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square, and another alley-way, had brought a messenger to the house, while the gondola was still gliding on its tortuous way. A group of women awaited their arrival. "I wish we might have gone in, to see how they live," May said, regretfully, as they pushed off, leaving the woman in the hands of her friends. "It's probably a very poor way of living," Uncle Dan surmised. "The kind that makes a man feel like a scoundrel the next time he smokes a good cigar." "Why, you're a regular socialist, Uncle Dan," cried May. "I didn't know that!" "Neither did I, Polly," the Colonel replied, pulling viciously at his moustache. "I don't so much mind being better off than other folks," he added, thoughtfully; "but somehow, you do hate to have other folks worse off than you!" They were retracing their way down one of the narrowest and darkest canals, when the warning cry,--"_premi-o!_"--echoing round an unsuspected corner told them of an approaching gondola. "_Ecco, mio fratello!_" Vittorio exclaimed, answering, then, with his own sonorous call; and an instant later, the prow of his brother's gondola came stealing out of the shadow. As the boats passed one another, Vittorio said a few words in dialect, which were quite unintelligible to the foreigners. Yet May felt sure that Nanni was being sent to the house they had just left. "Do you and Nanni know the singer?" she asked, as they came out into the full moonlight, above the Rialto bridge. "Si, Signorina," the gondolier replied, with prompt exactitude; "her sister's brother-in-law was the nephew of our grandmother's niece by marriage." "Oh!" May gasped, rendered, for once, inarticulate, by this surprising exhibition of genealogic lore. They were late in coming in that evening, and, as the girls opened their chamber door, the perfume of the roses wafted to them conveyed a delicate hint of unmerited neglect. "Poor things!" said Pauline; "it _was_ a shame to leave them to themselves all day long, doing nobody any good!" "I know it," May admitted; "it was a shame; but I didn't want to wear them, in all this heat, and I couldn't very well sit and tend them, all day! I know what we will do," she added, with quick decision; "we will take them round to the poor singer in the morning. Perhaps they may give her pleasure." "I wonder how Mr. Kenwick would like that," queried Pauline, who, in spite of an inborn loyalty to the absent, was not ill-pleased with the s
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