Well, they stayed for a whole week, and the little man was kindness itself to the boy. Not only did he feed him like a fighting cock—I really don’t know, by the way, how fighting cocks are fed, and I have no desire to know—the “sport,” so called, is brutal and brutalising in the extreme.
Antonio took the boy to concert and theatre, and, I’m quite sure of one thing, half at least of his own happiness consisted in witnessing the rapture and delight of Barclay.
Well, the days were spent in shopping, in the purchase of neat but nice furniture, carpets, oilcloth, curtains, and drapery and napery.
Antonio was as fastidious as a woman.
“I do like,” he explained to Barclay, “to have things nice around me. Couldn’t work or think if they weren’t!”
But there were kitchen or cookery articles to be bought as well, and many other things I need not mention. Anyhow, it was evident enough that Antonio knew what he was about.
Barclay and Antonio occupied adjoining rooms in the hotel where they lived.
“I say,” said Antonio on the first night, and before leaving the lad’s room, “it may seem a queer question from a barnacled old salt like me, but—do you say your prayers?”
“Oh, always,” said the boy seriously.
“Right, dearie, right. And now I’m off.”