"You don't understand. The signore is a friend of mine."
"But you said he was the friend of the signora."
"So he is. He is the friend of both of us."
Gaspare said nothing for a moment. His mind was working busily. At last
he said: "Then Maddalena--when the signora comes will she be the friend of the
signora, as well as your friend?"
"Maddalena--that has nothing to do with it."
"But Maddalena is your friend!"
"That's quite different."
"I do not understand how it is in England," Gaspare said, gravely.
"But"--and he nodded his head wisely and spread out his hands--"I
understand many things, signorino, perhaps more than you think. You do
not want the signore to come. You are angry at his coming."
"He is a very kind signore," said Maurice, hastily. "And he can speak
dialetto."
Gaspare smiled and shook his head again. But he did not say anything
more. For a moment Maurice had an impulse to speak to him frankly, to
admit him into the intimacy of a friend. He was a Sicilian, although he
was only a boy. He was Sicilian and he would understand.
"Gaspare," he began.
"Si, signore."
"As you understand so much--"
"Si, signore?"
"Perhaps you--" He checked himself, realizing that he was on the edge of
doing an outrageous thing. "You must know that the friends of the signora
are my friends and that I am always glad to welcome them."
"Va bene, signorino! Va bene!"
The boy began to look glum, understanding at once that he was being
played with.
"I must go to give Tito his food."
And he stuck his hands in his pockets and went away round the corner of
the cottage, whistling the tune of the "Canzone di Marechiaro."
Maurice began to feel as if he were in the dark, but as if he were being
watched there. He wondered how clearly Gaspare read him, how much he
knew. And Artois? When he came, with his watchful eyes, there would be
another observer of the Sicilian change. He did not much mind Gaspare,
but he would hate Artois. He grew hot at the mere thought of Artois being
there with him, observing, analyzing, playing the literary man's part in
this out-door life of the mountains and of the sea.
"I'm not a specimen," he said to himself, "and I'm damned if I'll be
treated as one!"