“Yes,” interposed Wallingford, “his grandmother—I mean his mother—in Genoa is at the point of death, and he must make a hasty trip. He will return again in a month.”
“Oh, it is too bad, too bad indeed!” she exclaimed. “I sympathize with you, so deeply, Signor Matteo. Signor,...”
The dreaded moment had come, and Wallingford braced himself as Miss Forsythe, cocking her head upon one side archly, like a dear little bird, gurgled out one of her very choicest bits of phonograph Italian!
Blackie Daw never batted an eyelash. He beamed upon Miss Forsythe, he displayed his dazzling white teeth in a smile of intense gratification, he grasped Miss Forsythe’s two hands in the fervor of his enthusiasm—and, with every appearance of lively intelligence beaming from his eyes, he fired at Miss Forsythe a tumultuous stream of utterly unintelligible gibberish!
As his flow continued, to the rhythm of an occasional, warm, double handshake, Miss Forsythe’s face turned pink and then red, and when at last, upon the conductor’s signal, Blackie hastily tore himself away and clambered on board, waving his hand to the last and erupting strange syllables which had no kith or kin, Miss Forsythe turned to Wallingford, nearly crying.
“It is humiliating; it is so humiliating,” she admitted, trapped into confession by the suddenness of it all; “but, after all my weeks of preparation, I wasn’t able to understand one word of that beautiful, limpid Italian!”