“The Signora Mackellar,” he cried, “walked up with Seraphina to her house. Through your telescope, signor, I saw them kissing and kissing on the roof. _Dio!_ Why does a woman want to kiss a woman? There are many strange things in the world, signor. St. Peter, he had a wife, and also his wife had a mother, and one day----” “Tell me about it after dinner,” I said. “And bring up the bottle of English wine, the port wine, which I brought from Rome, I have won five liras, Francesco.” “_Sissignor_,” said Francesco. “But the dinner is not yet quite ready, for I was watching with your telescope. Five liras!... There was once a man who backed five numbers at the _Lotto_, and behold they all came out even as he had backed them. He won a hundred thousand liras, and an estate in Calabria, and----” “Dinner,” said I, and Francesco ran to the kitchen. I walked on air. Alone that evening I had had the courage of my opinion, and for once had divined Mrs. Mackellar’s mind to the extent of backing my divination for five liras. That is a lot of money here--for a stall at the cinema (front row) only costs one. THE ORIOLISTS In spite of the unaccountable absence of a Cabinet Minister who should have sat between our hostess, Mrs. Withers and Miss Agnes Lockett, I felt that this luncheon-party must be considered as perhaps the most epoch-making that had, up to the present date, been enticed beneath that insatiably hospitable roof. Never had the comet-like orbit of our entertainer ascended quite so high towards the zenith. With the negligible exception of myself, for whose presence there I shall soon amply account, there was not one among us, man, woman or child (for that prodigy on the fiddle, Dickie Sebastian, in his tight colossal sailor-suit, was of the company) whose name was not thrillingly familiar to the great percentage of the readers of those columns in the daily Press which inform us who was in the park on Sunday chatting with friends, or at the first night of the new play looking lovely.