Katy had never yet bought her gift from old Mrs. Redding. She had waited, thinking continually that she should see something more tempting still in the next place they went to; but now, with the sense that there were to be no more “next places,” she resolved to wait no longer, and with a hundred francs in her pocket, set forth to choose something from among the many tempting things for sale in the Piazza. A bracelet of old Roman coins had caught her fancy one day in a bric-à-brac shop, and she walked straight toward it, only pausing by the way to buy a pale blue iridescent pitcher at Salviate’s for Cecy Slack, and see it carefully rolled in seaweed and soft paper.
The price of the bracelet was a little more than she expected, and quite a long process of bargaining was necessary to reduce it to the sum she had to spend. She had just succeeded and was counting out the money when Mrs. Ashe and her brother appeared, having spied her from the opposite side of the Piazza, where they were choosing last photographs at Naga’s. Katy showed her purchase and explained that it was a present; “for of course I should never walk out in cold blood and buy a bracelet for myself,” she said with a laugh.
“This is a fascinating little shop,” said Mrs. Ashe. “I wonder what is the price of that queer old chatelaine with the bottles hanging from it.”
The price was high; but Mrs. Ashe was now tolerably conversant with shopping Italian, which consists chiefly of a few words repeated many times over, and it lowered rapidly under the influence of her troppo’s and è molto caro’s, accompanied with telling little shrugs and looks of surprise. In the end she bought it for less than two thirds of what had been originally asked for it. As she put the parcel in her pocket, her brother said,—
“If you have done your shopping now, Polly, can’t you come out for a last row?”
“Katy may, but I can’t,” replied Mrs. Ashe. “The man promised to bring me gloves at six o’clock, and I must be there to pay for them. Take her down to the Lido, Ned. It’s an exquisite evening for the water, and the sunset promises to be delicious. You can take the time, can’t you, Katy?”
Katy could.
Mrs. Ashe turned to leave them, but suddenly stopped short.
“Katy, look! Isn’t that a picture!”
The “picture” was Amy, who had come to the Piazza with Mrs. Swift, to feed the doves of St. Mark’s, which was one of her favorite amusements. These pretty birds are the pets of all Venice, and so accustomed to being fondled and made much of by strangers, that they are perfectly tame. Amy, when her mother caught sight of her, was sitting on the marble pavement, with one on her shoulder, two perched on the edge of her lap, which was full of crumbs, and a flight of others circling round her head. She was looking up and calling them in soft tones. The sunlight caught the little downy curls on her head and made them glitter. The flying doves lit on the pavement, and crowded round her, their pearl and gray and rose-tinted and white feathers, their scarlet feet and gold-ringed eyes, making a shifting confusion of colors, as they hopped and fluttered and cooed about the little maid, unstartled even by her clear laughter. Close by stood Nurse Swift, observant and grimly pleased.
The mother looked on with happy tears in her eyes. “Oh, Katy, think what she was a few weeks ago and look at her now! Can I ever be thankful enough?”
She squeezed Katy’s hand convulsively and walked away, turning her head now and then for another glance at Amy and the doves; while Ned and Katy silently crossed to the landing and got into a gondola. It was the perfection of a Venice evening, with silver waves lapsing and lulling under a rose and opal sky; and the sense that it was their last row on those enchanted waters made every moment seem doubly precious.
I cannot tell you exactly what it was that Ned Worthington said to Katy during that row, or why it took so long to say it that they did not get in till after the sun was set, and the stars had come out to peep at their bright, glinting faces, reflected in the Grand Canal. In fact, no one can tell; for no one overheard, except Giacomo, the brown yellow-jacketed gondolier, and as he did not understand a word of English he could not repeat the conversation. Venetian boatmen, however, know pretty well what it means when a gentleman and lady, both young, find so much to say in low tones to each other under the gondola hood, and are so long about giving the order to return; and Giacomo, deeply sympathetic, rowed as softly and made himself as imperceptible as he could,—a display of tact which merited the big silver piece with which Lieutenant Worthington “crossed his palm” on landing.
Mrs. Ashe had begun to look for them long before they appeared, but I think she was neither surprised nor sorry that they were so late. Katy kissed her hastily and went away at once,—“to pack,” she said,—and Ned was equally undemonstrative; but they looked so happy, both of them, that “Polly dear” was quite satisfied and asked no questions.
Five days later the parting came, when the “Florio” steamer put into the port of Genoa for passengers. It was not an easy good-by to say. Mrs. Ashe and Amy both cried, and Mabel was said to be in deep affliction also. But there were alleviations. The squadron was coming home in the autumn, and the officers would have leave to see their friends, and of course Lieutenant Worthington must come to Burnet—to visit his sister. Five months would soon go, he declared; but for all the cheerful assurance, his face was rueful enough as he held Katy’s hand in a long tight clasp while the little boat waited to take him ashore.
After that it was just a waiting to be got through with till they sighted Sandy Hook and the Neversinks,—a waiting varied with peeps at Marseilles and Gibraltar and the sight of a whale or two and one distant iceberg. The weather was fair all the way, and the ocean smooth. Amy was never weary of lamenting her own stupidity in not having taken Maria Matilda out of confinement before they left Venice.
“That child has hardly been out of the trunk since we started,” she said. “She hasn’t seen anything except a little bit of Nice. I shall really be ashamed when the other children ask her about it. I think I shall play that she was left at boarding-school and didn’t come to Europe at all! Don’t you think that would be the best way, mamma?”
“You might play that she was left in the States-prison for having done something naughty,” suggested Katy; but Amy scouted this idea.
“She never does naughty things,” she said, “because she never does anything at all. She’s just stupid, poor child! It’s not her fault.”
The thirty-six hours between New York and Burnet seemed longer than all the rest of the journey put together, Katy thought. But they ended at last, as the “Lake Queen” swung to her moorings at the familiar wharf, where Dr. Carr stood surrounded with all his boys and girls just as they had stood the previous October, only that now there were no clouds on anybody’s face, and Johnnie was skipping up and down for joy instead of grief. It was a long moment while the plank was being lowered from the gangway; but the moment it was in place, Katy darted across, first ashore of all the passengers, and was in her father’s arms.
Mrs. Ashe and Amy spent two or three days with them, while looking up temporary quarters elsewhere; and so long as they stayed all seemed a happy confusion of talking and embracing and exclaiming, and distributing of gifts. After they went away things fell into their customary train, and a certain flatness became apparent. Everything had happened that could happen. The long-talked-of European journey was over. Here was Katy at home again, months sooner than they expected; yet she looked remarkably cheerful and content! Clover could not understand it; she was likewise puzzled to account for one or two private conversations between Katy and papa in which she had not been invited to take part, and the occasional arrival of a letter from “foreign parts” about whose contents nothing was said.
“It seems a dreadful pity that you had to come so soon,” she said one day when they were alone in their bedroom. “It’s delightful to have you, of course; but we had braced ourselves to do without you till October, and there are such lots of delightful things that you could have been doing and seeing at this moment.”
“Oh, yes,