“These biglietti are important?” asked Agnese when I consulted her about Alessandro.
“Of the greatest importance.”
“Listen to me, Signora. I would not destroy your confidence in Alessandro, no, nor in any other, but the distances are far, the Tiber is near—Alessandro might, by accident, let fall a bunch of these letters as he crosses the bridge. The postino is obliged to make his rounds, the carabinieri keep an eye on him. No, it is safer to trust the post!”
Agnese’s dinners are not like Attilio’s (Vera’s great Neapolitan chef), but she has a way of cooking truffles in white wine and serving them in a napkin, to be eaten with fresh butter, that seems to please. Checco of the Concordia gets us the truffles from some mysterious unfailing source, when they are not to be had in the market. Agnese’s fritta dorata of shrimps, cuttlefish and artichokes is fit for the King or the Pope, or Mr. Roosevelt—his sister once ate one of Agnese’s golden frys and liked it. After dinner the table was cleared, two white aprons were borrowed for Vera and me, and the big packages of envelopes were opened and laid out on the table.
“We had better look them over, don’t you think?” said Athol, the wise, taking up an envelope. “She has a good handwriting—but she makes queer work of these foreign titles. His Excellency the Count and the Countess Lutzow,—really now that won’t do!”
We looked at each other in despair; each had found the most egregious and impossible blunders. All the addresses except the English and Americans, it had been agreed, were to be written in French.
“They must all be done over again!” I cried.
“No, no, it’s not so bad as that. The English ones are all right. We must go over the whole lot, though, sort out the bad ones and redirect them.
“Who is going to do it?” I groaned. That was the question. Vera’s handwriting, though distinguished, is cryptic, owing to her having learned to write German and Russian before the Latin script. Athol’s tired hand had held the pen for eight hours that day, and could not be further taxed. J.’s handwriting is a work of art, and art is long; my own is frankly bad. Thompson had thrown himself into the work of putting in the cards and sticking up the envelopes.
“Handwriting is the only thing that does not improve with practice—the more a man writes, the worse he writes,” said Athol. Here the bell rang insistently; a minute later Agnese announced: