Mr. Daymond thinks he shall make one for their gondola on a
dark blue ground. Shan't you feel proud to sail the Venetian lagoons
with a sea-horse at the mast-head?"

"Proud as a peacock! And the young man is going to paint it for you?"

"Yes; isn't that good of him? And shan't we look pretty?"

"Never saw the time you didn't," Uncle Dan was tempted to say. But he
flattered himself that he never spoiled his nieces, and so he remarked
instead, with his most crafty grimace: "No, you'll probably look like
frights"; which, if the girls had not been quite case-hardened against
his thinly disguised compliments, might have had just the disastrous
effect he wished to avoid.

Truth to tell, they were neither of them very susceptible to flattery,
for neither of them was in the least self-centred. Even May, who was far
from sharing her sister's mellow warmth of interest in other
people,--even May, with all the crudities and shortcomings of youth
still in the ascendant, was too much occupied with her rapidly acquired
views of the phenomena about her, to pay much attention to the perhaps
equally interesting phenomenon of her own personality. The impression
left upon the two girls by their half hour's talk with Geoffry Daymond
was characteristic of each. May approved of him because he had been
interested in her ideas; and Pauline liked him because he had been
interested in her sister.

Whatever the young man's impressions may have been, it may as well be
stated at once, that in the course of that tea-drinking he made up his
mind that his mother really had a right to expect him to stay with her
for the next week or two, and that he should tell Oliver Kenwick
to-morrow, that he would have to get somebody else for that tramp
through the Titian country. What did he care about the Titian country
anyway? Here was Titian himself here in Venice, and lots besides. He
would pitch into those flags to-morrow. That was really a very happy
thought of the talkative one. He wondered if the quiet one would say
more if she got a chance; she did not look stupid. And that reflection
had struck him as so preposterous, that he had almost interrupted her
sister in her expression of opinion on the subject of the famous bronze
chargers that seem always on the point of plunging down from the front
of San Marco into the Piazza, to the destruction of the babies and
pigeons there assembled, to ask: "Miss Beverly what do you like best in
Venice?"

"The gond