regarded his _appartamento_ with eyes full of pleasure. He saw nothing wanting in it. It housed him sufficiently of nights, and was cool and pleasant in the summer mornings, when he rose, as most Italians do, in the early daylight, to get through all the private work he might happen to have. He looked round upon it with a gentle complaisance. Some old prints, and one or two copies of famous pictures, hung on the walls. In the best light was an old painting of a gloomy and uncertain aspect, which Paolo believed to be a Margheritone. It might have been anything. He was very proud of it. “Ecco!” he said, when they went in, “my old master. He is a little dark, but when you study him you will find much in him. He is of the _trecento_--very early--very early. The painter have seen the blessed father, San Francesco; that indicates how old it must be.” Harry did not make any reply to this. For his part he liked things better for being new. The dark old picture had no charm for him at all, and he thought the _appartamento_ rather worse as being larger than his own little room at the hotel, which had hitherto seemed to him the last example of bareness and dreariness. “A horrid little hole,” more adapted for a dog than a man. “I’ll tell you one other thing,” said Paolo, taking him affectionately by the shoulders before they sat down by the table; “if you will make economies, and do well, Isaack mio, you will not live always in the hotel. Me I dine there; it is the best thing to do; but live all the time--oh no! It is only for Englishmen to be so extravagant like that.” “That is what I have been thinking,” said Harry, “if I could get some nice rooms. You don’t understand about Englishmen. Dining every day at an hotel is a thing nobody would think of in England. We have our dinner at home, or, if the landlady is not a good cook, then perhaps--But for my part I always preferred a beefsteak at home, even if it were not the most perfect cookery in the world. Dining at an hotel is a thing no one thinks of, except on a great occasion perhaps.”