ke a turn at planning the garden.

It was very early in the morning when the wedding party which had been
reinforced by the consul, the mistress of Casa Frolli, and the minister,
who had turned out to be exactly of Mrs. Merrithew's persuasion, went
aboard the _Merrythought_, blooming out amazingly in bunting and roses
for the occasion. The morning blueness had drained out from the city and
stained the waters eastward as they put out between the red and yellow
sails of the fishing fleet. They saw the cypress-towered islands of
romance melt in the morning haze. The steam launch which was to take
them ashore again ploughed alongside, and there was a pleasant sort of
home smell from the cook's quarters.

Peter sat forward with the bride's hand tucked under his arm and
presently he heard her laughing softly, delightedly.

"Peter, do you know what that is, that good smell I mean?"

"What do you think it is?"

"It's pie baking. Truly, don't you think I'm enough of a housewife to
know that?"

"I know you're everything you ought to be."

"It is pie, there's no doubt about it, but we must pretend to be awfully
surprised when the captain brings it out. But Peter, don't you like it?"

"Pie, my dear?"

"No, but like having everything so homey and--and--so genuine at our
wedding?"

"I hope," said Peter, "it's genuine pie, but I see what you mean, my
dear."

"It's an omen, almost, that we'll always have the good, comfortable,
common things to fall back upon, if our marriage should not prove quite
all we've dreamed it. It's been so perfect up to now; it must drop down
out of the clouds some time."

It seemed rather to have taken a sweep upward when, with sails swelling
over them and the beat of the sea under the bows, they stood up to be
married, and to exhibit capacities of sustaining itself at a level from
which not the very soggy and sallow complexioned pie with the cook
grinning behind it, could dislodge the two most concerned in it. It wore
through the day to a contained and quiet gayety at a dinner which took
place in the _ristoranta_ over the water where they had once lunched
with the captain, and lasted until Peter had brought his wife home again
to the refurnished palace. It had gone, as he told himself, remarkably
well, with every intimation, as he had time to tell himself in his last
hours in the garden with his cigar, of going much better, of becoming as
the place gave him occasion to indulge the figure, an e