The last was cook’s remark, and it was received with a feminine chorus of “Ah’s!”
“Oh, that wretched Italian, why does he persist in coming here?” cried her ladyship one day. “Maude, you’ll drive me mad if you keep on encouraging him so.”
Maude looked at her mother dreamily and said nothing, but the next time the man came she wrapped some coppers in a piece of paper, and dropped them out, to be caught deftly in the soft felt hat.
“Poor fellow,” she sighed, “it may make him happy.”
“Ah, bella signora,” cried Luigi in mellifluous tones, and he ground, and smiled, and showed his white teeth till the lady retired.
But if there was love-making in Portland Place there was despair in Duke Street, human and canine, for Joby more than once proved himself to be a terrible nuisance at the chambers by uttering low snuffling whines upon the stairs and landings, which, being interpreted, meant, “Why doesn’t master come home?” But by degrees he smothered his feelings on finding that an open avowal of his trouble only resulted in boots, boot-jacks, empty soda-water bottles, and other missiles being flung at him from open doors, while he was reviled as being a beast.
His retort upon receiving such forcible salutations was very often a display of his teeth, and so threatening an action in the direction of legs that he generally caused his assailants to beat a retreat; but at last he performed the same strategic evolution himself, consequent upon having to deal with the unknown. In fact, science conquered him. He stood shot, and dodged them bravely. So clever was he indeed upon this point, that it was almost impossible to hit him with hair-brush, boot, or lump of coal; but one day an angry occupant of the chambers, upon hearing a very long-drawn howl, opened his door suddenly and hurled a bottle at the dog.
It was this bottle which puzzled Joby, for instead of being empty, it was full of the water known as soda, highly charged with gas by one Schweppe, and though it missed the dog, it struck upon a partly filled coal-scuttle, and exploded with such violence, and so great a scattering of fragments, that for two days Joby preferred to sleep in the park, and had a very narrow escape from a dog-stealer, who tried every blandishment he knew to get the animal to follow him, but without effect.
Sometimes he would go and hang about the great house in Portland Place, but there was no admission. Attempts to glide past or between the legs of the servants dismally failed; but he had a look or two at Lord Barmouth, and followed him when he went out, giving sundry sniffs at his pocket, and more than once coming in for a bone. But this was very exceptional, and Joby’s was just now a very unsatisfactory and useless life.
His lordship swore a little softly and in private about the organ, but ceased as he saw that his daughter took a little interest in the music.