"Then I will go on, sir; that is if you are going to keep this room." 

 "Yes. The room will do. Spire. It's big enough." 

 Spire took up one of the two candelabras and retired into the neighbourhood of a sort of state bed heavily draped at the other end of the room. There, throwing open the trunks and the doors of closets, he busied himself systematically, without noise, till he heard the quiet voice of his young master. 

 "Spire." 

 "Yes, sir," he answered, standing still with a pile of shirts on his arm. 

 "Is this inn very full?" 

 "Yes, very," said Spire. "The whole town is full of travellers and people from the country. A lot of our nobility and gentry are passing this way." 

 He deposited the shirts on a shelf in the depths of the wall and turned round again. 

 "Have you heard any names, Spire?" 

 Spire stooped over a trunk and lifted up from it carefully a lot of white neckcloths folded neatly one within the other. 

 "I haven't had much time yet, sir. I heard a few." 

 He laid down the neckcloths by the side of the shirts while Cosmo, with his elbow on the mantelpiece, asked down the whole length of the room: 

 "Anybody I know?" 

 "Not in this place, sir. There is generally a party of officers from the man-of-war staying here. They come and go. I have seen some Italian gentlemen in square-cut coats and powdered hair. Very old-fashioned, sir. There are some Austrians too, I think; but I haven't seen any ladies. . . . I am afraid, sir, this isn't the right sort of inn. There is another about a hundred yards from here on the other side of the square." 

 "I don't want to meet anybody I know," said Cosmo Latham in a low voice. 

 Spire thought that this would make his stay in Genoa very dull. At the same time he was convinced that his young master would alter his mind before very long and change to that other inn patronized by travellers of fashion. For himself he was not averse from a little 

 Prev. P 33/183 next