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"Then why not call him Signor Italo?" "At this time of day? It would be too formal. He would wonder what he'd done to offend me." Gerald was reminded that since Christmas Ceccherelli had been wearing, instead of his silver turnip, a fine gold watch, her overt gift and his frank boast, which he conspicuously extracted from its chamois-skin case every time he needed to know the hour. "Mrs.
He suspected, catching a side-look from the pianist's small brown eye, that the little man who did not care to speak aloud in his hearing yet had plenty to say on the subject of him in a different entourage. This notwithstanding, it was only when Gerald got whiffs and echoes of Ceccherelli through Aurora that he called him a pest.
The girl in white was indeed strangely, at this moment poignantly, lovely. Some intensity of repressed feeling made her cheek of a white-rose pallor, and her dark eyes, those spots of velvet shadow, mysteriously deep. She had gone where the piano stood in a bower of palm and bamboo, with Signor Ceccherelli seated before it, busy wiping the sweat of his brow.
"I call him Italo because I never can remember his other name. Come, let's go into the parlor." It was all rosily lighted. Candles set on the piano at each side of the music-rest enkindled glossy high lights on the nose-bump and forehead bosses of Signor Ceccherelli, who at Mrs. Hawthorne's appearance sprang up to salute. She reached him her hand, over which he deeply bowed.
You can do nothing whatever about it. Your name must not be allowed to appear in the matter at all. It would serve Ceccherelli right that his part in the disgraceful business should be known, dangerous little beast that he is. He would receive a lesson, and an excellent thing it would be; but that, again, might involve you. One couldn't trust him to keep your name out of it.
I took you in hand because I am a nurse and I couldn't keep my hands off, just as an old fire-engine horse will start to gallop when he hears a fire-alarm even if he isn't on the job. If it had been Italo Ceccherelli who was sick I would have been tempted in just the same way; so you see there is no occasion for gratitude. Put it out of your mind.
To go back: Gerald when after dinner the pianist came to make music for the ladies, was hoping for some example of that brightness for which he had a reputation with three persons, possibly more. But Ceccherelli remained on the piano-stool and never once raised his voice. Estelle and Aurora went in turns to chat with him there, but not one witty word reached Gerald.
He passed from house to house, playing accompaniments, drumming for dancing, so insignificant on his screw-stool that many no doubt talked before him as if nobody had been there. Gerald did not dislike Ceccherelli, really, only had him on his nerves in relation to Aurora. He felt him, indeed, rather likeable at a distance, as part of a story; he had the good point of being an individual.
Now and then he tossed his head, as if champing a bit, and the bunch of black frizz over his left temple trembled. A decidedly comic figure he appeared to Mrs. Foss. "I will tell Signor Ceccherelli what you say," she amiably promised. "I am sure it will please him." Leslie, whose responsibilities kept her from dancing her young fill at her own parties, sought Mrs.
Gerald was in general touched to benevolence at sight of a poor devil elated by his little draught of success. To Ceccherelli without a doubt the patronage of the wealthy American represented success. Ceccherelli pulling out his gold watch was a disarming vision.
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