"Dickens--?" she repeated.
"Si--Dickens, Carlo, celebre autore inglese. Why not?" he
asked.
Marietta gazed with long-suffering eyes at the horizon.
"Or, to put it differently," Peter resumed, "I've come all the
way from London with nothing better than a dinner jacket in my
kit."
"Dina giacca? Cosa e?" questioned Marietta.
"No matter what it is--the important thing is what it is n't.
It is n't a dress-coat."
"Non e un abito nero," said Marietta, seeing that he expected
her to say something.
"Well--? You perceive my difficulty. Do you think you could
make me one?" said Peter.
"Make the Signorino a dress-coat? I? Oh, no, Signorino."
Marietta shook her head.
"I feared as much," he acknowledged. "Is there a decent tailor
in the village?"
"No, Signorino."
"Nor in the whole length and breadth of this peninsula, if you
come to that. Well, what am I to do? How am I to dine with a
cardinal? Do you think a cardinal would have a fit if a man
were to dine with him in a dina giacca?"
"Have a fit? Why should he have a fit, Signorino?" Marietta
blinked.
"Would he do anything to the man? Would he launch the awful
curses of the Church at him, for instance?"
"Mache, Signorino!" She struck an attitude that put to scorn
his apprehensions.
"I see," said Peter. "You think there is no danger? You
advise me to brazen the dina giacca out, to swagger it off?"
"I don't understand, Signorino," said Marietta.
"To understand is to forgive," said he; "and yet you can't
trifle with English servants like this, though they ought to
understand, ought n't they? In any case, I 'll be guided by
your judgment. I'll wear my dina giacca, but I'll wear it with
an air! I 'll confer upon it the dignity of a court-suit. Is
that a gardener--that person working over there?"
Marietta looked in the quarter indicated by Peter's nod.
"Yes, Signorino; ha is the same gardener who works here three
days every week," she answered.
"Is he, really? He looks like a pirate," Peter murmured.
"Like a pirate? Luigi?" she exclaimed.
"Yes," affirmed her master. "He wears green corduroy trousers,
and a red belt, and a blue shirt. That is the pirate uniform.
He has a swarthy skin, and a piercing eye, and hair as black as
the Jolly Roger. Those are the marks by which you recognise a
pirate, even when in mufti. I believe you said his name is
Luigi?"