ly as we came from the station. I'm sure she would like you to call,
and I hope she will like the gondola."

"Oh, she will like it," Peter assured Miss Dassonville as he helped her
out in front of the Casa Frolli; "it will remind her of a rocking
chair."

Mrs. Merrithew did like the gondola; she liked everything:--the spacious
dark, the scudding forms like frightened swans, the sound of singing on
the water, the soft bulks of foliage that overhung them in the narrow
_calle_, the soundless hatchet-faced prows that rounded on them from
behind dim palaces; and she liked the gondola so much that she asked
Peter "right out" what it cost him.

"We would have taken one ourselves," she explained without waiting,
"only we didn't feel able to afford it. Fifty francs a week they wanted
to charge us, but maybe that was because we were Americans; they think
Americans can do everything over here. But I suppose you get yours cheap
at the hotel?"

"Oh, much cheaper."

"How much?"

"Forty francs," hazarded Peter. "I'm sure I could get you one for that.
Unless ... if you don't mind...." He made what he hadn't done yet under
any circumstances, a case out of his broken health to explain how by not
getting up very early and by taking some prescribed exercise, Giuseppe
and the gondola had to lie unused half the mornings, which was very bad
for them.... "So," he persuaded them, "if you would be satisfied with it
for half a day, I would be very much obliged to you if you would take
it ... share and share alike." There was as much hesitation in Peter's
speech as if it had really been the favour he seemed to make it, though
in fact it grew out of his attempt to fashion his offer by what he saw
in the dusk of Miss Dassonville's face. "In the evenings," he finished,
"we could take it turn about. There are a great many evenings when I
don't go out at all."

"Me, too," consented Mrs. Merrithew cheerfully. "I get tired easy, but
you and Savilla could go." The proposal appealed to her as neighbourly,
and it was quite in keeping with the character of a successful business
man, as he was projected on the understanding of Bloombury, to wish not
to keep paying for a thing of which he had no use. "I think we might as
well close with it at once, don't you, Savilla?"

"If you are sure it's only forty francs----" Miss Dassonville was
doubtful.

"Quite sure," Peter was very prompt. "You see they keep them so
constantly employed at the hotel"--which