14/15 No one likes to roll down a dusty stony bank, much less an officer in immaculate uniform on the eve of paying a formal call upon ladies. He picked himself up and looked at Tony; he was quite beyond speech. He swept off his hat with a deferential bow. If anything could have been more insultingly inadequate to the situation than that one word _Scusi_, it did not at the moment occur to him. Jeering, blasphemy, vituperation, he might have excused, but this! The shock jostled him back to a thinking state. |