Every one
agrees in saying that he is the type of the honourable player, and that,
if he wins on the whole, he owes his winnings to his superior coolness
and skill. The fact that he gambles rather lends him an additional
interest in the eyes of Beatrice, whose mother often plays and who would
like to play herself.
Ruggiero, who is to be San Miniato's boatman this summer, is waiting
outside the Count's door, until that idle gentleman wakes from his late
sleep and calls him. The final agreement is yet to be made, and Ruggiero
makes calculations upon his fingers as he sits on the box in the
corridor. The Count wants a boat and three sailors by the month and if
he is pleased, will keep them all the season. It became sufficiently
clear to Ruggiero during the first interview that his future employer
did not know the difference between a barge and a felucca, and he has
had ocular demonstration that the Count cannot swim, for he has seen him
in the water by the bathing-houses--a thorough landsman at all points.
But there are two kinds of landsmen, those who are afraid, and those who
are not, as Ruggiero well knows.
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