Irish and Italian--there was some subtle affinity always between them--the grave and the gay, the superstitious and the Pagan, as _he_ said--and he was positively confused when she observed that his golden beard and fair, curling hair were just like the St. Joseph’s in the Church. It was a merry run we had down through the chestnut woods and a sweet walk by the river in the sunset, back to the Presbytery. Graver but none the less satisfactory was the appreciation given to him by my old nurse, when we arrived presently in Genoa. She was of a different type--refined, sensitive, serious even to sadness--with the blight always on her of a foundling’s ignorance of parentage; but devoted beyond all words and of a rare intelligence: Joe was impressed with her and likened her to a female Dante. Yet the brighter types were more in accordance with his holiday mood: when we were on a visit later at a mediaeval castle whose battlements stand sheer above the sea and whose olive groves slope to a transparent bay, he spent all the time not occupied by eating figs off the tree on the Castle keep to playing with half-naked brown urchins on the quay of the tiny fishing-port below. His first acquaintance with one of them was at dead of night when we were alone in the weird old place and a hollow bell clanged suddenly through the hot air. Joe got out of bed--his chief fear being lest the mosquitoes should take the chance to get in under the sheltering net--and made his way down a dark, vaulted passage to the outer gateway and what was once the portcullis. A ragged boy stood there with a telegram: it was an invitation which should have been delivered six hours before, but the boy had walked five miles along a cliff in the dark and Joe rewarded him so well that his fame was spread in the village and he never more walked peacefully abroad. The little girls, however, were his chief pilferers: he could never refuse their appealing black eyes. And some of them were fine coquettes. I can see him now dancing a hornpipe on the quay with a half-clad little maiden who presently signed to him to take off his hat; the elaborate bow with which he did so, bidding me apologise to her for the omission, was worthy of the producer of many subsequent plays. The little incident recalls another of later date. Then it was in the Engadine that we were holiday-making. Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft--as they then were--had invited us to lunch at the Campfer Hotel and we had walked over from S. Moritz where we were lodged. As we came up the path through the pine-wood beside the rushing stream we saw the famous little lady standing on the dusty road above to welcome us; and Joe--his hat in his hand this time--began advancing towards her executing his hornpipe step.