He laughed in his sensitive, quick fashion.
'The women in America, when they came into the store, they said, "Where
is John, where is John?" Yes, they liked me.'
And he laughed again, glancing with vague, warm blue eyes, very shy,
very coiled upon himself with sensitiveness.
He had managed a store in America, in a smallish town. I glanced at his
reddish, smooth, rather knuckly hands, and thin wrists in the frayed
cuff. They were real shopman's hands.
The landlord brought some special feast-day cake, so overjoyed he was to
have his Giovanni speaking English with the Signoria.
When we went away, we asked 'John' to come down to our villa to see us.
We scarcely expected him to turn up.
Yet one morning he appeared, at about half past nine, just as we were
finishing breakfast. It was sunny and warm and beautiful, so we asked
him please to come with us picnicking.
He was a queer shoot, again, in his unkempt longish hair and slovenly
clothes, a sort of very vulgar down-at-heel American in appearance. And
he was transported with shyness. Yet ours was the world he had chosen as
his own, so he took his place bravely and simply, a hanger-on.
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