There was a grace about the lad which led me to talk to him, though I found his dialect very difficult.

Seeing us on good terms, the elder boy drew near, and at once asked a puzzling question: When was the ruined church on the hillside to be rebuilt?
I answered, of course, that I knew nothing about it, but this reply was taken as merely evasive; in a minute or two the lad again questioned me.

Was the rebuilding to be next year?
Then I began to understand; having seen me examining the ruins, the boy took it for granted that I was an architect here on business, and I don't think I succeeded in setting him right.

When he had said good-bye he turned to look after me with a mischievous smile, as much as to say that I had naturally refused to talk to him about so important a matter as the building of a church, but he was not to be deceived.
The common type of face at Cotrone is coarse and bumpkinish; ruder, it seemed to me, than faces seen at any point of my journey hitherto.

A photographer had hung out a lot of portraits, and it was a hideous exhibition; some of the visages attained an incredible degree of vulgar ugliness.