r did the grownup sister; nor the
mother, over whom Luigi also shrugged his shoulders. It was Loretta's
chubbiness that delighted my soul.

Even at five she was a delightful little body, and full of entrancing
possibilities. One can always tell what the blossom will be from the
bud. In her case, all the essentials of beauty were in evidence: dark,
lustrous velvety eyes; dazzling teeth--not one missing; jet-black
hair--and such a wealth of it, almost to her shoulders; a slender
figure, small hands and feet; neat, well-turned ankles and wrists, and
rounded plump arms above the elbows.

"What do you intend to do, little one, when you grow up?" I asked her
one morning. She was sitting beside me, her eyes following every
movement of my brush.

"Oh, what everybody does. I shall string beads and then when I get big
like my sister I shall go to the priest and get married, and have a
ring and new shoes and a beautiful, beautiful veil all over my hair."

"So! And have you picked him out yet?"

"Oh, no, Signore! Why, I am only a little girl. But he will surely
come,--they always come."

These mornings in the gondola continued until she was ten years old.
Sometimes it was a melon held high in the air that tempted her; or a
basket of figs, or some huge bunches of grapes; or a roll and a broiled
fish from a passing cook-boat: but the bait always sufficed. With a
little cry of joy the beads would be dropped, or the neighbor's child
passed to another or whatever else occupied her busy head and small
hands, and away she would run to the water steps and hold out her arms
until Luigi rowed over and lifted her in. She had changed, of course,
in these five years, and was still changing, but only as an expanding
bud changes. The eyes were the same and so were the teeth--if any had
dropped out, newer and better ones had taken their places; the hair
though was richer, fuller, longer, more like coils of liquid jet, with
a blue sheen where the sky lights touched its folds. The tight, trim
little figure, too, had loosened out in certain places--especially
about the chest and hips. Before many years she would flower into the
purest type of the Venetian--the most beautiful woman the world knows.

At sixteen she burst into bloom.

I have never seen a black tulip, not a real velvet-black, but if inside
its shroud of glossy enfoldings--so like Loretta's hair--there lies
enshrined a mouth red as a pomegranate and as enticing, and if above it