“Very much indeed, if you don’t mind; but I should not like you to strain yourself on my account.”
“All right, Buffo, I’ll be careful. Now listen. I don’t believe that the last act, as you call it, had anything to do with the story. It was a music-hall turn added at the end of the play merely to close the entertainment and send the audience away in good spirits.”
“But that wrecks your comedy. And if the play was neither comedy nor tragedy, what was it? You cannot expect a simple Portuguese gentleman from Rio to understand your Sicilian dramas all at once.”
“And we have not time now to discuss the question exhaustively, for if you do not go to bed immediately you will never be up to-morrow in time to catch your train back to Palermo, and if you are late what will papa say
and what will the public think when they find nothing ready in the teatrino?”
“That is true. Good night and thank you very much for my holiday and for all you have done for me.”
“Prego, prego; I thank you for giving me the pleasure of your company.”
“Not at all.”
“But I assure you—”
“If you go on like this I shall begin to cry, and then I shall not sleep at all, and that will be worse than sitting up to discuss the play. So good night, finally.”