The man's chief anxiety was to learn English, and he was childishly grateful to anyone who helped him. The stablemen took a delighted interest in his education; it was considered especially funny to teach him scurrilous slang. "Come off your perch, you old fool," was one of the phrases he patiently committed to memory, and later repeated to Mr. Harry with smiling pride at his own progress.
Mr. Harry spoke to Peter on the subject.
"Yes, sir," Peter agreed easily, "it's disgustin', the language these Dagoes picks up. I can't imagine where they hears it, sir. They're that familiar, ye can't pound no manners into them."
Mr. Harry wisely dropped the matter. He knew Peter, and he thought it safest to let Vittorio work out his own salvation.
Several of the practical jokes at the man's expense should, logically, have ended in a fight. Had he taken up the gauntlet, even at the expense of a whipping, they would have respected him—in so far as Irishmen can respect an Italian—but nothing could goad him into action. He swallowed insults with a smiling zest, as though he liked their taste. This unfailing peaceableness was held to be the more disgraceful in that he was a strongly built fellow, quite capable of standing up for his rights.
"He ain't so bad looking," Annie commented one day, as she and Peter strolled up to the hedge and inspected the new gardener at work with the clipping-shears. "And, at least, he's tall—that's something. They're usually so little, them Eye-talians."
"Huh!" said Peter, "size ain't no merit. The less there is of an Eye-talian, the better. His bigness don't help along his courage none. Ye're a coward, Tony. D'ye hear that?"
Their comments had been made with perfect freedom in Vittorio's presence, while he hummed a tune from "Fra Diavolo" in smiling unconcern. Unless one couched one's insults in kindergarten language and fired them straight into his face, they passed him by unscathed.
"Ye're a coward, Tony," Peter repeated.