The little scene amused Frances. The women were knitting, with a little cluster of children about them, scrambling upon the bench or on the dusty pathway at their feet. The stranger took off his big hat and addressed them with few words and many gestures. She heard _casa_ and _Inglese_, but nothing else that was comprehensible. The women did their best to understand, and replied volubly. But here the little tourist evidently could not follow. He was like so many tourist visitors, capable of asking his question, but incapable of understanding the answer given him. Then there arose a shrill little tempest of laughter, in which he joined, and of which Frances herself could not resist the contagion. Perhaps a faint echo from the loggia caught the ear of one of the women, who knew her well, and who immediately pointed her out to the stranger. The little man turned round and made a few steps towards the Palazzo. He took off the mushroom-top of grey felt, and presented to her an ugly, little, vivacious countenance. “I beg you ten thousand pardons,” he said; “but if you speak English, as I understand them to say, will you be so very kind as to direct me to the house of Mr Waring? Ah, I am sure you are both English and kind! They tell me he lives near here.” Frances looked down from her height demurely, suppressing the too ready laugh, to listen to this queer little man; but his question took her very much by surprise. Another stranger asking for Mr Waring! But oh, so very different a one from Constance--an odd, little, ugly man, looking up at her in a curious one-sided attitude, with his glass in his eye. “He lives here,” she said. “What? Where?” He had replaced his mushroom on his head, and he cocked up towards her one ear, the ear upon the opposite side to the eye which wore the glass. “Here!” cried Frances, pointing to the house, with a laugh which she could not restrain. The stranger raised his eyebrows so much and so suddenly that his glass fell. “Oh!” he cried--but the biggest O, round as the O of Giotto, as the Italians say. He paused there some time, looking at her, his mouth retaining the shape of that exclamation; and then he cast an investigating glance along the wall, and asked, “How am I to get in?”