“Yes, really and truly—almost as well as I do. He has lived in New York and he speaks English like a dream—real English—not the Gustavo—Lieutenant di Ferara kind. I can understand what he says.”
“How simply horrible!”
“Very convenient, I should say.”
“If there’s anything I detest, it’s an Americanized Italian—and here in Valedolmo of all places, where you have a right to demand something unique and romantic and picturesque and real. It’s too bad of Gustavo! I shall never place any faith in his judgment again. You may talk English to the man if you like; I shall address him in nothing but Italian.”
As they rose from the table she suggested pessimistically, “Let’s go and look at the donkeys—I suppose they’ll be horrid, scraggly, knock-kneed little beasts.”
They turned out however to be unusually attractive, as donkeys go, and they were innocently engaged in nibbling, not rose-leaves but grass, under the tutelage of a barefoot boy. Constance patted their shaggy mouse-colored noses, made the acquaintance of the boy, whose name was Beppo, and looked about for the driver proper. He rose and bowed as she approached. His appearance was even more violently spectacular than she had ordered; Gustavo had given good measure.
He wore a loose white shirt—immaculately white—with a red silk handkerchief knotted about his throat, brown corduroy knee-breeches, and a red cotton sash with the hilt of a knife conspicuously protruding. His corduroy jacket was slung carelessly across his shoulders, his hat was cocked jauntily, with a red heron feather stuck in the band; last, perfect touch of all, in his ears—at his ears rather (a close examination revealed the thread)—two golden hoops flashed in the sunlight. His skin was dark—not too dark—just a good healthy out-door tan: his brows level and heavy, his gaze candor itself. He wore a tiny suggestion of a moustache which turned up at the corners (a suspicious examination of this, might have revealed the fact that it was touched up with burnt cork); there was no doubt but that he was a handsome fellow, and his attire suggested that he knew it.