"Then, excuse me," said Mr. Fett, becoming serious of a sudden, "but isn't it a damned foolish business that brings you?"
"It may be," I answered. "But the point is, Can you help us?"
"To a lodging? Why, certainly, as luck has it, I can take you straight—no, not straight exactly, but the devil of a way round—to one where you can lie as snug as fleas in a blanket. Oh—er—but excuse me—" He checked himself and stood rubbing his chin, with a dubious glance at the Princess.
"Indeed, sir," she put in, smoothing down at her peasant-skirt, "I think you first found me lodging upon a bare rock, and even in this new dress it hardly becomes me to be more fastidious."
"I was thinking less of the lodgings, Princess, than of the company: though, to be sure, the girls are very good-hearted, and Donna Julia, our prima amorosa, makes a most discreet duenna, off the boards. There is Badcock too—il signore Badcocchio: give Badcock a hint, and he will diffuse a most permeating respectability. For the young ladies who dwell at the entrance of the court, over the archway, I won't answer. My acquaintance with them has not passed beyond an interchange of winks: but we might send Badcock to expostulate with them."
"You are not dealing with a child, sir," said the Princess, with a look at me and a somewhat heightened colour. "Be assured that I shall have eyes only for what I choose to see."
Mr. Fett bowed. "As for the lodgings, I can guarantee them. They lie on the edge of a small Jew quarter—not the main ghetto— and within a stone's-throw of the alleged birthplace of Columbus; if that be a recommendation. Actually they are rated in the weavers' quarter, the burgh of San Stefano, between the old and new walls, a little on the left of the main street as you go up from Sant' Andrea towards Porticello, by the second turning beyond the Olive Gate."
"I thank you," I interrupted, "but at a reasonable pace we might arrive there before you have done giving us the direction."
"My loquacity, sir, did you understand it," said Mr. Fett, with an air of fine reproach, "springs less from the desire to instruct than from the ebullience of my feelings at so happy a rencounter."
"Well, that's very handsomely said," I acknowledged. "Oh, sir, I have a deal to tell, and to hear! But we will talk anon. Meanwhile"—he touched my arm as he led the way, and I fell into step beside him—"permit me to note a change in the lady since I last had the pleasure of meeting her—a distinct lessening of hauteur—a touch of (shall I say?) womanliness. Would it be too much to ask if you are running away with her?"