his sleek black trousers whenever Hermes playfully dashed his
hoof, instead of his nose, into the bowl. As Giacomo explained
to Assunta in the kitchen, it was for the Signorina, and the
Signorina was very lonely.

She was less lonely with Hermes, for he spoke her language.

"It is almost time to hear from Eustace," Daphne told him one
day, as she sat on a stone under an olive tree in the orchard
below the house. Hermes stood before her, his head down, his
tail dejectedly drooped.

"Perhaps," she added, dreamily looking up at the blue sky through
its broken veil of gray-green olive leaves, "perhaps he does not
want me back, and the letter will tell me so."

Hermes gave an incredible jump high in the air, lighted on his
four feet, pranced, gamboled, curveted.

"It is very hard to know one's duty or to do it, Hermes," said
Daphne, patting his woolly brow. Hermes intimated, by means of
frisking legs and tail, that he would not try.

"I believe you are bewitched," said the girl, suddenly taking him
up in her arms. "I believe you are some little changeling god
sent by your master Apollo to put his thoughts into my head."

He squirmed, and she put him down. Then she gave him a harmless
slap on his fleecy side.