This was a question more embarrassing than the Vice-Consul supposed, for after all there did not seem much that Harry could do. He confessed that he had almost forgotten what he knew at school, and he had never learned any modern languages, and could speak no tongue but his own. He had a little experience in business, he said; but this was the only knowledge he could lay claim to. The Vice-Counsel did not know what to make of him; but as he had started with the distinct hypothesis that Harry was a squire’s son, it was not very difficult to fit in the facts to his foregone conclusion. Many a young gentleman forgot all his school learning by the time he was twenty. The difficult thing was that knowledge of business which at first Harry had been strongly disposed to put forward as the only faculty which he knew himself to be possessed of. How had he acquired that? Mr. Bonamy ended by deciding that he must have quarrelled with his family some time before, and that his acquaintance with business had been the fruit of some attempt made in England to maintain himself before he came here. Thus, without any intention on Harry’s part, he managed to deceive his first influential friend. He neither meant to do it, nor was he aware he had done it; but still this was how things fell out. The conclusion of the interview was that Mr. Bonamy engaged Harry to come back to him next day, when he would have thought the whole matter over, and know what to say. They parted with great friendship and cordiality, Mr. Bonamy having entirely come round again to his own theory in respect to the young man who had been so serviceable to his daughter. Everything seemed to prove this, Harry’s very ignorance among the rest. “In these days every poor lad is more or less educated; a gentleman’s son, who has something else to look to than competitive examination, he is the only one that escapes that sort of thing,” the Vice-Consul wisely said. Harry, on his part, went off to his hotel with greatly exhilarated feelings. He had done nothing, he said to himself, but make friends since ever he came to Leghorn. To be sure in the light of the Vice-Consul’s friendship he felt that Paolo was (as he had always felt) somewhat beneath his pretensions. But still the poor fellow had been very kind. As he came out by the private door of the Consul’s house, he saw Paolo at a little distance waiting till the public door of the Consulate should be open. He saw Harry and rushed at him, beckoning violently. “Komm ’ere, komm ’ere; this is the place,” he said. “Komm along, I will introduce you, I will respond for you; now is the time to find the Vice-Consul amiable. He is always amiable when he has well breakfasted.” He seized Harry by the arm, and tried to drag him back to the Consulate with an anxious desire to serve his friend which merited a better return. Harry shook himself free of the little man with good-natured impatience.