allest boy, always spoken of by his adoring parents
as the _piccolo Giovanni_. "Pickle Johnny," Uncle Dan called him, and,
being a specialist in names, the Colonel had no sooner invented one for
this small and rather obstreperous manikin, than he took him into his
particular favour.

The attention of the girls, meanwhile, was pretty evenly divided between
the moving show upon the quay and the quite as active contingent in
Nanni's gondola. Indeed there were about as many babies in the one as in
the other, for it is a pretty and childlike fancy of the Venetians to
dress up their children as saints and angels, and lead them, with a
becoming reverence, not all untouched by vanity, in the wake of the holy
men. Here were small Franciscans in their brown cowls, tiny St. Johns,
clad in sheepskins and armed with crosses, little queens of heaven in
trailing garments of blue tarleton, and toddling white angels, with
spangled wings and hair tightly crimped.

As the last of these heavenly apparitions disappeared down a dark alley,
"Pickle Johnny" set up a howl of disappointment, which his mother tried
in vain to suppress. In vain did his father scowl upon him over the
heads of his passengers in a semblance of terrible wrath, in vain did
his uncle produce a row-lock for his delectation; "Pickle Johnny"
mourned the loss of the last baby angel and would not be comforted.

May was looking on with an amusement that was not without relish, when,
chancing to glance at the harassed face of Nanni, the most conspicuous
victim of "Pickle Johnny's" ill-judged exhibition of feeling, she
experienced a sudden change of mood, and came instantly to the rescue.

"Let me take the _bambino_," she begged. "I can make him good."

The mother, a stout, comely woman in a plain black gown, demurred
decorously, but was glad enough to yield, and Nanni, taking the child in
his arms, stepped across the intervening gondola, to which his own was
tied, and deposited his wondering burden in the arms of the Signorina
who stood up to receive it. As he did so, that flash of grateful
recognition which he was so chary of, crossed his grave face. Then,
before "Pickle Johnny" could decide upon any definite line of action,
the Signorina made haste to divert his mind by surrendering to him the
cluster of silver trinkets which dangled from her belt. Pencil and
penknife, scent-bottle, glove-buttoner, and, best of all, a tiny mirror,
in which he viewed his still tearful cou