u
something? No, not painting. I should like to drill you in the
pronunciation of that little man's name. It is Ceccherelli.
Cec-che-rel-li. _Cec-che-rel-li._"

She shook her head.

"No use. I've got accustomed to the other now."

He felt a spark dropped among the recesses where his inflammable temper
was kept.

"Before you know it the fellow will be calling you Aurora!" he said,
repressing the outburst of his wrath at this possibility.

"He does, my friend," she answered him quietly. "He can't say Hawthorne.
Do you hear him saying Hawthorne? He calls me Signora Aurora."

"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. Hawthorne," said Gerald, "you have repeatedly said that you have
what you call lots of fun with Ceccherelli. Would you mind giving me an
idea of what the fun consists in? I wish to have light--that I may do
the man justice. Left to myself, I should judge him to be the dullest,
commonest, cheapest of inexpressibly vulgar, insignificant, pretentious,
ugly, and probably dishonest, little men." The adjectives came rolling
out irrepressibly.

"Perhaps he is," Aurora said serenely; "but haven't you noticed,
Stickly-prickly, that about some things you and I don't feel alike?
Italo plays the piano in a way that perfectly delights me, he's
good-hearted, and he makes me laugh. Isn't that enough?"

"In short, you like him. You like so many people, Mrs. Hawthorne, and of
such various kinds, that though one is bound to be glad to be among your
friends, one needn't--need one?--feel exactly flattered."

She seemed to consider this, but instead of taking it up, went on with
the subject of Italo.

"He entertains me. He knows all about everybody in Florence and tells
me."

"He gossips, you mean."

Again she considered a moment before going on.

"Funny, when I don't know the people, or just know them by sight, and
they and the life are all so foreign and apart from me, gossip about
them doesn't seem the same as gossip at home. It's more like Antonia's
novels, condensed and told in the queerest English! It was some time
before I could make out what he meant when h