“I don’t know what you will think of us,” I went on as we shook hands.  “How long have you been kind enough to wait, anyway?”

“Since a quarter of an hour—­only,” replied the Count, with a difficult smile, “but now that I see you it is forgotten all.”

“That’s very nice of you,” I said.  “I assure you momma was quite worked up about keeping you waiting.  It’s rather trying to the American temperament to be obliged to order a hurried luncheon from the market-gardener.”

“So!  In America you have him not—­the market garden?  You are each his own vegetable.  Yes?  Ah, how much better than the poor Italian!  But Mistra and Madame Wick, they have not, I hope, the indisposition?”

“Well, I’m afraid they have, Count—­something like that.  They said I was to ask you to excuse them.  You see they’ve been sight-seeing the whole morning, and that’s something that can’t be done by halves in your city.  The stranger has to put his whole soul into it, hasn’t he?”

“Ah, the whole soul!  It is too fatiguing,” Count Filgiatti assented.  He glanced at me uncertainly, and rose.  “Kindly may I ask that you give my deepest afflictions to Mistra and Madame Wick for their health?”

“Oh,” I said, “if you must!  But I’m here, you know.”  I put no hauteur into my tone, because I saw that it was a misunderstanding.

He still hesitated and I remembered that the Filgiatti intelligence probably dated from the Middle Ages, and had undergone very little alteration since.  “You have made such a short visit,” I said.  “I must be a very bad substitute for momma and poppa.”

A flash of comprehension illuminated my visitor’s countenance.  “I pray that you do not think such a wrong thing,” he said impulsively.  “If it is permitted, I again sit down.”

“Do,” said I, and he did.  Anything else would have seemed perfectly unreasonable, and yet for the moment he twisted his moustache, apparently in the most foolish embarrassment.  To put him at his ease, I told him how lovely I thought the fountains.  “That’s one of your most ideal connections with ancient history, don’t you think?” I said.  “The fact that those old aqueducts of yours have been bringing down the water to sparkle and ripple in Roman streets ever since.”

“Idealissimo!  And the Trevi of Bernini—­I hope you threw the soldi, so that you must come back to Rome!”

“We weren’t quite sure which it was,” I responded, “so poppa threw soldi into all of them, to make certain.  Sometimes he had to make two or three shots,” and I could not help smiling at the recollection.

“Ah, the profusion!”

“I don’t suppose they came to a quarter of a dollar, Count.  It is the cheapest of your amusements.”

The Count reflected for a moment.

“Then you wish to return to Rome,” he said softly; “you take interest here?”

“Why yes,” I said, “I’m not a barbarian.  I’m from Illinois.”