He said he remembered, but did not confess to any great emotion. "You wait till Thursday," said Aurora. "It's Thanksgiving. We're going to have chicken-pie, roast turkey, mince-pie, squash-pie, everything but cranberry sauce. We can't get the cranberries. Will you come?" In haste and confusion he said, alas! it would be impossible, wholly impossible, intimating that he was a man of a thousand engagements and occupations. But after an interval, and talk of other things, he inquired, with an effect of enormous discretion, whether he might without too great impertinence ask who was coming to eat that wonderful Thanksgiving dinner which her own hands, he must suppose, would largely have to prepare. "Just the Fosses. All the Fosses." "Ah, Mr. Foss will feel agreeably like the great Turk." "You mean he'll be the only man? I guess he can stand it. We thought of asking Charlie Hunt, too, but he's English and would seem an outsider at this particular gathering. Wish you'd come. You're such a friend of theirs. Come on, come!" "Mrs. Hawthorne, you are so very unusually kind. If you would leave it open, and then when the day arrives, if I should find I could do so without--without--" "Oh, yes. Come if you can. And be sure, now, you come!" They were still sitting at the table--dinner had been retarded by the circumstantial round of the house--when music resounding through the echoing rooms stopped the talk. It was the piano across the hall that had been briskly and powerfully attacked. The "Royal March" of Italy was played, first baldly, then with manifold clinging and wreathing variations. Aurora signed to the servant to open the dining-room door. All three at the table sat in silence till the end of the piece. Gerald wondered what the evening caller could be who made the moments of waiting light to himself in this fanciful manner. "It's Italo," said Mrs. Hawthorne, rising. "I call him Italo because I never can remember his other name. Come, let's go into the parlor." It was all rosily lighted. Candles set on the piano at each side of the music-rest enkindled glossy high lights on the nose-bump and forehead bosses of Signor Ceccherelli, who at Mrs. Hawthorne's appearance sprang up to salute. She reached him her hand, over which he deeply bowed. "You're to play all those lovely things I'm so fond of," she directed him. "'The Swallow and the Prisoner,' 'The Butterflies,' 'The Cascade of Pearls.' And don't forget the 'Souvenir of Saint Helena.' Then the one of the soldiers marching off and the soldiers coming home again. All our favorites. Mr. Fane-- Are you acquainted with each other? Italo--you'll have to tell him your name yourself. All I can think of is Checkerberry." "Yes, yes, we are acquainted," said Gerald, hurriedly. "We have seen each other many times. _Come sta?_" "Oh, he can speak English." "A leetle," Ceccherelli modestly admitted.