llowed him. They looked even adoring, and again Jeffrey wondered, so
droll was their excess of welcome, if he were going to be embraced. The
boy, too, was radiant, and, like an acolyte at some ritual, more humbly
though exquisitely proffered his own fit portion of worship. Jeffrey, it
being the least he could offer, shook hands all round. Then he asked
Andrea:

"Who do you think I am? What did Madame Beattie tell you?"

Andrea spread his hands dramatically, palms outward, and implied
brokenly that though he understood English he did not speak it to such
an extent as would warrant him in trying to explain what was best left
alone. He would only repeat a word over and over, always with an access
of affection, and when Jeffrey asked:

"Does that mean 'prisoner'?" he owned it did. It seemed to hold for the
three the sum of human perfectibility. Jeffrey was The Prisoner, and
therefore they loved him. He gave up trying to find out more; it seemed
to him he could guess the riddle better if he had a word or two of
Andrea's language to help him, and he asked summarily if they couldn't
have some lessons together. Wouldn't Andrea come up to the house and
talk Italian? Andrea blossomed out in gleam of teeth and incredible
shininess of eyes. He would come. That night? Yes, he would come that
night. So Jeffrey shook hands again all round and went away, curiously
ill at ease until he had turned the corner; the warmth of their
adoration seemed burning into his back.

But that night Andrea did not come. The family had assembled, Anne a
little timid before new learning, Lydia sitting on the edge of her chair
determined to be phenomenal because Jeffrey must be pleased, and even
Mary Nellen with writing pads and pencils at the table to scrape up such
of the linguistic leavings as they might. At nine o'clock the general
attention began to relax, and Lydia widely yawned. Jeffrey, looking at
her, caught the soft redness of her mouth and thought, forgetful of
Circe's island where he had taken refuge, how sweet the little barbarian
was.

But nobody next day could tell him why Andrea had not come, not even
Andrea himself. Jeffrey sought him out at the fruit-stand and Andrea
again shone with welcome. But he implied, in painfully halting English,
that he could not give lessons at all. Nor could any of his countrymen
in Addington.

Jeffrey stood upon no ceremony with him.

"Why the devil," said he, "do you talk to me as if you'd begun Engli