Olive hastily picked up one of her shoes and flung it at them. It struck the vetturino just above the ear. “A nasty crack,” she said. “His language is evidently frightful. It is a good thing I can’t understand it, Carmela.”
She looked down at the angry, bewildered men, and the vetturino, catching a glimpse of the flushed face framed in a soft fluff of brown hair, shook his fist and roared a curse upon it.
“Touch that horse again and I’ll throw a jug of boiling water over you,” she cried as she drew the green shutters to; and then, in quite another tone, “Oh, Giovanni, be good. What has the poor beast ever done to you?” She turned to Carmela. “I know him. His wife does washing for Signora Aurelia,” she explained.
A slow grin overspread the man’s heavy face as he rubbed his head.
“Mad English,” he said, and then looked closely at the coin the Lucchese had tendered him.
“Your legal fare,” Orazio began pompously.
“Santo Diavolo—”
“I am a lawyer.”
“Si capisce! Will you give the signorina her shoe?” He handed it to Orazio, who took it awkwardly.
“The incident is closed,” Olive said as she came back to her cooling tea. “I hope there is a heaven for horses and a hell for men. Oh, how I hate cruelty! Carmela, if that is Orazio I must say I sympathise with Gemma. How could any woman love a mean, narrow-shouldered, whitey-brown paper thing like that?”