was in him. Then he swung round the bicycle, and stood it
again on its wheels. After which he quickly folded his tools.

"Will you come now?" she said.

He turned, rubbing his hands together, and drying them on an old
cloth. He went into the house, pulled on his coat and his cap, and
picked up the things from the table.

"Where are you going?" Max asked.

Ciccio jerked his head towards Alvina.

"Oh, allow me to carry them, Miss Houghton. He is not fit--" said
Max.

True, Ciccio had no collar on, and his shoes were burst.

"I don't mind," said Alvina hastily. "He knows where they go. He
brought them before."

"But I will carry them. I am dressed. Allow me--" and he began to
take the things. "You get dressed, Ciccio."

Ciccio looked at Alvina.

"Do you want?" he said, as if waiting for orders.

"Do let Ciccio take them," said Alvina to Max. "Thank you _ever_ so
much. But let him take them."

So Alvina marched off through the Sunday morning streets, with the
Italian, who was down at heel and encumbered with an armful of
sick-room apparatus. She did not know what to say, and he said
nothing.

"We will go in this way," she said, suddenly opening the hall door.
She had unlocked it before she went out, for that entrance was
hardly ever used. So she showed the Italian into the sombre
drawing-room, with its high black bookshelves with rows and rows of
calf-bound volumes, its old red and flowered carpet, its grand piano
littered with music. Ciccio put down the things as she directed, and
stood with his cap in his hands, looking aside.

"Thank you so much," she said, lingering.

He curled his lips in a faint deprecatory smile.

"Nothing," he murmured.

His eye had wandered uncomfortably up to a portrait on the wall.

"That was my mother," said Alvina.

He glanced down at her, but did not answer.

"I am so sorry you're going away," she said nervously. She stood
looking up at him with wide blue eyes.

The faint smile grew on the lower part of his face, which he kept
averted. Then he looked at her.

"We have to move," he said, with his eyes watching her reservedly,
his mouth twisting with a half-bashful smile.

"Do you like continually going away?" she said, her wide blue eyes
fixed on his face.

He nodded slightly.

"We have to do it. I like it."

What he said meant nothing to him. He now watched her fixedly, with
a slightly mocking look, and a reserve he would not relinquish.

"Do you think I s