Ashe looked at Francesco, and said, "Rather a mongrel, isn't he?" and Peter took the comment as condemning the four of them, and divined in Ashe the respectability of the sheltered life, and was compassionate again. Ashe cared, during the brief space of time allotted to him, to be respectably dressed; he cared to lead what he would call a decent life. Peter, in his disreputability, felt like a man in the open air who looks into the prison of a sick-room.
Ashe said he was staying at Varenzano with his mother, and they were passing through Castoleto on the way back from their afternoon's drive.
"It's lungs, you know. They don't give me much chance—the doctors, I mean. It's warm and sheltered on this coast, so I have to be here. I'd rather be here, I suppose, than doing a beef-and-snow cure in one of those ghastly places. But it's a bore hanging round and doing nothing. I'd as soon it ended straight off."
Ashamed of having been so communicative (but Peter was used to people being unreserved with him, and never thought it odd), he changed the subject.
"Are you on the tramp, or what? Is it comfortable?"
"Very," said Peter, "and interesting."
"Is it interesting? How long are you going on with it? When are you going home?"
"Oh, this is as much home as anywhere else, you know. I don't see any reason for leaving it yet. We all like it. I've no money, you see, and life is cheap here, and warm and nice."
"Cheap and warm and nice...." Ashe repeated it, vaguely surprised. He hadn't realised that Peter was one of the permanently destitute, and tramping not from pleasure but from necessity.
"What do you do?" he asked curiously, seeing that Peter was not at all embarrassed.