“Of course I am.”
“And to supper afterwards?”
“Certainly, if I may. I do not want to cause an eruption of Mount Etna, and I do not want you to leave off speaking to me.”
“Bravo, bravo!” And away he went, apologizing for leaving me by saying he really must try to get a little sleep before nine o’clock or he would be no good at the performance. And this time I fancied there was something of a twinkle in his eye.
Four o’clock p.m. is not such a bad dinner-hour when one is going to bed at four a.m. And four a.m. is not such a bad time for going to bed in Sicily. At some seasons it is better for getting up and then one takes one’s siesta during the heat of the day. Either way some alteration of one’s usual habits is a good thing on a holiday, and any one in want of a thorough change from the life of the ordinary Londoner might do worse—or, as I should prefer to say, could hardly do better—than spend a week with a Sicilian Dramatic Company.
CHAPTER XIX—BRANCACCIA
After the players were gone I resumed my normal habits. One morning, as Peppino and I were returning to colazione he asked me whether I had seen the procession down on the shore.
“Of course I saw it, but I did not know what it was all about.”
“That,” said he, “was the bishop; he go to bless the sea and pray God to send the tunnies. Every spring shall be coming always the tunnies, but if to don’t bless the sea, then to be coming few tunnies; if to bless the sea then to be coming plenty many tunnies.”
“It was a beautiful procession,” I said. “I knew it was the bishop; I saw his mitre and the vestments and the gilded crosses and the smoke of the incense in the sunlight. But do you think it is quite sportsmanlike to pray that many tunnies may be killed?”