Mrs. Ashe did not join in these commendations of the Commodore; her attention was fixed on another part of her brother’s discourse.
“Then you won’t be able to come to me again? I sha’n’t see you again after this!” she exclaimed. “Dear me! I never realized that before. What shall I do without you?”
“You will have Miss Carr. She is a host in herself,” suggested Ned Worthington. His sister shook her head.
“Katy is a jewel,” she remarked presently; “but somehow one wants a man to call upon. I shall feel lost without you, Ned.”
The month’s housekeeping wound up that night with a “thick tea” in honor of Lieutenant Worthington’s arrival, which taxed all the resources of the little establishment. Maria was sent out hastily to buy pan forte da Siena and vino d’Asti, and fresh eggs for an omelette, and chickens’ breasts smothered in cream from the restaurant, and artichokes for a salad, and flowers to garnish all; and the guest ate and praised and admired; and Amy and Mabel sat on his knee and explained everything to him, and they were all very happy together. Their merriment was so infectious that it extended to the poor giantess, who had been very pensive all day at the prospect of losing her good place, and who now raised her voice in the grand aria from “Orfeo,” and made the kitchen ring with the passionate demand “Che farò senza Eurydice?” The splendid notes, full of fire and lamentation, rang out across the saucepans as effectively as if they had been footlights; and Katy, rising softly, opened the kitchen door a little way that they might not lose a sound.
The next day brought them to Venice. It was a “moment,” indeed, as Katy seated herself for the first time in a gondola, and looked from beneath its black hood at the palace walls on the Grand Canal, past which they were gliding. Some were creamy white and black, some orange-tawny, others of a dull delicious ruddy color, half pink, half red; but all, in build and ornament, were unlike palaces elsewhere. High on the prow before her stood the gondolier, his form defined in dark outline against the sky, as he swayed and bent to his long oar, raising his head now and again to give a wild musical cry, as warning to other approaching gondolas. It was all like a dream. Ned Worthington sat beside her, looking more at the changes in her expressive face than at the palaces. Venice was as new to him as to Katy; but she was a new feature in his life also, and even more interesting than Venice. They seemed to float on pleasures for the next ten days. Their arrival had been happily timed to coincide with a great popular festival which for nearly a week kept Venice in a state of continual brilliant gala. All the days were spent on the water, only landing now and then to look at some famous building or picture, or to eat ices in the Piazza with the lovely façade of St. Mark’s before them. Dining or sleeping seemed a sheer waste of time! The evenings were spent on the water too; for every night, immediately after sunset, a beautiful drifting pageant started from the front of the Doge’s Palace to make the tour of the Grand Canal, and our friends always took a part in it. In its centre went a barge hung with embroideries and filled with orange trees and musicians. This was surrounded by a great convoy of skiffs and gondolas bearing colored lanterns and pennons and gay awnings, and managed by gondoliers in picturesque uniforms. All these floated and shifted and swept on together with a sort of rhythmic undulation as if keeping time to the music, while across their path dazzling showers and arches of colored fire poured from the palace fronts and the hotels. Every movement of the fairy flotilla was repeated in the illuminated water, every torch-tip and scarlet lantern and flake of green or rosy fire; above all the bright full moon looked down as if surprised. It was magically beautiful in effect. Katy felt as if her previous sober ideas about life and things had melted away. For the moment the world was turned topsy-turvy. There was nothing hard or real or sordid left in it; it was just a fairy tale, and she was in the middle of it as she had longed to be in her childhood. She was the Princess, encircled by delights, as when she and Clover and Elsie played in “Paradise,”—only, this was better; and, dear me! who was this Prince who seemed to belong to the story and to grow more important to it every day?
Fairy tales must come to ending. Katy’s last CHAPTER closed with a sudden turn-over of the leaf when, toward the end of this happy fortnight, Mrs. Ashe came into her room with the face of one who has unpleasant news to communicate.
“Katy,” she began, “should you be awfully disappointed, should you consider me a perfect wretch, if I went home now instead of in the autumn?”
Katy was too much astonished to reply.
“I am grown such a coward, I am so knocked up and weakened by what I suffered in Rome, that I find I cannot face the idea of going on to Germany and Switzerland alone, without Ned to take care of me. You are a perfect angel, dear, and I know that you would do all you could to make it easy for me, but I am such a fool that I do not dare. I think my nerves must have given way,” she continued half tearfully; “but the very idea of shifting for myself for five months longer makes me so miserably homesick that I cannot endure it. I dare say I shall repent afterward, and I tell myself now how silly it is; but it’s no use,—I shall never know another easy moment till I have Amy safe again in America and under your father’s care.”
“I find,” she continued after another little pause, “that we can go down with Ned to Genoa and take a steamer there which will carry us straight to New York without any stops. I hate to disappoint you dreadfully, Katy, but I have almost decided to do it. Shall you mind very much? Can you ever forgive me?” She was fairly crying now.
Katy had to swallow hard before she could answer, the sense of disappointment was so sharp; and with all her efforts there was almost a sob in her voice as she said,—
“Why yes, indeed, dear Polly, there is nothing to forgive. You are perfectly right to go home if you feel so.” Then with another swallow she added: “You have given me the loveliest six months’ treat that ever was, and I should be a greedy girl indeed if I found fault because it is cut off a little sooner than we expected.”
“You are so dear and good not to be vexed,” said her friend, embracing her. “It makes me feel doubly sorry about disappointing you. Indeed I wouldn’t if I could help it, but I simply can’t. I must go home. Perhaps we’ll come back some day when Amy is grown up, or safely married to somebody who will take good care of her!”
This distant prospect was but a poor consolation for the immediate disappointment. The more Katy thought about it the sorrier did she feel. It was not only losing the chance—very likely the only one she would ever have—of seeing Switzerland and Germany; it was all sorts of other little things besides. They must go home in a strange ship with a captain they did not know, instead of in the “Spartacus,” as they had planned; and they should land in New York, where no one would be waiting for them, and not have the fun of sailing into Boston Bay and seeing Rose on the wharf, where she had promised to be. Furthermore, they must pass the hot summer in Burnet instead of in the cool Alpine valleys; and Polly’s house was let till October. She and Amy would have to shift for themselves elsewhere. Perhaps they would not be in Burnet at all. Oh dear, what a pity it was! what a dreadful pity!
Then, the first shock of surprise and discomfiture over, other ideas asserted themselves; and as she realized that in three weeks more, or four at the longest, she was to see papa and Clover and all her dear people at home, she began to feel so very glad that she could hardly wait for the time to come. After all, there was nothing in Europe quite so good as that.
“No, I’m not sorry,” she told herself; “I am glad. Poor Polly! it’s no wonder she feels nervous after all she has gone through. I hope I wasn’t cross to her! And it will be very nice to have Lieutenant Worthington to take care of us as far as Genoa.”
The next three days were full of work. There was no more floating in gondolas, except in the way of business. All the shopping which they had put off must be