“I don’t mind,” said Alvina hastily. “He knows where they go. He brought them before.”
“But I will carry them. I am dressed. Allow me—” and he began to take the things. “You get dressed, Ciccio.”
Ciccio looked at Alvina.
“Do you want?” he said, as if waiting for orders.
“Do let Ciccio take them,” said Alvina to Max. “Thank you ever so much. But let him take them.”
So Alvina marched off through the Sunday morning streets, with the Italian, who was down at heel and encumbered with an armful of sick-room apparatus. She did not know what to say, and he said nothing.
“We will go in this way,” she said, suddenly opening the hall door. She had unlocked it before she went out, for that entrance was hardly ever used. So she showed the Italian into the sombre drawing-room, with its high black bookshelves with rows and rows of calf-bound volumes, its old red and flowered carpet, its grand piano littered with music. Ciccio put down the things as she directed, and stood with his cap in his hands, looking aside.
“Thank you so much,” she said, lingering.
He curled his lips in a faint deprecatory smile.
“Nothing,” he murmured.