she cried. ‘Where on earth did Gustavo find him? Did you ever see anything so beautiful?’ she appealed to the others. ‘He looks like a brigand in opera bouffe.’
The donkey-man reddened visibly and fumbled with his hat.
‘My dear,’ her father warned, ‘he understands English.’
She continued to gaze with the open admiration one would bestow upon a picture or a view or a blue-ribbon horse. The man flashed her a momentary glance from a pair of searching grey eyes, then dropped his gaze humbly to the ground.
‘Buon giorno,’ he said in glib Italian.
Constance studied him more intently. There was something elusively familiar about his expression; she was sure she had seen him before.
‘Buon giorno,’ she replied in Italian. ‘You have lived in the United States?’
‘Si, signorina.’
‘What is your name?’
‘I spik Angleesh,’ he observed.
‘I don’t care if you do speak English; I prefer Italian—what is your name?’ She repeated the question in Italian.
‘Si, signorina,’ he ventured again. An anxious look had crept to his face and he hastily turned away and commenced carrying parcels from the kitchen. Constance looked after him, puzzled and suspicious. The one insult which she could not brook was for an Italian to fail to understand her when she talked Italian. As he returned and knelt to tighten the strap of a hamper, she caught sight of the thread that held his earring. She looked a second longer, and a sudden smile of illumination flashed to her face. She suppressed it quickly and turned away.
‘He seems rather slow about understanding,’ she remarked to the others, ‘but I dare say he’ll do.’
‘The poor fellow is embarrassed,’ apologized her father. ‘His name is Tony,’ he added—even he had understood that much Italian.
‘Was there ever an Italian who had been in America whose name was not Tony? Why couldn’t he have been Angelico or Felice or Pasquale or something decently picturesque?’
‘My dear,’ Miss Hazel objected, ‘I think you are hypercritical. The man is scarcely to blame for his name.’
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