Antonio grinned from ear to ear. He did not believe a word of what Harry said. “If it pleases to ze gentleman,” he said, laughing too. He was perfectly tolerant of the joke, and glad to see his _protegé_ cheerful. Then Harry jumped up from the table, poorly sustained for the business he had in hand by his light meal, but somewhat anxious to get through the ordeal he had proposed to himself. Antonio, however, who appeared presently in the well-worn and assiduously brushed costume of a _laquais de place_, could not quite let him off the inevitable sightseeing. He led him to the Duomo and into the great Square with a pretence that this was on the way to the Consul’s office, and made him look at again, whether he would or not, the same public buildings which he had gazed at dreamily as he wandered about the streets the day before, and looked at languidly in the moonlight under Paolo’s active guidance. He had been but twenty-four hours in Leghorn, and already he had associations with the street-corners, which probably he would never forget. Already this new world was acquiring known features of acquaintanceship; his life beginning to put forth threads like a spider’s web, and twist and twine, the new with the old. It startled Harry to feel that he was no longer a stranger here, where he had landed so forlorn. After the round which Antonio beguiled him into making, it was about eleven o’clock before they reached the door over which the well-known British symbol was put up. The outer office was full of people and business, sea-captains and merchants’ clerks, and even a few examples of the kind of traveller who is most common in Italy, he who travels for pleasure and not for business. Harry had to wait among the rest who were seeking an audience of the Vice-Consul. Here Antonio left him, and he could not see anything like the olive-countenance and brilliant costume of Paolo; but it was an English group among which he stood. The clerks even spoke English, if one or two of them displayed the tongue-tied hesitation which is common to all classes when they speak a language imperfectly understood. One of the tourists did his best to draw Harry into conversation, lamenting the cruel fate which had detained him in such a place. He was just starting for Pisa, this pilgrim said, where there was really something to see. “One might as well be in Liverpool as here,” he said. Harry did not make any reply. This was just the reason why he himself approved of Leghorn more than of any other place he had seen. When it came to his turn at last, almost all the other appellants and petitioners had been seen and dismissed. They all wanted something; and Harry’s new acquaintance had talked and worried him so much with his dislike to a place where there was so little to see, that he had almost forgot the manner in which he had arranged with himself to open his own story; when at length everybody else was despatched, and he had to go forward to his audience.