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Now my dancing days terminated many years ago when I was told that my dancing was the very prose of motion, but I did not want to say so, because I thought it just possible I might be allowed to dance with Brancaccia if I played my cards judiciously; so I merely said modestly I was afraid of knocking up against the other couple.
He and Brancaccia were in love with one another, any one could tell that, and he wanted me to meet her so that he could talk to me about her afterwards. I said to Brancaccia "What is Peppino saying to the gentleman?" She, looking up and smiling, in an amused and friendly way, said "Oh! Peppino is always talking to people." "Some of them seem to enjoy his conversation."
Would not Brancaccia be exactly the woman to help you to run the albergo and to look after your parents in their old age?" He admitted that she had the reputation of being an admirable housekeeper and that he had never heard anything against her. So I went on and said all I could think of in favour of matrimony, to which he listened without attempting to interrupt.
One of the men dancers, shouting in dialect, gave short staccato directions which the others carried out. This brightened up the party, and some of the women began to look less gloomy, but a week of contraddanze would not have brought the best of them up to the standard of Brancaccia. I approached her and said "Signorina, will you do me the favour of dancing with me?"
"All right, Peppino," I said. "I don't know enough about it; I will look on and wait, and when it is over I shall ask Brancaccia to dance a waltz with me." Peppino paid no attention: he was off and busy superintending the preparations for the contraddanza.
This naturally alarmed me, but I boldly asked her and she consented with a stiff bow: we performed a polka together and I restored her to her seat, feeling as though I had crossed from Siracusa to Valletta in a storm, more frightened than hurt, it is true, but glad it was over, especially as I now considered myself entitled to introduce the subject of dancing with Brancaccia.
She replied, "Thank you very much, but I do not suppose Peppino will ask you anything about me." "I shall tell him what I think of you whether he asks me or not," said I, bowing. It was now nearly two o'clock and I got Peppino to take me away. Remembering what Brancaccia had said, I began at once
"Who is that wonderfully beautiful girl you have been dancing with, Peppino?" said I. He replied, with a rather bored air, that her name was Brancaccia, and that she was the daughter of a distant cousin of his father who kept a curiosity shop in the corso. "How long has this been going on, Peppino? Why did you never mention Brancaccia to me before?"
I finished by saying that if he did marry Brancaccia and it turned out unsuccessful he was not to blame me. He replied with great decision that I need not fear anything of the kind, for he had made up his mind never to marry any one, and certainly not Brancaccia. Soon after the wedding festa I returned to London.
"What a wonderfully beautiful and charming girl Brancaccia is; she seems to me to be the most desirable young lady I have ever met." There was a pause, and I added, "You are a bachelor, Peppino, Brancaccia is unmarried and she is quite different from all the other young ladies." "That," he replied, "is what says my mother. But womans it is always like that.
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