square, and another
alley-way, had brought a messenger to the house, while the gondola was
still gliding on its tortuous way. A group of women awaited their
arrival.

"I wish we might have gone in, to see how they live," May said,
regretfully, as they pushed off, leaving the woman in the hands of her
friends.

"It's probably a very poor way of living," Uncle Dan surmised. "The kind
that makes a man feel like a scoundrel the next time he smokes a good
cigar."

"Why, you're a regular socialist, Uncle Dan," cried May. "I didn't know
that!"

"Neither did I, Polly," the Colonel replied, pulling viciously at his
moustache. "I don't so much mind being better off than other folks," he
added, thoughtfully; "but somehow, you do hate to have other folks worse
off than you!"

They were retracing their way down one of the narrowest and darkest
canals, when the warning cry,--"_premi-o!_"--echoing round an
unsuspected corner told them of an approaching gondola.

"_Ecco, mio fratello!_" Vittorio exclaimed, answering, then, with his
own sonorous call; and an instant later, the prow of his brother's
gondola came stealing out of the shadow.

As the boats passed one another, Vittorio said a few words in dialect,
which were quite unintelligible to the foreigners. Yet May felt sure
that Nanni was being sent to the house they had just left.

"Do you and Nanni know the singer?" she asked, as they came out into the
full moonlight, above the Rialto bridge.

"Si, Signorina," the gondolier replied, with prompt exactitude; "her
sister's brother-in-law was the nephew of our grandmother's niece by
marriage."

"Oh!" May gasped, rendered, for once, inarticulate, by this surprising
exhibition of genealogic lore.

They were late in coming in that evening, and, as the girls opened their
chamber door, the perfume of the roses wafted to them conveyed a
delicate hint of unmerited neglect.

"Poor things!" said Pauline; "it _was_ a shame to leave them to
themselves all day long, doing nobody any good!"

"I know it," May admitted; "it was a shame; but I didn't want to wear
them, in all this heat, and I couldn't very well sit and tend them, all
day! I know what we will do," she added, with quick decision; "we will
take them round to the poor singer in the morning. Perhaps they may give
her pleasure."

"I wonder how Mr. Kenwick would like that," queried Pauline, who, in
spite of an inborn loyalty to the absent, was not ill-pleased with the
s