'Just now, talking over there with La Corrini.'
From the group indicated by the jerked thumb the staff's sister emerged. She strolled up to her brother. There did not seem to be any particular difference between them, externally. The boy might have been twenty-three and the girl twenty-two; or it was quite equally likely to be the other way about. At first glance there seemed to be a certain resemblance between them in dress as well as in face; analysis, however, reduced this to the suggestion in each of an untidiness—one might all but say a disreputability—that made their worldly status a matter for speculation. The girl's hat was of broken straw, pulled over her eyes; one of her shoes lacked a lace; her blue cotton dress was sun-bleached and discoloured. The boy wore a ragged blazer, frayed flannel trousers, and a very limp Panama hat, which he kept turning up, with sweet-tempered patience, when it flopped over his eyes.
The girl sat down beside her brother. She had—they both had—a serene air of being admirably content to do nothing during prolonged periods. To sit by the harbour and talk, if the day were fine and the company agreeable, was an excellent afternoon's occupation. The streets were always entertaining, and the harbour particularly so, with the thronging of those who go down to the sea in ships, and the gay greetings of friends, and the cheerful shouting of mariners. Neapolitan loafers (and really to loaf, in the highest sense of that agreeable word, one should go to Naples) always like the harbour. The smell of the sea, too, is pleasant on a hot September afternoon, especially to the unfastidious, who do not cavil at its dilution with various other odours.
The talk between the brother and sister and the cheerful youth who was giving himself a holiday from his shop was leisurely, of an easy familiarity, seasoned with allusions and anecdotes that showed them to share in common a 'set.' The girl's talk was partly professional, of the music-hall stage, on which she made casual and irregular appearances. La Corrini had been saying something to her.... In the report this was very funny. The stout youth, whose name, one gathered, was Luli, roared with laughter and spat many times. It was noticeable that the drawer of pictures, though he, too, talked a great deal, did not spit at all: he only stammered.
Presently they decided to have lunch, and went off, the three of them together, Luli affectionately clinging to the journalist's arm. They turned into a trattoria in the Toledo. At one of the marble-topped and not very elaborately cleaned tables a finely developed young woman ate spaghetti with admirable speed and dexterity, and drank red Posilipo. The three, seeing her, hailed her with some effusion, and joined her at her table. There ensued a very sociable and conversational repast, and there was a great deal of noise, with the full-bodied and rather strident tones of the young woman of the spaghetti, the resonant laughter of Luli, and the stuttering, melancholy-toned and unceasing flow of singularly futile and inane babbling that emanated from the journalist and his sister. These two appeared to have a somewhat extensive circle in Naples; they exchanged greetings with most of their fellow-eaters. Some of these were really comparatively reputable; quite a number were very gaily attired, and most seemed light of heart.
The journalist, after finishing his wine and his inexpensive cigar, announced himself obliged to depart in pursuit of business.
'I must catch them driving out. They are sure to drive out, you know.'
His sister said she too would come, and catch them driving out.
So they went out into the street and sauntered leisurely along it. Its screaming, gay business was a little hushed at this hour of the hot September day; behind closed green shutters people shunned the vertically striking sun; the heavy noon brooded over what was almost, for Naples, stillness. It was not, had the representative of Marchese Peppino considered the question, in the least likely that he would at this hour 'catch them driving out.' He very likely did not particularly care whether he so caught them or not; he liked to walk about the streets; neither he nor his sister minded the glare and the hot, baked smell that beat up into their faces. They had an air of very leisurely sweet temper and content with life as it was lived as they sauntered along the Toledo together. There were two things it was manifest that they would not in any circumstances do: they would quarrel with no one, and they would take no thought for the morrow.
'I wonder,' the journalist was saying, 'if Luli would lend us twenty francs. Think he would, Betty?'