I went out of doors to wash in a creek which ran a few yards from the house.  My hosts were as engrossed with me as ever; they never took their eyes off me, following every action that I did, no matter how trifling, and each looking towards the other for his opinion at every touch and turn.  They took great interest in my ablutions, for they seemed to have doubted whether I was in all respects human like themselves.  They even laid hold of my arms and overhauled them, and expressed approval when they saw that they were strong and muscular.  They now examined my legs, and especially my feet.  When they desisted they nodded approvingly to each other; and when I had combed and brushed my hair, and generally made myself as neat and well arranged as circumstances would allow, I could see that their respect for me increased greatly, and that they were by no means sure that they had treated me with sufficient deference—­a matter on which I am not competent to decide.  All I know is that they were very good to me, for which I thanked them heartily, as it might well have been otherwise.

For my own part, I liked them and admired them, for their quiet self-possession and dignified ease impressed me pleasurably at once.  Neither did their manner make me feel as though I were personally distasteful to them—­only that I was a thing utterly new and unlooked for, which they could not comprehend.  Their type was more that of the most robust Italians than any other; their manners also were eminently Italian, in their entire unconsciousness of self.  Having travelled a good deal in Italy, I was struck with little gestures of the hand and shoulders, which constantly reminded me of that country.  My feeling was that my wisest plan would be to go on as I had begun, and be simply myself for better or worse, such as I was, and take my chance accordingly.

I thought of these things while they were waiting for me to have done washing, and on my way back.  Then they gave me breakfast—­hot bread and milk, and fried flesh of something between mutton and venison.  Their ways of cooking and eating were European, though they had only a skewer for a fork, and a sort of butcher’s knife to cut with.  The more I looked at everything in the house, the more I was struck with its quasi-European character; and had the walls only been pasted over with extracts from the Illustrated London News and Punch, I could have almost fancied myself in a shepherd’s hut upon my master’s sheep-run.  And yet everything was slightly different.  It was much the same with the birds and flowers on the other side, as compared with the English ones.  On my arrival I had been pleased at noticing that nearly all the plants and birds were very like common English ones:  thus, there was a robin, and a lark, and a wren, and daisies, and dandelions; not quite the same as the English, but still very like them—­quite like enough to be called by the same name; so now, here, the ways of these two men, and the things they had in the house, were all very nearly the same as in Europe.  It was not at all like going to China or Japan, where everything that one sees is strange.  I was, indeed, at once struck with the primitive character of their appliances, for they seemed to be some five or six hundred years behind Europe in their inventions; but this is the case in many an Italian village.