“Ah,” he said in a tone of disappointment. “You know them in your country? what you call at ’ome? But,” he added with a little triumph, “there you could not meet Signorina Rita, because she is never to go to England; her mother die in England, her mother was the daughter of an English and Italian, like me for example; but she die in England when she go, all young, when the Signorina was a bébé. The Signor Vice-Consul was mad--Si! mad, there is no other word. It was a long time that it was thought he die too--but no, he live, he go on living; but the Signorina Rita never go to England, that is finished, that is fixed, nothing will change it. It could not be that you meet her there.” “Do you know Miss Bonamy very well,” said Harry with a little offence, “that you call her by her Christian name?” “I say Signorina Rita, it is our custom. If she were an old, I should say Sora Rita; and the Vice-Consul he is Ser Giovanni, that is our custom. Ser Isaack you, Ser Paolo me--but not for you, amico. When you say Paul-o, that pleases me,” and Paolo laughed, showing his teeth, which were very white and even. He added, after a moment, with a sudden moistening of his brilliant eyes, “But what displeases me, after becoming amici, as we are, is not to be able to serve you. I picture to myself that I will do something; not moche, but yet something. I will stand up and say, ‘I take him upon myself. He is without papers, but I take him upon myself--me.’ Now I am without use. It is no matter to you to have Paolo Thomp-sone for your friend. The Vice-Consul is moche bettare--he is grand personage; he has power, not only the heart, like me.” “But, Paul-o,” said Harry, anxious to comfort him, and half touched, half amused by his distress, “but for you I should never have gone near the Vice-Consul: you put it into my head. But for you,” he added, with a laugh, putting his hand lightly on Paolo’s shoulder, “I think I should have turned tail altogether, and wandered off I don’t know where.” Paolo’s face shone with delight. He would have rushed into Harry’s arms had that been practicable, and thrown himself upon his breast. But Harry, laughing, kept his friend at arm’s length. To have kissed, or to have suffered himself to be kissed by, any man, seemed to him the height of ridicule. Paolo, baffled in this impulse, sat down and looked at him with radiant eyes. “Now I know that we are amici,” he said. “Aspetto! There is still a way I can serve you. I well teach you to speak the Italian. You shall know it so well that they shall say, Ecco un Italiano. Me, I have been to school in Sienna. I know the real Toscano--the best Italian. We shall begin this moment. That pleases to you, Ser Isaack?” asked Paolo, tenderly, looking with humble and deprecating eagerness into his face.