bundles and put his hat straight and peered out of the
window into the steep mountains of the afternoon. There was a town
in the opening between steep hills, a town on a flat plain that ran
into the mountains like a gulf. The train drew up. They had arrived.

Alvina was so tired she could hardly climb down to the platform. It
was about four o'clock. Ciccio looked up and down for Pancrazio, but
could not see him. So he put his luggage into a pile on the
platform, told Alvina to stand by it, whilst he went off for the
registered boxes. A porter came and asked her questions, of which
she understood nothing. Then at last came Ciccio, shouldering one
small trunk, whilst a porter followed, shouldering another. Out they
trotted, leaving Alvina abandoned with the pile of hand luggage. She
waited. The train drew out. Ciccio and the porter came bustling
back. They took her out through the little gate, to where, in the
flat desert space behind the railway, stood two great drab
motor-omnibuses, and a rank of open carriages. Ciccio was handing up
the handbags to the roof of one of the big post-omnibuses. When it
was finished the man on the roof came down, and Ciccio gave him and
the station porter each sixpence. The station-porter immediately
threw his coin on the ground with a gesture of indignant contempt,
spread his arms wide and expostulated violently. Ciccio expostulated
back again, and they pecked at each other, verbally, like two birds.
It ended by the rolling up of the burly, black moustached driver of
the omnibus. Whereupon Ciccio quite amicably gave the porter two
nickel twopences in addition to the sixpence, whereupon the porter
quite lovingly wished him "buon' viaggio."

So Alvina was stowed into the body of the omnibus, with Ciccio at
her side. They were no sooner seated than a voice was heard, in
beautifully-modulated English:

"You are here! Why how have I missed you?"

It was Pancrazio, a smallish, rather battered-looking, shabby
Italian of sixty or more, with a big moustache and reddish-rimmed
eyes and a deeply-lined face. He was presented to Alvina.

"How have I missed you?" he said. "I was on the station when the
train came, and I did not see you."

But it was evident he had taken wine. He had no further opportunity
to talk. The compartment was full of large, mountain-peasants with
black hats and big cloaks and overcoats. They found Pancrazio a seat
at the far end, and there he sat, with his deeply-lined, i