“Del Torre’s coming out of it as soon as he can,” said Lilly.

“I should think so, too.”

“I like him myself—­very much.  Look, he’s seen us!  He wants to come up, Argyle.”

“What, in that uniform!  I’ll see him in his grandmother’s crinoline first.”

“Don’t be fanatical, it’s bad taste.  Let him come up a minute.”

“Not for my sake.  But for yours, he shall,” Argyle stood at the parapet of the balcony and waved his arm.  “Yes, come up,” he said, “come up, you little mistkafer—­what the Americans call a bug.  Come up and be damned.”

Of course Del Torre was too far off to hear this exhortation.  Lilly also waved to him—­and watched him pass into the doorway far below.

“I’ll rinse one of these glasses for him,” said Argyle.

The Marchese’s step was heard on the stone stairs:  then his knock.

“Come in!  Come in!” cried Argyle from the bedroom, where he was rinsing the glass.  The Marchese entered, grinning with his curious, half courteous greeting.  “Go through—­go through,” cried Argyle.  “Go on to the loggia—­and mind your head.  Good heavens, mind your head in that doorway.”

The Marchese just missed the top of the doorway as he climbed the abrupt steps on to the loggia.—­There he greeted Lilly and Aaron with hearty handshakes.

“Very glad to see you—­very glad, indeed!” he cried, grinning with excited courtesy and pleasure, and covering Lilly’s hand with both his own gloved hands.  “When did you come to Florence?”

There was a little explanation.  Argyle shoved the last chair—­it was a luggage stool—­through the window.

“All I can do for you in the way of a chair,” he said.

“Ah, that is all right,” said the Marchese.  “Well, it is very nice up here—­and very nice company.  Of the very best, the very best in Florence.”

“The highest, anyhow,” said Argyle grimly, as he entered with the glass.  “Have a whiskey and soda, Del Torre.  It’s the bottom of the bottle, as you see.”

“The bottom of the bottle!  Then I start with the tail-end, yes!” He stretched his blue eyes so that the whites showed all round, and grinned a wide, gnome-like grin.

“You made that start long ago, my dear fellow.  Don’t play the ingenue with me, you know it won’t work.  Say when, my man, say when!”

“Yes, when,” said Del Torre.  “When did I make that start, then?”

“At some unmentionably young age.  Chickens such as you soon learn to cheep.”

“Chickens such as I soon learn to cheap,” repeated Del Torre, pleased with the verbal play.  “What is cheap, please?  What is TO CHEAP?”

“Cheep!  Cheep!” squeaked Argyle, making a face at the little Italian, who was perched on one strap of the luggage-stool.  “It’s what chickens say when they’re poking their little noses into new adventures—­naughty ones.”

“Are chickens naughty?  Oh!  I thought they could only be good!”