“Able to take a little nourishment,” Mr. Wake answered, which I found later was a joke. “I have quite a story for you,” he went on, “suppose we start out and talk on the road. Shall we?”
I nodded, and then blinked as I always did when I stepped from the dark, gray-walled hall out into the brilliant middle hours of an Italian day. It was cheerful outside. The cats—and there are millions of them in Florence; every one sets out food for them, and no one ever harms them; I think they were blessed, and so protected, by some Saint beloved of the Florentines—the cats sat sunning themselves and washing their ears and whiskers, or they strolled without hesitation, and planted their feet surely, which shows how quickly the sun had worked at drying things. The old ladies who always sit in doorways and call to each other, huddled less over their scaldinoes, and little boys with bare knees ran through the paths in the Piazza Indipendenza or spun their tops on the pavement on our side of the street. Of course officers walked slowly, and little knots of soldiers from the ranks collected on corners to talk, and pretty Italian girls fluttered past. Every one seemed glad to be out, and happy. It was pleasant.
“Well?” I prompted after we had turned a corner, and into a street that was, from the white walls, simply ablaze with sun. “Where is Mr. Deane?”
“At the Villa Rossa, now, I think,” Mr. Wake answered.
“Your house?” I said in surprise.
“Yes, my dear. . . . And very glad I am to have him. . . . A nice boy, a very fine boy, and I needed some one to play the banjo in my garden. . . . I have fountains that look very well in the moonlight, and a climbing rose tree that has covered one side of my house, and I have marble benches, and everything that goes with romance, and—not a hint of the real thing. All wrong it was! And so I am glad to have this troubadour from Texas—”
“I called him that too,” I confessed, “I used to like to hear him play—”
“And so do I,” Mr. Wake responded, “and I imagine he plays remarkably badly. There must be ears of love as well as eyes of love. . . . You like him?”
“Oh, very much!” I stated. Mr. Wake smiled down at me then—I didn’t know quite why—but I liked it; it gave me something of the same warm feeling that came from the almost piercing sunlight, and then Mr. Wake took my hand and drew my arm through his as he had done before.
“The devil take Signora Grundy,” he said, “I have no use for her at all, and never had! And how—” (he stopped and coughed and finished with a jerk) “is the fairy godmother?”