Part 32

“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?”

“Yes, Signorino--Luigi Maroni. We call him Gigi.”

“Is Gigi versatile?” asked Peter.

“Versatile--?” puzzled Marietta. But then, risking her own interpretation of the recondite word, “Oh, no, Signorino. He is of the country.”

“Ah, he's of the country, is he? So much the better. Then he will know the way to Castel Ventirose?”

“But naturally, Signorino.” Marietta nodded.

“And do you think, for once in a way, though not versatile, he could be prevailed upon to divert his faculties from the work of a gardener to that of a messenger?”

“A messenger, Signorino?” Marietta wrinkled up her brow.

“Ang--an unofficial postman. Do you think he could be induced to carry a letter for me to the castle?”

“But certainly, Signorino. He is here to obey the Signorino's orders.” Marietta shrugged her shoulders, and waved her hands.

“Then tell him, please, to go and put the necessary touches to his toilet,” said Peter. “Meanwhile I'll indite the letter.”

When his letter was indited, he found the piratical-looking Gigi in attendance, and he gave it to him, with instructions.

Thereupon Gigi (with a smile of sympathetic intelligence, inimitably Italian) put the letter in his hat, put his hat upon his head, and started briskly off--but not in the proper direction: not in the direction of the road, which led to the village, and across the bridge, and then round upon itself to the gates of the park. He started briskly off towards Peter's own toolhouse, a low red-tiled pavilion, opposite the door of Marietta's kitchen.