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.
To the entranced amazement of a few loungers, she picked up her skirts in the prettiest way imaginable and immediately responded with a pas-seul of her own—her little feet nimble as ever, till the two met, laughing immoderately, in the middle of the highway just as the diligence hove in sight.
CHAPTER IV
HOME LIFE AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM