“Oh, that all happened a long time ago and Rosario has married and settled down since then.”

Evidently Carmelo had thought this over and had felt uncomfortable that I should shun Rosario for being a jail-bird and not shun him who was one also.  It seemed to indicate considerable delicacy of feeling on his part and I was pleased with him for taking so much trouble to get the confession off his chest.  Whereas Rosario had treated his disgrazia as merely an annoying little accident that might happen to any gentleman.

Peppino returned, stood on the quay and shouted to the ships; presently a small boat containing Vanni and a sailor detached herself from the confusion and rowed to our feet.  I was introduced and, amid the usual compliments, we took our seats and glided past the Sacro Cuore, the Due Sorelle, the Divina Provvidenza, the Maria Concetta, the Stella Maris, the La Pace, the Indipendente, the Nuova Bambina and many more.  Peppino called my attention to the names of the ships p. 59and said how commonplace and dull they were after the romantic names he had seen on the beach at Brighton.  He gave, as an instance, Pride of the Ocean, which I remembered having often seen there; it was all very well, but somehow it had never impressed me as hitting the bull’s-eye of romance.  During their voyage through time the words of one’s own language become barnacled over with associations so that we cannot see them in their naked purity as we see the words of a foreign tongue.  I translated Pride of the Ocean into Vanto del Mare and offered it to Peppino; it seemed to me to gain, but he said I had knocked all the poetry out of it.  One of the ships was