“Perhaps,” Montanelli answered gently, “you do not quite realize the meaning of what you just said. You will see differently in a few years. Meanwhile we had better talk about something else.”
It was the first break in the perfect ease and harmony that reigned between them on this ideal holiday.
From Chamonix they went on by the Tete-Noire to Martigny, where they stopped to rest, as the weather was stiflingly hot. After dinner they sat on the terrace of the hotel, which was sheltered from the sun and commanded a good view of the mountains. Arthur brought out his specimen box and plunged into an earnest botanical discussion in Italian.
Two English artists were sitting on the terrace; one sketching, the other lazily chatting. It did not seem to have occurred to him that the strangers might understand English.
“Leave off daubing at the landscape, Willie,” he said; “and draw that glorious Italian boy going into ecstasies over those bits of ferns. Just look at the line of his eyebrows! You only need to put a crucifix for the magnifying-glass and a Roman toga for the jacket and knickerbockers, and there's your Early Christian complete, expression and all.”
“Early Christian be hanged! I sat beside that youth at dinner; he was just as ecstatic over the roast fowl as over those grubby little weeds. He's pretty enough; that olive colouring is beautiful; but he's not half so picturesque as his father.”
“His—who?”
“His father, sitting there straight in front of you. Do you mean to say you've passed him over? It's a perfectly magnificent face.”
“Why, you dunder-headed, go-to-meeting Methodist! Don't you know a Catholic priest when you see one?”
“A priest? By Jove, so he is! Yes, I forgot; vow of chastity, and all that sort of thing. Well then, we'll be charitable and suppose the boy's his nephew.”