“Let me alone; after having done me harm you now want to joke. I tell you you will finish by killing me!”
He turned away too, muttering under his breath and thinking sad thoughts of that chemical combination called marriage.
⁂
“Listen, dear; I should like to dine an hour earlier to-day.”
“And why?”
“Because I eat nothing at breakfast and have a poet’s hunger.”
“I, on the contrary, have none at all. I eat too much.”
“But besides my appetite, I have another reason for wishing to dine earlier. Do you know, I have promised my oldest and best friend, Giovanni, to meet him at the station on his way to Rome?”
“Who knows that it is not a lady instead?”