Having established himself, selected his trattoria, and imbibed a good deal of lemonade as a beginning, the occupant of the bachelor quarters visited the business streets of Pisa in search of employment. But it was the dullest season in a place always dull, and no one wished for a new boy. At the Anglo-American Agency the clerk, languid from the heat, motioned him away without a word; at the Forwarding and Commission Office no one looked at him or spoke to him; so it was everywhere. His friend, the bookseller's assistant, had gone for the summer to the branch establishment at Como.
Mrs. Roscoe, who detested Pisa, had established no relations there save at the confectioner's, and at the agreeable bank where they saw what she was. But the bank continued closed, and the confectioner objected to boys of thirteen as helpers. In this emergency Maso wrote to Luigi, asking if there was any hope of a place in Leghorn.
"There is sure to be a demand at the large establishments for a talented North American," Luigi had answered, with confidence.
But Maso went up and down the streets of Leghorn in vain; the large establishments demanded nothing.
The boys now came down in their expectations. Upon Maso's second visit to the seaport of Tuscany it was agreed that he should take any employment that was offered; "for of course it is but a temporary thing," said Luigi, grandly. He remembered Maso's mother, and to him Casa Corti, at whose heels, as it were, he had lived, was a highly aristocratic place of abode. Luigi was assistant in a shop where glass-ware was sold; for an hour this morning he was free to accompany his friend in his quest, and together they edged their way along in the narrow line of shade on one side of the hot, white streets. But it made no difference whether Luigi went in first and offered his North American candidate, Maso following a few minutes afterwards, or whether Maso made his demand in person, Luigi entering later, with his best smile, to serve as backer; no one showed any eagerness to secure the services of the small, narrow-chested boy. "Say, Maso, couldn't you look a little different?" suggested Luigi, anxiously, as they came out of an office, where, as he was last, he had overheard the epithet "sullen-faced" applied to his American friend.
The two boys spoke Italian; Luigi knew no English.
"Why, I look as I'm made. Everybody looks as they're made, don't they?" said Maso, surprised.
"Ah, but expression is a beautiful thing—a sympathetic countenance," said Luigi, waving his hand. "Now you—you might smile more. Promise me to try a smile at the next place where we go in to ask."
"Like this?" said Maso. And stopping, he slapped his leg violently, and gave a deep, long, sardonic laugh. "I saw a man once who did it like that," he explained.
"Well! If you should go in and ask for a place and do that—well, I don't know what they would do to you!" said Luigi, standing still, amazed.