Constance nodded affirmatively, and added, with her eyes on the pig, that it might be pleasanter to eat outside where they could look at the view. She became quite gay again over what she termed their afternoon tea-party, and her father had to remind her most insistently that if they wished to get down before darkness overtook them they must start at once. An Italian twilight is short. They paid for the food and presented a lira apiece to the children, leaving them silhouetted against the sky in a bobbing row shouting musical farewells.
Their host led them through the woods and out on to the brow of the mountain in order to start them down by the right path. He regretted that he could not go all the way, but the sheep had still to be brought in for the night. At the parting he was garrulous with directions.
The easiest way to get home now would be straight down the mountain to Grotta del Monte—he pointed out the brown-tiled roofs of a village far below them—there they could find donkeys or an ox-cart to take them back. It was nine kilometres to Valedolmo. They had come quite out of their way; if they had taken the right path in the morning they would have reached the top, where the view was magnificent—truly magnificent. It was a pity to miss it. Perhaps some other day they would like to come again and he himself would be pleased to guide them. He shook hands and wished them a pleasant journey. They would best hurry a trifle, he added, for darkness came fast, and when one got caught on the mountain at night—he shrugged his shoulders and looked at Tony—one needed a guide who knew his business.
They had walked for ten minutes when they heard some one shouting behind and found a young man calling to them to wait. He caught up with them and breathlessly explained.
Pasquale had told him that they were foreigners from America who were climbing the mountain for diversion and who had lost their way. He was going down to the village himself and would be pleased to guide them.
He fell into step beside Constance and commenced asking questions, while Tony, as the path was narrow, perforce fell behind. Occasionally Constance translated, but usually she laughed without translating, and Tony, for the twentieth time, found himself hating the Italian language.
The young man’s question’s were refreshingly ingenuous. He was curious about America, since he was thinking, he said, of becoming an American himself some day. He knew a man once who had gone to America to live and had made a fortune there—but yes, a large fortune—ten thousand lire in four years. Perhaps the signorina knew him—Giuseppe Motta; he lived in Buenos Aires. And what did it look like—America? How was it different from Italy?
Constance described the sky-scrapers in New York.
His wonder was intense. A building twenty stories high! Dio mio! He should hate to mount himself up all those stairs. Were the buildings like that in the country too? Did the shepherds live in houses twenty stories high?
‘Oh no,’ she laughed. ‘In the country the houses are just like these, only they are made of wood instead of stone.’