ing, perhaps,
his first impressions of the great world.

"_Scusi, Signorina!_"

It was Nanni, stepping across Pietro's gondola to get ashore. May looked
up and her eyes met those of the gondolier.

"_Prego_," she answered, and there was a gentle courtesy in her voice,
and a kindness in her eyes, that would have been grateful to any man. As
Nanni stepped ashore and joined his brother and old Pietro under the
trees, it may be that he blessed her for them. But he had betrayed no
pleasure, and once more a sense of the sadness of life stole like a
shadow across the young girl's spirit.

To divert her thoughts, and to have an excuse for turning her back on
Kenwick, she tried making friends with the bashful _bambino_, who had
seated himself upon the grassy bank and was gazing furtively at her
bright silk waist.

Kenwick took the little ruse kindly. He had noticed that she spoke to
Nanni in a subdued tone, and he flattered himself that he had the key to
her change of mood. He employed himself with handing plates about, while
Geof dispensed the strawberries.

It was a pretty and peaceful scene. Kenwick had stepped into Mrs.
Daymond's gondola, and was invited to take the seat beside her; Geof
stood on the shore talking with the men. Uncle Dan and Pauline, sitting
side by side, found their attention about equally divided between the
toothsome strawberries and the little drama going on between May and the
_bambino_.

May had shared her fruit with the child, and now she was amusing herself
with decorating his small, grimy toes with coppers. He was an
unsophisticated little beggar, and evidently had no intelligent interest
in the cool, round coins, which nevertheless tickled his brown toes
agreeably. He looked up and smiled, showing a row of tiny white teeth,
and with the movement all the coppers slid off into the grass.

The mother had been watching the little scene, and May had a comfortable
assurance that that wealth of _soldi_ would presently be restored to its
legitimate function in the scheme of things. She turned from her pretty
fooling, and Kenwick promptly remarked: "Are you aware that you have
sown the seeds of mendicancy in the soul of that innocent child?"

"Oh, no; those were nothing but coppers," she retorted brightly, "and I
have sown them in the grass."

They had spent half-an-hour at their picnicking, and now a new division
of the party was proposed, according to which the four young people
should row ou