Poggibonizzi, fatti in la,
  Che Monteriano si fa citta!

Then she asked Philip for a halfpenny.  A German lady, friendly to the Past, had given her one that very spring.

“I shall have to leave a message,” he called.

“Now Perfetta has gone for her basket,” said the little girl.  “When she returns she will lower it—­so.  Then you will put your card into it.  Then she will raise it—­thus.  By this means—­”

When Perfetta returned, Philip remembered to ask after the baby.  It took longer to find than the basket, and he stood perspiring in the evening sun, trying to avoid the smell of the drains and to prevent the little girl from singing against Poggibonsi.  The olive-trees beside him were draped with the weekly—­or more probably the monthly—­wash.  What a frightful spotty blouse!  He could not think where he had seen it.  Then he remembered that it was Lilia’s.  She had brought it “to hack about in” at Sawston, and had taken it to Italy because “in Italy anything does.”  He had rebuked her for the sentiment.

“Beautiful as an angel!” bellowed Perfetta, holding out something which must be Lilia’s baby.  “But who am I addressing?”

“Thank you—­here is my card.”  He had written on it a civil request to Gino for an interview next morning.  But before he placed it in the basket and revealed his identity, he wished to find something out.  “Has a young lady happened to call here lately—­a young English lady?”

Perfetta begged his pardon:  she was a little deaf.

“A young lady—­pale, large, tall.”

She did not quite catch.

“A young lady!”

“Perfetta is deaf when she chooses,” said the Dogana’s relative.  At last Philip admitted the peculiarity and strode away.  He paid off the detestable child at the Volterra gate.  She got two nickel pieces and was not pleased, partly because it was too much, partly because he did not look pleased when he gave it to her.  He caught her fathers and cousins winking at each other as he walked past them.  Monteriano seemed in one conspiracy to make him look a fool.  He felt tired and anxious and muddled, and not sure of anything except that his temper was lost.  In this mood he returned to the Stella d’Italia, and there, as he was ascending the stairs, Miss Abbott popped out of the dining-room on the first floor and beckoned to him mysteriously.

“I was going to make myself some tea,” he said, with his hand still on the banisters.

“I should be grateful—­”

So he followed her into the dining-room and shut the door.

“You see,” she began, “Harriet knows nothing.”

“No more do I. He was out.”

“But what’s that to do with it?”

He presented her with an unpleasant smile.  She fenced well, as he had noticed before.  “He was out.  You find me as ignorant as you have left Harriet.”