked quickly, “And the lady—did you know her? and did she get clean away?”

“Know her!” said Harry, “I only arrived here yesterday; besides I did not want to know her: it might not have been pleasant for her. We watched her safe out of reach; indeed we went on till we heard a door shut where she lived, I suppose. No, it was not for that. It was to say that if the fellow complained, or brought any action, or anything of that sort—I wanted you, Sir, being the representative of England, to know the real facts. That is how it was.”

There was a smile about the Vice-Consul’s mouth. “As it happens I have heard about it already,” he said. “I’ll speak to you farther on the subject by-and-bye—Don’t be alarmed, it will do you no harm; sit down and rest yourself, and wait for a few minutes. I am going in to lunch presently, and I’ll talk to you then,” the Vice-Consul said. Harry did not know what to think. The consequences could not be very bad, since this great functionary restrained a smile; but there was evidently a second chapter to the adventure. Harry withdrew as he was directed to the other end of the office, and there stood gazing at railway timetables, and pictures of ships. There was all about a line of vessels to America from Genoa which had lately been established, just the very thing for him if he intended to do what he had been thinking of. But Harry scarcely knew what he was looking at. All these questions seemed things of the past. What was the Vice-Consul going to say to him? What was to come of it? Till he knew this he could not think of anything else.

CHAPTER IV.

THE VICE-CONSUL’S DAUGHTER.

A DOOR in the Vice-Consul’s office opened into a long passage with a row of windows on one side, which communicated with his house. When the hour came at which, after the comfortable fashion of leisurely Italian towns, the office was shut up for the midday meal, the Vice Consul made Harry an amiable sign to follow. He led him through this passage, which looked upon a courtyard full of plants, where a fountain trickled in the sunshine, into a large cool room with all its jalousies closed, and in which for a minute or two he saw nothing. He was being introduced into a sort of enchanted country it seemed, unlike anything he had ever known or thought of; the tiled floor was almost covered with soft rugs, according to a fashion not then known in England, and the furniture dimly discerned in the gloom, was like rocks at sea to the stranger who had no chart of the confused and intricate passage. Something white in a corner, something which moved a little when they came in, was all he saw, and he could not make out even what that was till his eyes had got accustomed to the light. Then he perceived with a great tremor and shock of shyness that it was a lady, a slight girl in a white dress who looked up to nod to her father, then seeing a second figure behind him, rose hastily with a shy grace. Harry was still more shy than she was. He was not accustomed to the society of ladies. And he was dreadfully hungry, having had nothing but that dry bread and coffee, a circumstance which made him still more depressed and timid. He did not at all know why he was introduced so suddenly into this other world. He thought he was only going to an inner office, or perhaps—but that was a blessedness he dared scarcely hope for—that the Consul in his kindness had meant to give him some luncheon. But the drawing-room confused him wholly; he had done nothing to merit such an introduction. He only half took in accordingly the meaning of the words the Consul said, “Look here, Rita, I have brought your champion of last night.”

“Oh!” That purely English exclamation sounded to Harry the sweetest syllable he had ever heard. The white figure came a step forward. By this time he began to see through the gloom, and what he saw was a very young face, with two great dark eyes, lifted to him full of wonder and pleasure. Then a hand was put out, “Was it you?” she said eagerly. “Oh, yes, I remember!” And before he was aware the hand, smaller and softer than any such article previously known to him, touched his for a moment. Harry dropped into the chair which the Vice-Consul pointed to him in utter confusion of surprise. He was not even able to notice what an extraordinary advantage to him such an introduction was. He was simply astonished more than words could say.

“This is Mr. Oliver,” said the Vice-Consul. “He came and told me all about it without a notion who you were. And you see how surprised he is. He thought, I suppose, I was taking him into a kind of genteel prison. It must be added that, if you only arrived yesterday, you lost no time in getting into a row.”

“Did you only arrive yesterday?” said the delightful little voice, in which there was a flavour of something not English, though the English was perfect. “Oh, how glad I am that you did arrive then! What would have become of us otherwise? for no one but an Englishman wandering about the most unlikely places could ever have found himself just there.”

“And nobody but an English girl would have risked herself in such a place,” said the father. “I hope you will take that to heart, my dear. This girl,” he added, turning to the young man, “is by way of despising all Italian precautions. She is an English girl, she tells everybody, and she will not be a slave like the others: and old Benedetta is an old fool and never goes against her. One of her pensioners was ill last night, that was why the monkey was out at such an hour. When I am at the Club there is nobody to put her to bed.”

“As if I was a little child to be put to bed! It was the dearest old woman, and she would see me. The priest had been sent for and the sacraments; could I refuse to go—now could I? And how was I to know men were so dreadful? But you see, papa, there are always the good angels about.”

“When I was young the angels were all feminine,” the Vice-Consul said, “and we called the ladies by these pretty names, not the ladies us.”

“Perhaps you never did so much for any girl. Oh, how frightened I was when that man took hold of my arm! and then to hear an English voice as if it were coming from the skies, ‘Let go that girl!’”

“How did the fellow understand, I wonder?” the Vice-Consul said.

“If I had not been so frightened I should have laughed. They did not understand a bit! It might just as well have been Greek; but if it had been Greek they would have understood,” cried Rita, putting her hands together with grateful enthusiasm. All this time Harry had never spoken a word; indeed, there had been no opening for him to speak.

“You must have thought me a big idiot to say anything at all,” he said.

“Oh! I thought you—— I won’t tell you what, or papa will say something disagreeable. It was so grand the English voice; and then their hands dropped as if I had been fire.”

“I should have broken every bone in their bodies,” cried Harry, with unnecessary fervour, “if I had known it was you they touched with their filthy fingers!” He did not know why he made this violent speech, which was far from elegant, and quite unsuitable to the refined and still atmosphere in which he so unexpectedly found himself. As for Rita she blushed a little, and laughed a little, in the soft green twilight, finding it not unnatural that he should have been doubly indignant at the idea that it was she who was in danger. She was accustomed to believe that anything disagreeable was doubly offensive when it happened to her, and that she was about the most important little person in the world. But she was one of the rare people whom such a knowledge does not spoil. It seemed to her quite simple—was not she her father’s only child, and only pleasure in life? She had been aware of this fact ever since she was born.

“Hush, hush!” said the Vice-Consul; “we must have nothing more about breaking bones: to knock down one fellow was quite enough. But I am very much obliged to you, Oliver. I can’t make a stranger of you after this. My little girl is all I have in the world, and whoever is good to her is good to me. If you are going to stay in Leghorn, I hope you’ll let me be of some use to you; but I don’t suppose that’s very likely. Meantime, Rita, don’t you think we had better go to lunch?”

What welcome words these were to Harry! He was excited and pleased by the adventure altogether; his head was a little turned by the enthusiasm of gratitude with which he was received, and the atmosphere around this young creature, who was a kind of mystic half revelation to him. He had not yet made out her face quite distinctly, and yet he was admitted to all the privileges of friendship: the strange sensation intoxicated him. But yet when her father spoke of lunch, all that went out of his head. Consider that he had eaten nothing but about half a yard of tasteless bread that day! and it was one o’clock. But Harry was not without manners; though the pangs of appetite made him faint, he got up politely and made a pretence at taking leave. Needless to say that the Vice-Consul was above taking advantage of his position, “No, no, no; we are going to keep you to luncheon,” he said, with a bonhomie which was irresistible. Harry thought him the most delightful person in the world, only a little less delightful than the other unknown being who made him feel tremulous and abashed, though so happy. The dining-room was lighted from the shady side of the courtyard, and there was accordingly light enough to see by. The meal was not a foreign breakfast, but an English luncheon of a substantial kind, and it is safe to say that Harry had never been so happy in his life as when he had taken off the first fierce edge of appetite, and had begun to be able to enjoy the novelty and yet the familiarity of this unexpected scene. Mr. Bonamy (which was the name of the Vice-Consul) without laying aside the dignity as of a benevolent prince which was so remarkable in him, showed all the condescension of a thoroughly amiable potentate; and Rita was—— Rita was something of which Harry had no previous conception. She was about sixteen—no more. Her face was the face of a child, but lighted up by two beautiful large eyes which she had got from her Italian mother. She knew, or seemed to know, everything her father knew, and was used to be talked to about all that happened. If it were not Joan putting in her word occasionally in a long discussion when her interference was seldom received but with either blame or contempt, Harry had never been accustomed to women who took any share in the conversation going on; and to hear this child talk bewildered him. She had a slight girlish figure, a small face almost without colour, the faint sweet flesh tints of which were thrown up in the most delicate distinctness by the white of her dress. She seemed all spirit, all life, a creature made of air and sunshine rather than flesh and blood to Harry. And about himself there was so much flesh and blood! He listened to the conversation rather than joined in it, feeling himself an admiring audience rather than a partaker in their talk. One thing only he felt moved to say, and that was about his own appetite, which he feared they would think preposterous. “I feel more like a wolf than a man,” he said. “I hope you won’t think I’m always like this. I never was abroad before, and I don’t know the ways. And I had no breakfast but some of their queer bread. This bread is delightful,” Harry said, with enthusiasm. The father and the daughter were delighted with him, appetite and all.

“I am so glad you never were abroad before,” said Rita; “now one sees exactly what England is like. Oh, yes, papa, you need not laugh. I see the English green, and the trees waving, and the winds blowing, all in Mr. Oliver’s face. And there is a little sound of the sea, and a shadow of hills—not big mountains, but nice, kind hills with sheep-bells tinkling——”

“We have not many sheep-bells, Miss Bonamy, in my country,” said Harry; “the hills are more grey than green, and there is a great deal of fog in the winter, and east wind, and rain——”

“Oh, don’t tell me about the bad things, tell me about what is pleasant,” said Rita. “The east wind is not so bad as the scirocco, and the rain is delightful. I know all about that. As for the fog, the painters say it is more picturesque than anything. They say there is always a soft delicious sort of haze, and you never see things sharp cut out against the sky as they look here.”

“Have you never been in England?” Harry said, with a little surprise; and then he saw that a shade, a sort of cloud, come over the lively table, and the two animated faces. Rita shook her head, and then began to talk quickly to him about the neighbourhood, and all he would have to see. Harry had protested to his humble friends that he wanted to see nothing but the shipping, but he did not repeat this sentiment here. He learned in a moment that to be fond of pictures was a necessity, and that there were certain things which every Englishman in Italy had come expressly to worship. Rita’s opinion “of course” convinced him in a moment. He never made the slightest stand against it. Henceforward he knew what was expected of him. When she went out of the room waving her fingers to him in sign of goodbye, Harry suddenly became quite grave, and felt all at once as if the light had gone out of the sky. And there was more than sentiment in this feeling; for now he found himself face to face with the Vice-Consul, and it was very evident that, so much having passed between them, something more would now have to be said. Mr. Bonamy offered the young man a cigar, and, lighting his own, leant back in his chair, and evidently awaited some further disclosures of his mind and purpose.

“You are thinking of staying in Leghorn,” he said.

“I am thinking,” said Harry, feeling his colour rise, “of trying to get employment, if I can; a situation of some kind.”

“Employment!” said the Vice-Consul. It was impossible to deny that he was disappointed. His voice had an accent which there was no mistaking. Harry had not much refinement or education, but he had an air which would have been perfectly consistent with the rank of a young squire, an English country gentleman of simple mind, and no great amount of culture, travelling for his pleasure, and perhaps with some vague idea of improvement. Mr. Bonamy, who had received him so cordially, and who had been pleased to be under an obligation to a young fellow of attractive appearance and pleasant manners, was more cast down by this intimation than might have been thought possible. Not a young squire: nobody in particular: a penniless youth seeking employment. Such visitors were not rare, but they seldom penetrated into the carefully-guarded interior of the Vice-Consul’s house.

Harry felt very much abashed. He was sensible of the downfall. How he longed to produce the glories of the Joscelyns, and convince his hearer that, if he was humble now, his family had once sat with princes! Perhaps Mr. Bonamy might not have been so impressed by these ancestors as Harry thought; but as it was they looked at each other blankly, mutually feeling that a great fall had taken place. Harry smiled in that rigid way which is popularly called smiling at the wrong side of the face.

“Yes,” he said, “employment. I don’t know that I am very good for anything: but I have some little acquaintance with—business.”

This was worse and worse. Had he been possessed of a knowledge of law business, or military drill, or anything likely to be of no real use to him, the situation might have improved. But business! book-keeping, and that sort of thing! no doubt he was a mere clerk after all.

“You have recommendations, I suppose, from your last employers,” Mr. Bonamy said, coldly. “I shall be glad if I can be of any use, but——”

“To tell the truth,” said Harry—he was seized with an outburst of frankness, feeling a kind of desperation seize him at sight of this cold withdrawal of the sudden friendship which had made him so happy for the moment—“to tell the truth I have no recommendations. If anyone will be kind to me they must take me at my own word. All I have got to say for myself is that I have quarrelled with my family. I cannot enter into the question now. I have done it, and that is all I can say; and here I am, and I must get employment. I am not going to push myself into your acquaintance, Sir. It was an accident, nothing more than an accident; and probably you thought me a person of more importance——”

“Importance or not has nothing to do with it,” said the Vice-Consul; and again his countenance softened. A young man who has quarrelled with his family is no doubt a person to be lectured and reproved, and brought back to a sense of duty, but all the same he is quite different from a commonplace clerk seeking a situation. Harry did not intend to throw any halo of distinction over his own humble person, but he did it unawares. Mr. Bonamy’s countenance gradually cleared. “My dear young fellow,” he said, “I daresay you are impulsive and hot-headed, like so many other young men. As being under obligations to you, I may allow myself to give you good advice. No advantage ever springs from family quarrels. My advice to you is, make it up.”

“Not for anything in the world,” said Harry, hotly. “I have been treated—I can’t say how I have been treated. I will neither make it up, nor will I go near them, or have any communication with them, till I am altogether independent of them, and have worked out a position for myself!”

“You must not be so violent,” said the Vice-Consul. “Come, come, let me act the part of a real friend. Let me write.”

“Never!” said Harry, getting up to his feet. “I am very sorry, Sir, to have troubled you with my affairs.”

“That is nonsense,” said Mr. Bonamy. “Sit down, sit down, and let us talk it over. You have been hot-headed, I don’t doubt. What is it now? tell me. Some foolish falling in love. You must want to marry somebody they don’t approve.”

Harry smiled in spite of himself. “I am no more in love than you are, Sir,” he said.

“That might be a dangerous affirmation,” said the Vice-Consul, shaking his head, with a smile which was somewhat melancholy; “but I understand what you mean. Then was it money? You have been foolish and got into debt?”

“It was a little about money; but not because I had got into debt—and that was the least of it,” Harry said. “You must pardon me, Sir; but indeed I cannot tell you: it is a complicated business; and I can’t depart from what I have said. I will never go home, never make it up till I have made my own fortune. But if you will believe me,” he said earnestly, with a flush of hot colour, “the fault was not mine. I have nothing to conceal on my side.”

“Then why conceal it?” said the Vice-Consul. “I cannot act for you unless I have full information; but if you will trust me with your story——”

“I would trust you sooner than anyone I know; but I have promised that I will never say a word on the subject,” said Harry, with all the obstinacy of all the Joscelyns in his face, “until—I am independent, as I have said.” He rose up a second time, all flushed and excited. “I am going to try my luck at Leghorn,” he said. “I am much obliged to you, Sir, for your kindness. I have felt myself again since I have been here; but now I will not trouble you any more.” He held out his hand. He was a handsome young fellow, tall and strong, with the sunburnt countenance and well-developed limbs, and curling, fair locks, which are everywhere identified with a young Englishman. He was not at all like a mere clerk in an office; he was like a son of the fields and woods, one of those whose training has been of the kind most prized and appreciated by all Englishmen—an open-air youth; a rider, rower, swimmer, cricketer—brought up in that way which involves leisure and space, and all the appliances of country-life. Mr. Bonamy saw all this in Harry’s vigorous form and movements. He felt sure that he could not be a nobody. And after all, except that of being a nobody, there is in youth no unpardonable sin.

“Don’t be in such a hurry. Sit down again, the office does not open for another half-hour: and let me hear what there is to be done for you,” he said.

This was a question more embarrassing than the Vice-Consul supposed, for after all there did not seem much that Harry could do. He confessed that he had almost forgotten what he knew at school, and he had never learned any modern languages, and could speak no tongue but his own. He had a little experience in business, he said; but this was the only knowledge he could lay claim to. The Vice-Counsel did not know what to make of him; but as he had started with the distinct hypothesis that Harry was a squire’s son, it was not very difficult to fit in the facts to his foregone conclusion. Many a young gentleman forgot all his school learning by the time he was twenty. The difficult thing was that knowledge of business which at first Harry had been strongly disposed to put forward as the only faculty which he knew himself to be possessed of. How had he acquired that? Mr. Bonamy ended by deciding that he must have quarrelled with his family some time before, and that his acquaintance with business had been the fruit of some attempt made in England to maintain himself before he came here. Thus, without any intention on Harry’s part, he managed to deceive his first influential friend. He neither meant to do it, nor was he aware he had done it; but still this was how things fell out. The conclusion of the interview was that Mr. Bonamy engaged Harry to come back to him next day, when he would have thought the whole matter over, and know what to say. They parted with great friendship and cordiality, Mr. Bonamy having entirely come round again to his own theory in respect to the young man who had been so serviceable to his daughter. Everything seemed to prove this, Harry’s very ignorance among the rest. “In these days every poor lad is more or less educated; a gentleman’s son, who has something else to look to than competitive examination, he is the only one that escapes that sort of thing,” the Vice-Consul wisely said. Harry, on his part, went off to his hotel with greatly exhilarated feelings. He had done nothing, he said to himself, but make friends since ever he came to Leghorn. To be sure in the light of the Vice-Consul’s friendship he felt that Paolo was (as he had always felt) somewhat beneath his pretensions. But still the poor fellow had been very kind. As he came out by the private door of the Consul’s house, he saw Paolo at a little distance waiting till the public door of the Consulate should be open. He saw Harry and rushed at him, beckoning violently.

“Komm ’ere, komm ’ere; this is the place,” he said. “Komm along, I will introduce you, I will respond for you; now is the time to find the Vice-Consul amiable. He is always amiable when he has well breakfasted.” He seized Harry by the arm, and tried to drag him back to the Consulate with an anxious desire to serve his friend which merited a better return. Harry shook himself free of the little man with good-natured impatience.

“I’ve just come from the Vice-Consul,” he said with dignity, “we’re the best of friends. I’ve been able to be of use to him, and he is going to be of use to me. Many thanks to you, Paolo, all the same; but I’ve been lunching there, and—and I’ve done my business. To-morrow I am to go again,” Harry said, unconsciously holding his head high. Paolo gazed at him with eyes and mouth that were like round O’s of wonder. He was much crestfallen in his honest endeavours to be of service. But he soon recovered his spirits.

“Bravo!” he said three times over, each time more satisfied than the other. Then he rose to a “Bravissimo,” with a smile that lighted up his olive face. “It would have made me pleasure to be of use to you, Ser Isaack mio. I would have responded, I would have taken it all upon me—what you call caution. But you are a true English, like the Vice-Consul himself, and it is just that you should understand each other. I am not disappointed—I am happy, very much happy that you have not any need of me,” little Paolo said, smiling, but with tears in his eyes.

CHAPTER V.

PAOLO.

PAOLO came back from his labours in the evening, very curious to know all about Harry’s interview with the Consul, and the origin and the result of the acquaintance between them. But Harry was prudent. He was prudent without any motive, from personal pride, rather than from any consideration for the credit of Miss Bonamy, which he did not think to be in the least involved. The women with whom Harry was acquainted were not of a kind who would have been afraid to go anywhere in the evening, and it did not occur to him that the reputation, even of a girl, in Italy would be jeopardized by such an innocent benevolence as that of going to visit a sick neighbour at night. Therefore it was simply pride and English reserve, not any notion of prudence on Rita’s account, that kept him silent on the subject. Paolo had a very different conception of the affair. He was very anxious to find out what had been the immediate effect upon Harry’s mind of the visit to the Consul’s house.

“There is a—young ladi there,” he said, watching Harry’s face. “You see perhaps, yes? a young ladi, the daughter of the Signor.”

“Oh, yes, I saw Miss Bonamy,” Harry said.

“And you nevare—see her before?” This Paolo asked with a gleam of mischief in his dark eyes, and the air of a man who knew a great deal more than he said.

“Oh yes, I have met her before,” said Harry lightly. “They were quite old friends. I did not in the least expect to meet people so like old friends here.”

Paolo was bewildered by this speech, and did not know what to think.

“Ah,” he said in a tone of disappointment. “You know them in your country? what you call at ’ome? But,” he added with a little triumph, “there you could not meet Signorina Rita, because she is never to go to England; her mother die in England, her mother was the daughter of an English and Italian, like me for example; but she die in England when she go, all young, when the Signorina was a bébé. The Signor Vice-Consul was mad—Si! mad, there is no other word. It was a long time that it was thought he die too—but no, he live, he go on living; but the Signorina Rita never go to England, that is finished, that is fixed, nothing will change it. It could not be that you meet her there.”

“Do you know Miss Bonamy very well,” said Harry with a little offence, “that you call her by her Christian name?”

“I say Signorina Rita, it is our custom. If she were an old, I should say Sora Rita; and the Vice-Consul he is Ser Giovanni, that is our custom. Ser Isaack you, Ser Paolo me—but not for you, amico. When you say Paul-o, that pleases me,” and Paolo laughed, showing his teeth, which were very white and even. He added, after a moment, with a sudden moistening of his brilliant eyes, “But what displeases me, after becoming amici, as we are, is not to be able to serve you. I picture to myself that I will do something; not moche, but yet something. I will stand up and say, ‘I take him upon myself. He is without papers, but I take him upon myself—me.’ Now I am without use. It is no matter to you to have Paolo Thomp-sone for your friend. The Vice-Consul is moche bettare—he is grand personage; he has power, not only the heart, like me.”

“But, Paul-o,” said Harry, anxious to comfort him, and half touched, half amused by his distress, “but for you I should never have gone near the Vice-Consul: you put it into my head. But for you,” he added, with a laugh, putting his hand lightly on Paolo’s shoulder, “I think I should have turned tail altogether, and wandered off I don’t know where.”

Paolo’s face shone with delight. He would have rushed into Harry’s arms had that been practicable, and thrown himself upon his breast. But Harry, laughing, kept his friend at arm’s length. To have kissed, or to have suffered himself to be kissed by, any man, seemed to him the height of ridicule. Paolo, baffled in this impulse, sat down and looked at him with radiant eyes. “Now I know that we are amici,” he said. “Aspetto! There is still a way I can serve you. I well teach you to speak the Italian. You shall know it so well that they shall say, Ecco un Italiano. Me, I have been to school in Sienna. I know the real Toscano—the best Italian. We shall begin this moment. That pleases to you, Ser Isaack?” asked Paolo, tenderly, looking with humble and deprecating eagerness into his face.

“You must learn to speak English better,” Harry said, with some condescension. “I told you before you must not not say an English, but an Englishman, and to say an old is nonsense—it should be an old woman, or an old man, whichever it may be.”

“Yes, yes,” cried Paolo, “that is alright, that is understood. You correct me when I say what is not just, and I teach you.”

“Come out now for a walk,” Harry said.

Paolo jumped up alert and delighted. It is true that it glanced across the mind of the young Englishman that perhaps it was beneath the dignity of a man who was a friend of the Vice-Consul’s, and thus, as it were, a member of the best society, to walk about with Paolo hanging on to his arm. But, though Harry was full of youthful conceits and the prejudices of an ignorant Englishman, he yet had a heart in his capacious bosom, and Paolo’s devotion had been so great as to touch that heart. He said to himself, with a little effusion, that he never would turn his back upon a little fellow who had been so anxious to help him. It might be that it was presumption on the part of the little fellow to think himself capable of serving Harry, but still it was well meant, and his undisguised admiration showed a most just and well-judging spirit. Nothing, he said to himself, would induce him to turn his back upon Paolo, his first friend. Antonio had given his whole attention to the two during the course of dinner. He had loitered behind them when he was not actively pressing upon them all the choicest morsels, to the despair of various less interesting guests who could not catch his eye, and who shouted and stamped in vain. He kept shifting from one foot to another in the restlessness of pure pleasure as he caught now and then a word of the conversation between them, and rubbed his hands with delight in the consciousness of being able to understand it. Now and then he would punch a fat Italian, with whom he was familiar, in the shoulder, and call his attention. “Ecco il giovane Inglese,” he would say, though Harry was doing nothing more important than eating his dinner. Antonio had got his five francs for a very short day, for naturally the time passed in the Consul’s had given him no trouble except that of waiting, and what was still more to the purpose than the five francs was the importance of having such a witness to his power of English-speaking as this new guest, who could arrange nothing for himself without his (Antonio’s) help. He disregarded even the call of the chief butler, so absorbed was he in his favourite stranger.

“Do you wish the young Inglese to starve,” he asked, indignantly, in his native language, “when you know the Inglesi are the best customers the padrone has, and always send millions more? Do you propose to yourself that he should have nothing to eat, this young one that is no doubt made of gold; and how can he have anything to eat if I am not there to serve him?”

Thus he kept behind Harry’s chair with a countenance full of delighted interest. Now and then he would put in a word. “Ze signori will do much better to go to ze opera to-night,” he said. “Zey will hear La Catalina, who is ze first in Italy. It is ze ‘Barbiere,’ Ser Paolo, which gives itself to-night.”

Paolo looked up appealingly into his friend’s face, but Harry brushed the suggestion away with a true British argument. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he cried, “don’t let us go and box ourselves up in a hot theatre on such a night.”

Paolo sighed, but obeyed. He repeated the sentiment in a superior tone to Antonio, who was anxiously serving them with Cigare Scelte, arranged in different kinds upon a wooden tray. “A hot theatre, Antonio mio! one does not go there in a so warm evening. That goes well with the winter, when it is cold; but in summer, we young have need of moche air and the great world to keep us comfort-able. When you know more of real English you will learn what they love.”

Antonio accepted this decision of his superiors with much respect, and laid it up in his memory, to be produced on his own account when it might accord with his pretensions as an Anglomane and person of high sentiment to produce it. But in the meantime he could not but launch a little criticism to the others who overheard this dignified rebuke. “That little Paolino,” he said, as they went out, “to give himself the air of a rich Inglese! He is neither one thing nor another. He is no more than an abozzo—a sketch of an Inglese,” Antonio cried. He had been in an artist’s studio in his day. “Me, I understand them, al fondo,” he added, beating his breast.

Little Paolo had no notion that he was being called an abozzo. He sallied forth, lighting his cigar, thrusting his arm through Harry’s with the greatest delight and pride.

Next day, at the hour appointed, Harry presented himself at the Vice-Consul’s office, and was received with the same cordiality. Mr. Bonamy had “made inquiries,” but, as nobody in Leghorn knew anything about Harry, there was not much information to be procured. Neither did the captain of the steamer in which he had arrived know anything about him except that he was a passenger in the second cabin; although he looked quite superior to the second cabin. “I set him down as somebody’s son in disgrace with his family,” the captain said. This chimed in sufficiently well with Mr. Bonamy’s observations. He met Harry after the first consultation with a grave face. “You know I know nothing about you, Mr. Oliver,” he said, “except—and that is not much—what you have chosen to tell me.”

“That is quite true, Sir,” said Harry, growing serious too, and feeling his heart sink, “and I have no right to expect you to take my word even for that.”

“Therefore,” said the Vice-Consul, “(for you should never interrupt a man in the middle of a sentence), I have the more claim upon you to treat me in an honourable way. If you had come with all your papers, as they say in this country, I should not have had the same right to put you on parole, as it were. If you know no reason why I shouldn’t take you into my office, and trust you with the Queen’s affairs, I mean to do so. But if there is anything that would make you a discredit to Her Majesty’s Service——”

“There is nothing, Sir,” said Harry, standing up. His face flushed, his nostril dilated, an impulse of almost fierce self-justification came upon him; but fortunately for him he was not used to defending himself, and he could not say another word.

“Then that is enough,” said the Vice-Consul. “I take you on your own parole.”

They were both silent for a minute or two after. It was not like a common engagement. Harry’s heart was in his throat. What with surprise at this extraordinary good fortune, and the emotion called forth by a confidence in him which he could not help feeling to be as extraordinary, he was quite beyond his own control. If he had said anything he would have “made a fool of himself,” so he said nothing, but sat still, almost disposed, like Paolo, to be tearful, which was the most dreadful catastrophe he could think of. The good Vice-Consul was a little affected too.

“But I don’t know a word of the language,” at last Harry said.

“We have more to do with Englishmen than Italians,” said Mr. Bonamy. “Perhaps the fellow whom you knocked down ‘quietly,’ as you told me, may come and make his complaint to you. Your knocking a man down quietly was the thing that tickled me. I wonder what was his opinion of it. You must learn the language of course, and some other things quite as important. You must find out all about the harbour by-laws and dues, and all that affects the shipping. These are things we have a great deal to do with. You must master them, that is the most important thing; and when you have been here for a little while you will find out other points. Do you know anyone from whom you can get lessons? But I suppose, as a matter of fact, you don’t know anyone here.”

Here Harry, finding his power of speech, told him of Paolo, with that half laugh of commentary which implies a certain slight of the friend to whom he had so much reason to be grateful. He felt that it was mean, but he could not help it. How could he help implying a laugh at the droll little person who held by him so faithfully, yet was so entirely out of Harry’s way? However, the Vice-Consul took Paolo quite seriously. He nodded his head with approval. “Nobody better—nobody better,” he said. “I see you laugh at him; but he is as sound as a bell, that little fellow, and always rings true. That he is not quite your equal,” Mr. Bonamy added, “does not matter a bit in the circumstances. I am glad that you have chanced so fortunately. To get hold by accident of such a genuine person as Paolo is quite a piece of luck. I rather think you must be a lucky person,” he added, with a laugh.

“Since I came to Leghorn,” said Harry, fervently, “nothing could be more true than that.”

“Yes, I think you must be lucky,” said the Vice-Consul, “to hit upon a perfectly honest person as your first acquaintance, then making haste to get yourself into a row to have so good an excuse for it as my Rita, and then——”

“And then,” said Harry, “to meet with such astonishing, such unlooked-for kindness, to fall on my feet in such a wonderful way.”

“Well, perhaps,” said Mr. Bonamy, not displeased, “we may say that was luck too; and one thing, Oliver,” he added quickly, “it will be so much the better for you that employment in Her Majesty’s Service is a disgrace to nobody; mind what I say. Of course, in the nature of events, you and your family will not be at daggers drawn for ever; and when you condescend to go back, or they find you out, and come to look for you——”

“Neither, neither will happen,” cried Harry, shaking his head.

“We shall see; but if that day comes, there is nothing for them to find fault with. A Consulate is not like a merchant’s office; anybody may serve Her Majesty. None of us, I hope, are too good for that.”

“I assure you, Sir——” Harry cried, hastily.

“No, no, you need not assure me. I don’t want to know anything; unless, indeed, your heart should be opened to tell me everything, which I should really be glad of. Well,” he said, “come to-morrow morning and begin. Your friend, Paolo, will tell you about the hours: and I hope, Oliver, we shall always remain the best of friends,” the Vice-Consul added, rising and holding out his hand. “I hope nothing will happen to make me entertain a less opinion of you than I do now; that’s understood. You shall have a card for Rita’s evening at-home, and I hope you’ll come and see us occasionally in a friendly way. Let us say next Sunday, perhaps? Sunday’s a dreary day for a young man by himself. Come after church, and stay for the after noon; for the present, goodbye.”

Harry took his hat and made his best bow. He was really quite tremulous with excitement, surprise, and pleasure. To be so speedily and so easily established was more good fortune than he could realize. When he was at the door Mr. Bonamy called him back.

“Oliver!” he cried, “one moment; I would not knock any more men down if I were you; however quietly it is done, it is a little risky, and Her Majesty’s Service, you know——”

“You needn’t fear, Sir; that’s what Paul-o has been preaching to me all the time,” Harry said.

Upon which the Vice-Consul laughed benignly.

“Paul-o, as you call him, is as good an adviser as you could have,” he said.

“What should I call him but Paul-o?” Harry said to himself; and he went off with his head in the air. Lucky! indeed he had been lucky; only the third day since his arrival and he had a situation and a sort of a home and friends; to make up to him for all the evil that had happened to him before, providence was taking special care of him now. Somehow this made Harry think of his mother, of whom, hitherto, his thoughts had been scarcely more kind than towards the others concerned; a little moisture crept unawares to his eyes. “She’ll have been praying,” he said to himself; and suddenly he seemed to see her, as he had seen her so often, wringing her thin worn hands, her lips trembling with words that were inaudible. He thought—it would be hard to trace the exact connection of ideas, but there was one—that he would go in to the first church in which there seemed to be service going on, on his way back to the inn. It would not have occurred to him to go into a church where there was no service, but when he heard the tinkle of a bell, and saw one or two people creeping up and down the broad stone steps, he went in, though with a little opposition in his mind, as well as a certain craving for sympathy and utterance. But when he went in, Harry saw no signs of public worship. The tinkle of the bell was coming from an altar in a side chapel, where a great many candles were burning. In the body of the church some people were seated quietly, others kneeling on the low rush-bottomed chairs. He stood and gazed for a little with mingled feelings, with a great opposition in his mind to the Papist ritual and ceremonies (of which he saw nothing, and which, to tell the truth, he had never seen, and knew nothing whatever about); and disapproval of the people who were in the church for, as he thought, no purpose—mingled with a curious sense of the grateful calm and quietness and seclusion of the place, the serene coolness and breadth of its lofty roofs and silent space. This stole upon him, he could not tell how. He would not have knelt down, as the few people about were doing, to save his life: it would have seemed to him like the famous bowing down in the house of Rimmon, for the North was very Protestant in those days, and sympathy with Rome was very rare. He would not even say a distinct prayer in his heart, which would have seemed like yielding to temptation. But, as he stood, there rose in him an unwilling devotion, and the thanks that had been in his mind were perhaps not the less given that they were arbitrarily refused utterance. For Harry’s prejudices were a part of his training, not anything that originated in himself. When he went away the moisture came again into the corners of his eyes. His mother was as Protestant, more Protestant, than himself. She would have thought it wrong to go into “a Catholic chapel.” She would scarcely have been able to believe in the existence of a country not given over to all evil, in which a Popish place of worship was not a Catholic chapel, but an established church. Oh, the poor people! what benighted darkness they must be in! she would have said, in her ignorance. But somehow, Harry could not have told how, he felt as if he had approached his mother in that foreign place. The silent church, with the silent people in it praying, made him think of her as he had seen her, with her lips moving and her hands clasped together. Often again he stole in for a moment to renew that sentiment, which was so soft and pathetic. He held out against his mother all the time obstinately, though he knew he was condemning her to great suffering—and he entirely disapproved of the church; but for all that the two had some subtle resemblance, a union of two things he was hostile to, which went to his heart.

Paolo came to dinner in great triumph. He had placed a flower in his button-hole and put on a brilliant new tie in honour of the great event, and fairly threw himself upon his amico and kissed him with enthusiasm before Harry could get out of this extremely embarrassing position. Never young girl blushed more uncomfortably than the young man did as he drew himself out of his enthusiastic friend’s embrace.

“What have I done to you that you make no response?” Paolo said, almost weeping over this repulse.

“Hold your tongue, for goodness’ sake! Men don’t kiss each other in England. Whatever you do, don’t be ridiculous,” Harry cried.

Poor little Paolo was wounded to the heart.

“I am an English myself,” he said. “Yes, yes, an Englishman, if you will; I have not the courage to remember. I am a true English-man; but it is cruel all the same. Should I then take no notice? when it is the wish most dear of my heart that will be fulfilled? Always I have said to myself—if the Santissima Virgin would send a real English-man, not one that is what you call ’alf-and-’alf, like me. And when it is done, and my amico whom I have chosen turns out to be he whom I have so much desired, am not I to show a little that I am glad? I am ’appy that I am an Italian,” said Paolo, with indignation, “if it is so.”

And there was a little suspension of intercourse between them. But this did not last; Paolo was too good-humoured and too tender-hearted to stand out; he begged his friend’s pardon in less than five minutes. Harry, whose mind moved more slowly, had not had time to realize that he had been unkind when this reversal of the position took place. Paolo did all but weep in his penitence.

“I am good-for-nothing,” he said, “I am without sentiment, I have no delicacy nor education. Who can say why you were so magnanimous as to choose me, me! for your amico? and when you show the true dignity of an English, me I am so without good-breeding, so common, so devoid of sentiment, that I become angry! but if you will only forgive me, forgive me this once——!”

“It is I who am a brute,” said Harry, penitent in his turn. But Paolo protested with tears in his eyes, and would have thrown himself at his friend’s feet, or on his neck again, in the excitement of the reconciliation. And though he was usually very thrifty, calculating every centissimo, he ordered a bottle of champagne frappé to celebrate the day. Nothing would prevail upon him to countermand this order.

“It is a festa,” cried the little man, “and it is a reparation: and we will drink to our eternal friendship.” Paolo did not know that he was guilty of plagiarism; he was heroically in earnest, and drank his wine, which Antonio brought with great pride and many grins, triumphantly in its pail, setting it on the table before them, and watching its consumption with the most amiable interest. “And here is for a bicchierino,” Paolo said, bestowing, a small coin upon Antonio with much grandeur, “drink thou also the health of Ser Isaack, who is my amico,” and he held out his foaming glass to touch that of his friend.

Paolo’s head was turned altogether by these unusual potations; and Harry’s first office was to see his friend safe home and deliver him from all the dangers of the streets, on this too triumphant night.

CHAPTER VI.

THE OFFICE.

This hasty alarm and anxious honesty of purpose made Mr. Bonamy more and more certain that he had judged rightly. “Don’t give in in such a hurry,” he said, “you can’t be expected to know things of that sort without learning. They are not part of a gentleman’s education. You must get your friend Paolo to take you in hand. He is a perfect mine of information. I have often to refer to him myself. Though he is not in a very high position, he knows more about these special matters than all the rest of us put together.”

And thus balm was diffused over Harry’s sore spirit. But he could not help asking himself why the inequalities and injustices of this world should be so marked in respect to Paolo. Why should he not be in a very high position so far as the Vice-Consul’s office was concerned? He, Harry, who was an ignoramus and knew nothing, was to have higher pay and far more consideration than the other, who was a mine of knowledge. It was true that Harry’s personal sense of superiority to Paolo was noways weakened—but yet he felt the injustice. He had not been used to enter into such questions, yet he could not but see that to bolster up the ignorance of a well-looking Englishman, by the knowledge of a little oddity of an Italian was somewhat hard so far as the Italian was concerned. It was, accordingly, with a deprecating tone that he spoke to Paolo at dinner. It even moved him to a little insincerity. What he had said to the Vice-Consul in all good faith, and much dismay, he repeated to Paolo, not meaning it at all. “I don’t know a thing,” he said, “not one question could I answer. I never knew I was so ignorant. It is very nice to be settled and have Mr. Bonamy for my chief, and you, Paolo, to help me through: but a fellow must be honest—and when the beggars come and ask me things, I can’t go on pretending to know.”

“You shall not pretend to know, Isaack mio,” cried Paolo, with a beaming countenance. “Now is just come the moment which I was looking for, which show that it is good to have a friend. How much does it matter whether it is you that have it or I that have it? Listen then to me. You think Paolo Thomp-sone a little nobody, and it is true; but listen—listen to me. It is not to talk big or to brag that is necessary. I know.”

“I am sure of that, Paolo,” said Harry, languidly, and with the look of dejection which was half acting, though he did not intend it. “The Vice-Consul said so. He told me you were a mine of knowledge. But why should I pick your brains? Why should I mount up upon you and stand upon your shoulders, and get all the credit of it? That is not just any more than the other. I oughtn’t to take everything from you.”

Paolo could scarcely keep still upon his chair in his delight and satisfaction. His face glowed and shone with happiness. “Are not you my friend?” he cried; “all that which is to Paolo is to you, Ser Isaack. It is my pride. We will begin to-night. It is better than to go out to the Café to sit and sip Rosolio—to be idle like the others—moche bettare. You shall come to my room, or I will go to yours—and then the books, and to write the exercises, and to stoody. Yes, yes—I know. I have been here all my life—I know moche, almost everything. Then we commence to-night.”

“But, Paolo, how am I to accept all that from you? A week ago you did not know me, and now you are going to sacrifice all your spare time and your pleasure to me; that is not just, as you say. You must let me at least,” said Harry, faltering, and, with a glimmering insight which was quite new to him, watching his friend’s countenance, “you must let me at least—consider you as—my master, you know; and we must settle—now don’t be angry—a price.”

Paolo did not say a word; he turned his face away from his friend and pretended to go on eating his dinner. There was no need for words to show how deeply wounded he was. He turned his shoulder to Harry, and called the smiling Antonio to the other side.

“Take it away! take it away!” he said in English, “it choke me!” and he pushed his plate from him.

“Oh! Signor Paolo! Pertanto é buonissimo; don’t cry, Ser Paolo,” cried the anxious waiter. “These Inglesi, they are brutes; they have no sentiment; they give pain without knowing it. Pertanto, you must not weep.”

“That imports me nothing,” said Paolo, feebly. “It is again an illusion, my good Antonio; but I cannot weep much, for it is too deep.”

“What are you two talking about? when you know I don’t understand your confounded Italian!” cried Harry, at his wit’s end. “What’s the matter? what have I done now? you will drive a poor beggar out of his senses! Good Lord! you’re not a woman, that you should cry for what a fellow says. I don’t know what you mean by your sentiment and all that; I want to be honest, and not to take advantage of a good hearted duffer because he is my friend.”

Paolo turned round with the tears still in his eyes.

“You call me duffere,” he said quickly; “beggare I understand, but duffere I never heard.”

“It means,” said Harry, drawing on his imagination, “the best-hearted, silly kind fellow in the world, always going out of his way to help somebody, holding out his hand to a suspicious beast the moment he lands in a strange place, never giving him up though he behaves like a brute, giving everything like an idiot, but flaring up if you want to give him anything in return.”

“Not that, not that,” said Paolo, laying his hand upon his friend’s arm. “I give you my lofe, and I wait for your lofe in return. If there is a thing you want I take it upon myself. Siamo amici! is there any more to say? I know nothing; all is in that. If it is true that I am your amico, then you are a beggare, you are a beast, you are all bad,” said Paolo, with flashing eyes, “to be so base as to offer to pay me—money. Ah! che! che! there is nothing too bad, nothing too dreadful to say. Inglese brutale! false amico——!” Here he stopped all at once, and gazed piteously into Harry’s face. “Forgive me, forgive me, my friend!” he cried.

This all happened at dinner, at the table-d’hôte, which fortunately was not very full that day. There was nobody sitting opposite, which was a great relief to Harry’s mind; but he could see from the end of the table the cynical Englishman, who had never taken any notice of him, giving an amused glance now and then at the group of friends—Paolo shedding tears into his plate, Antonio, with a face full of sympathy, tenderly removing it, essaying to console the sufferer. This was a greater trial to Harry’s temper than even the sentiment of Paolo. He shot an answering glance of defiance at his countryman, who had never so much as given the help of a kind word to the stranger.

“Let’s say no more about it, Paolo,” he said, “you and I are quite different, you know. I daresay I am a brutal Englishman, but I can’t help it. That’s our nature. We don’t think so much of a little thing as you do, and we abhor making a fuss. Perhaps you don’t know what that means?”

“I will nevare make a fuss more. I will learn to be a duffere, and do as you do,” said Paolo, in all the tenderness of reconciliation.

Harry looked at him something as Joan looked at his mother. He had too good a heart to despise his little friend, and he did not understand him; but this sentiment was extremely inconvenient and very troublesome—on that point there could be no doubt.

However, later in the evening, Paolo, who had inherited all the Italian thrift, gave his friend some very sensible advice. Instead of going to the Café, they went to Paolo’s appartamento, which was on the highest floor of a high house in one of the narrow streets. Though he called it an appartamento it was a single room, with an odd little closet in the shape of a kitchen, and offices attached to it. The room itself was somewhat low in the roof, being so high up, but had three or four windows, and a little balcony suspended over the street, into which it made Harry dizzy to look down as into an Alpine ravine. The floor was of tiles, the walls white, with a pattern in distemper, very graceful and flowing, round the top and bottom. The bed was a very tiny and bare article, put away in a corner. In another corner stood a table. A few chairs, and an old, very straight-backed settee, with two arms, in old gilding and brocade, stood against the wall. There was a tall, brass lucerna, the lamp common throughout Italy, with its little bundle of snuffers and extinguisher and scissors to trim the wick, hanging from it by a chain, and a few books on a shelf. Nothing could be more bare. There was a small rug by the bedside, but no other covering for the bare area of tiles which was the chief feature in the room. Paolo had a little picture of the Madonna, a bad copy of that which is called the Madonna del Granduca, and a basin for holy water over his bed, which was covered with a red and blue cotton coverlet. Everything about showed the same bareness and absence both of comfort and ornament. But Paolo regarded his appartamento with eyes full of pleasure. He saw nothing wanting in it. It housed him sufficiently of nights, and was cool and pleasant in the summer mornings, when he rose, as most Italians do, in the early daylight, to get through all the private work he might happen to have. He looked round upon it with a gentle complaisance. Some old prints, and one or two copies of famous pictures, hung on the walls. In the best light was an old painting of a gloomy and uncertain aspect, which Paolo believed to be a Margheritone. It might have been anything. He was very proud of it. “Ecco!” he said, when they went in, “my old master. He is a little dark, but when you study him you will find much in him. He is of the trecento—very early—very early. The painter have seen the blessed father, San Francesco; that indicates how old it must be.”

Harry did not make any reply to this. For his part he liked things better for being new. The dark old picture had no charm for him at all, and he thought the appartamento rather worse as being larger than his own little room at the hotel, which had hitherto seemed to him the last example of bareness and dreariness. “A horrid little hole,” more adapted for a dog than a man.

“I’ll tell you one other thing,” said Paolo, taking him affectionately by the shoulders before they sat down by the table; “if you will make economies, and do well, Isaack mio, you will not live always in the hotel. Me I dine there; it is the best thing to do; but live all the time—oh no! It is only for Englishmen to be so extravagant like that.”

“That is what I have been thinking,” said Harry, “if I could get some nice rooms. You don’t understand about Englishmen. Dining every day at an hotel is a thing nobody would think of in England. We have our dinner at home, or, if the landlady is not a good cook, then perhaps—But for my part I always preferred a beefsteak at home, even if it were not the most perfect cookery in the world. Dining at an hotel is a thing no one thinks of, except on a great occasion perhaps.”

Paolo opened his eyes in surprise. “It is well,” he said, “you are more prudent when you are in your own country. This is what you must do, Isaack, amico. You will first find an appartamento. It is not always that one is so fortunate as me. This is perfect—non é vero? It is all one could want. A bed—ecco! a table, the sof-fa that has come from a palazzo, even a little tabouret for the feet—everything. And then the balcone! When it makes warm in the summer, in July and Agosto, it is, oh! fresco, freschissimo so fresh and cool here! The first thing is an appartamento. But in every way I am too fortunate. As soon I dress in the morning, there is a caffè in face—you can see it if you look down—where I can have my coffee in a moment. No waiting as when you go to a distance, but at the moment. They are about to send us now the coffee, amico, to clear our head. You will see how good it is. Then when the time come for the other breakfast—what you call lunch—there is a restaurant near the bureau. You have two very good dish, a dolce, and dessert; and very little to pay. I will lead you to-morrow to that place. And at last the dinner at the Leone. Figure to yourself so much comfort all in one day! And you see the journals for nothing, and hear what all the people say.”

“Bless us all,” said Harry, “in that way you are never at home.”

“At ’ome! I am at ’ome everywere,” the little Italian said; “all is friends; whatever goes on, everyone makes part of it to me. And when all is over you mount in your appartamento, you are tranquil, you light your lamp, you fume slowly your cigar on the balcone, you go to bed. And you make economies—great economies. Me even, that have not moche appointment, I become a little rich, what you call at my ease. And you, who will have moche more as me——”

“Why should I? You are a great deal more use than I am,” Harry said.

Paolo shook his head with a cheerful yet shrewd acceptance of the position. “Si, I am of more use,” he said. “I am good for something; you, caro, not good for moche yet. But look at you and look at me. That expliques itself. That is the world’s way—what you call the world’s way. Come; the first thing is an appartamento. You think, perhaps, it is too high up here? But smell the good air,” cried Paolo; “that is of itself refreshing—and the view! You will pay more scudi at the Leone in a week than for a month here. Ecco! here is the coffee, and though it is not yet quite dark, that amiable garzone, see, he has brought us a lamp.”

Then there entered, with a knock at the door, the man from the caffè opposite, holding upon the points of three fingers a tray containing two heavy cups of white porcelain and the small coffee-pot, flanked by a plate of cakes, which Paolo’s hospitality had added in honour of his friend. The waiter swung the lighted lamp in the other hand, holding it by the handle at the top, and in this way had come up five flights of stairs without spilling a drop of the coffee or jeopardizing the cups. He put the lamp on the table with a “Felicissima notte, Signori,” looking upon the two young men with looks as amiable as his wish. And, indeed, the wish has more reason in it at the beginning of the evening than at the end. Paolo was great as a host. He poured out his black coffee as if it had been the richest of drinks, and pressed upon Harry the odd little collection of cakes of every possible and impossible flavour. Some of them were excellent, but Harry thought he despised these innocent dainties. And he was not very fond of the black coffee: how much better he would have liked an English cup of tea! As he sat turning over the books which Paolo placed before him, and listened to his friend’s explanations, gulping, with a great effort not to make a wry face, occasional mouthfuls of coffee, there seemed to flit before him a vision of his mother’s parlour—the fragrant tea, the rich fresh cream, and herself, with that pale face which had not always seemed to him so attractive as it did now. Once, to tell the truth, Harry had thought his mother and sister heavy company, and in his heart had said that nothing could be more dull than the long evening in the parlour at home. Now that he was up here so near the sky in Paolo’s appartamento, his ideas were different. The bare tiles underfoot, the wide, vacant space, with the little bed in the corner, the dull old Margheritone staring him in the face, with a pair of round eyes looking out from its blackness—and all those knotty questions about the harbour dues to occupy him, made as great a contrast as could be conceived to the old curtains and carpets, and familiar walls, and cheerful fire, and the grey sweep of landscape showing from the windows, stretching far into the horizon. But he himself. Harry was very much the same, and in the one place as in the other he was unsatisfied. He thought it had been his surroundings that were to blame in the first instance, but now, after the excitement of all this new beginning, and the novelty of his new friends, and the new place, so unlike anything he had seen before, Paolo’s appartamento, and the thought of settling down in another such, brought him back, with a sort of mental gasp, to himself. Was that all that was to come of it? It was scarcely worth while renouncing his name and his family, and all his past, in order to settle down in a room upon the fifth floor, among the chimneypots, at Leghorn. While he was studying the dock regulations and harbour laws, his mind was busy about this other perplexing question. An appartemento! Was he never, he wondered, with an impatience that was almost comic in the humiliation and depression it caused him, to have a sitting-room again? never to get a meal save in public, in the grim sala of the Leone, or in a gaudy restaurant with little marble tables; never even a cup of tea to himself in his own place, as an Englishman loves to have it; never to have a carpet under his feet, but cold tiles; and nothing in the world that looked like home? He kept all this to himself, and tried hard to grasp at the laws and regulations about the free port of Leghorn, and its etiquettes and its dues; but his inner soul was crossed all the time by impulses of ill-humour and disappointment which he could with difficulty restrain. It is always difficult, after a period of agitation and excitement, to settle down again and resume a steady routine; and Harry could not think of this kind of settling with anything but annoyance. The inn was not any better. His little sleeping-room there was not so good as Paolo’s. In the sala there was always a sense of dinner combined with cigars; and in the other parts of the establishment the smell was of cigars impregnated with soup and divers odours of the kitchen. And these were the only places where he, with his English habits, had a chance of sitting down! He sighed for his little parlour, with its Kidderminster carpet, and red moreen curtains, at Liverpool. It was a palace to the appartamento, or anything that seemed possible here.