“Why, we did nothing this morning except sit about the theatre watching My Lady arrange the scenery for her Attitudes, and rehearsing a few mountebanks in their parts.”
“You are very severe, Signor W-Will. The Admiral and I were in fits of laughter.”
“I thought it very dull. My Lady’s attitudes are certainly wonderful; but I don’t think that I care for them so much that I want to see her in the morning arranging the backgrounds for her performance at night.”
“Nor I,” she said, with considerable warmth and spirit. “In fact, I think we have too much attitudes altogether. What does a man like your Admiral, a great hero who is directing the destinies of the world, want with this perpetual round of attitudes, buffos, bals masqués, and fêtes? They are all very well for us of the Two Sicilies, who have to eat and drink and be merry until the flood comes and swamps us into one of the great Powers; but a man like your Admiral does not need them—he needs rest.”
“I think you are sweeping, Donna Rusidda. After all, when the stress of a severe campaign is over, what the fighter requires is change more than rest. Men can go to sleep while they are fighting at a battle, if they are only weary enough. What the hard fighter and the hard worker need is recreation.”
“And is this recreation?”
“There is no recreation for me like the society of beautiful and gracious ladies such as yourself.”
She bowed with mock gravity, and said, with a touch of bitterness in her voice, “You mean like the Ambassador’s wife.”
“No,” he answered: “she is very beautiful, wonderfully and uniformly gracious, and very clever; but I do not like seeing the Admiral blind to her play-actress side. He takes everything in her seriously, while I, who am a mere boy——”
“Not always a boy, W-Will. You are sometimes a boy with the wiseness of a man, and sometimes a man with the foolishness of a boy.”