“He is a fine little man,” Miss Susanna said, nodding approval of the odd, whole-souled Italian. “He won’t forget that promise, either.”
Guiseppe Baretti had no intention of forgetting the, to him, solemn promise he had made Page and Dean. The nearly perfect management of his restaurant to which he had long since attained left him a good deal of time to spend as he pleased. Usually he pleased to be busy in the inn where he had achieved affluence. It was his workshop, and he loved it. Now that the “dorm,” also grown into his peculiar affection, was in difficulties it behoved him to become a knight errant.
Imbued with this high purpose he went again and again to the Italian quarter, a patient, open-eared watchful little questioner or listener, as the case might be. February was almost ended when he at last learned something of importance. He came one evening upon Pedro Tomaso and Francisco Vesseli engaged in heated argument. He gathered from the torrent of angry words each hurled at the other the information he was seeking. There had been a “Maestro” at the quarter, it seemed. He had arranged the new scale of wages. Baretti heard over and over again the name “Ravenzo.” When he left the quarter it was with four points fixed in his mind. There had been a “Maestro” at the quarter. His name was Ravenzo. He had come from New York. Then had come the desertion of the “dorm” by the workmen.
What Baretti entertained as a positive belief, the Italians knew nothing of. This was Leslie Cairns’s part in the dormitory trouble. They placed the odium on Thorne and Foster. The long-headed Italian inn keeper laid the primary blame upon Miss “Car-rins.” He firmly believed if “that one” were made to “behave good” the troubles of the dorm would end. He had gleaned here and there enough of Leslie’s past history to know that she was the only child of Peter Cairns, a well-known financier, and that her home was in New York.
After his fruitful visit to the quarter he sat down in his tiny private office at the inn and wrote a long letter in Italian to a countryman of his in New York connected with an Italian confidential agency. The purpose of the letter was to establish the identity and business of one, Ravenzo.
When he had finished the letter he sat very still for a long time and thought about Leslie Cairns. Ever since he had first seen her as a freshman at Hamilton, he had detested her. Now he put her through a mental revue which did not redound to her credit. He wondered how her father could allow her to “boss herself all wrong.” Perhaps her father did not know half she did. There were many such cases. He reflected with old-world wisdom that. “A father don’ want his childr’n do wrong.” He was also of the conviction that, “A father, he can’t punish his childr’n they do wrong, he don’ know they do it.” Guiseppe Baretti was sure that Mr. Car-rins “don’ know much ’bout what his daughter do.”
His knowledge of Italian nature told him that if the scale of wages on the Cairns’s garage was dropped to what it had been when begun by Thorne and Foster, the men of the quarter as well as the American and Irish workman would be glad to go back to the fair employ of Page and Dean under the management of Peter Graham. If Miss Car-rins’s father knew her as she really was perhaps he would come and take her away from Hamilton. Miss Car-rins was of age, but a father was a father. Her father was a “big” man. He probably would have ways to make his daughter behave.
Such was Baretti’s view of the problem he was trying to solve. The next day he sat down and went over the same train of thought with the same deliberation. On the third day thereafter he resigned himself to the composition of a letter in Italian. It was a very long letter and the first draft of it did not please him. For several days he kept patiently at it, re-writing and re-vising. Finally he gave it into the keeping of his Italian manager who was also a high school graduate. Two days afterward the manager returned a neatly typed, well-phrased letter in polite English to the little proprietor. Guiseppe had the pleasure of addressing an envelope to Peter Cairns at his New York offices. Baretti’s last thought in sending the letter was one of consideration for Leslie’s father. He wrote on the lower, left-hand side of the envelope: “For Peter Cairns only.”