ding their nets. On its edge, hanging over the water,
reaching down, holding on by a foot or an arm to the iron rail, are
massed the children--millions of children--I never counted them, but
still I say millions of children. This has gone on since I first staked
out my claim--was a part of the inducement, in fact, that decided me to
move in and take possession--boats, children, still water, and
rookeries being the ingredients from which I concoct color combinations
that some misguided people take home and say they feel better for.

If you ask me for how many years I have been sole owner of this stretch
of water I must refer you to Loretta, who had lived just five summers
when my big gondolier, Luigi, pulled her dripping wet from the canal,
and who had lived eleven more--sixteen, in all--when what I have to
tell you happened.

And yet, Loretta's little mishap, now I come to think of it, does not
go back far enough. My claim was really staked out before she was born
(I am still in possession--that is--I was last year, and hope to be
this), and her becoming part of its record is but the sticking of two
pins along a chart,--the first marking her entrance at five and the
second her exit at sixteen. All the other years of my occupation--those
before her coming and since her going--were, of course, full of the
kind of joy that comes to a painter, but these eleven years--well,
these had all of this joy and then, too, they had--Loretta.

I was in the bow of the gondola when the first of these two pins found
its place on the chart, working away like mad, trying to get the exact
shadow tones on a sun-flecked wall. Luigi was aft, fast asleep, his
elbow under his head: I never object, for then he doesn't shake the
boat. Suddenly from out the hum of the children's voices there came a
scream vibrant with terror. Then a splash! Then the gondola swayed as
if a barca had bumped it, and the next thing I knew Luigi's body made a
curve through the air, struck the water, with an enormous souse, and up
came Loretta, her plump, wet little body resting as easily on Luigi's
hand, as a tray rests on a waiter's. Another sweep with his free arm,
and he passed me the dripping child and clambered up beside her. The
whole affair had not occupied two minutes.

That was a great day for me!

Heretofore I had been looked upon as a squatter: possessing certain
rights, of course, and more or less welcome because of sundry lire
expended for the temporar