less my soul!" he cried; "that's a present worth having! Eh,
Polly?"

"Indeed it is!" Pauline agreed, cordially, taking the picture from her
uncle's hand and studying it attentively.

"All the same," she said, as they were rowing towards home, half-an-hour
later; "I should much rather have had Mr. Daymond's sketch. It is not a
likeness, yet there's twice as much of May in it."

"Do you think so?" May queried, doubtfully. "Seems to me he didn't give
me any nose."

"Oh, yes, he did; there was a little dot that did very well for a nose.
And, besides, there isn't very much of you in your nose."

"I wish you had told me that my hat was tipped up on one side," May
continued, reproachfully. She was examining Kenwick's sketch with much
interest.

"It would have spoiled it if it hadn't been; your hair wouldn't have
showed half as well."

"Perhaps not; and the hair does look pretty," May admitted. "Do you
remember how pretty Mamma's hair was, Uncle Dan?"

"Of course I do. It was prettier than yours," the Colonel declared,
cheerfully perjuring his soul in the cause of discipline.

"So I thought," said May. "There's always something better than ours. I
wonder how it would seem to have anything really superlative."

As the gondola came up to the steps of the _Venezia_, May turned, and
looking back at the gondolier, said: "The _papaveri_ are beautiful,
Nanni."

She was delighted with her acquisition of a new word, and still more so
with the flash of pleasure her thanks called forth.

"No, he is not morose," she assured herself, as she stood on the
balcony, a few minutes later, and watched the gondola gliding away in
the golden afternoon light. The man was rowing slowly, against the tide,
but presently the long, slim boat, with the long, slim figure at the
stern, rounded the bend of the Canal and vanished.

VIII

The Pulse of the Sea

By the end of another week the life in Venice had come to seem the only
life in the world, and even May admitted that there was something
mythical about wheels and tram-ways and such prosaic devices for getting
about on dry land. Both she and Pauline had acquired some little skill
with the forward oar, for, as Uncle Dan justly observed, now that they
sometimes succeeded in keeping the oar in the row-lock for twenty
consecutive strokes, they were really very little hindrance to the
progress of the boat! May declared that no person of a practical turn
would ever take naturally t