And then we turned into the dining room--I had followed the crowd at a respectful distance--and Miss Julianna stepped forward, to say, “La Signorina Jones, Americana!” and then she turned and said, “Mees Meek, Mees Banneester, Meester Hemmingway; you must be _friend_!” And I said that I hoped they would let me be. And then, a little flushed because I was not used to meeting so many people at once, I wiggled into my chair, and Beata came in with the soup. CHAPTER FIVE NEW FRIENDS, A NEW DAY, AND NEW PLANS I looked at the bunch of paper roses that stood in the center of the table as I ate my soup, because I felt all the rest looking at me and it made me uncomfortable; and I suppose I would have looked at them, or down at my plate, all through the meal, if Miss Bannister hadn’t barked a question out at me. “Where do you come from?” she asked, with an emphasis and a rise in her sentence that was as new to me as the Italian I was hearing. “Pennsylvania,” I answered. “Quite a village, I suppose?” she questioned. I tried to explain, but right in the middle of my explanation she said: “One of my deaf days, but no matter, I don’t care in the least. I only asked to be polite, don’t you know--” Which left me feeling as you do when you run for a car, but do nothing more than reach the spot where it _was_. I ate soup quite hard for several minutes. Then Mr. Hemmingway, who had traveled quite a lot--I learned it soon!--helped me out by screaming information about the States across the table to Miss Bannister, who clattered her spoon and kept saying, “No matter, no matter!” all the time he talked. I felt just exactly as if I were in the middle of a funny dream, and one that wasn’t especially nice, and I honestly even half wondered whether I wouldn’t wake up to tell Mother about it, and have her say, “Now _what_ did you eat before you went to bed?” But I didn’t wake up and the dinner went on; Beata took away our soup plates, and then brought in big plates of spaghetti, cheese was passed and sprinkled over this, and I found it good, but difficult to eat, because it was in long pieces. Several on my plate I know would have gone around our hose reel _dozens_ of times! Anyway, as I struggled with this and tried to cut it, Mr. Hemmingway began, and I began to understand _him_. “I am familiar with the States,” he asserted, “although my travels in the States have not been extensive. I spent a winter in Canada while a comparatively young man; it was, if I recall correctly, the winter of 1882. _Or was it_ ’83? Now I _should_ know. Ah, I have it! It was ’83, and my certainty of this pertinent fact comes from the recollection that in ’82 I was in England, and I know this, because the year prior to that, which, if you will reckon, was ’81, I was detained in a village in South Wales, by a sharp attack of fever which was thought to have been introduced by the importation of French labor upon the occasion of--”