d masters is perfectly
wonderful," continued poppa placidly. "Or Salviati, or Jesurum, or what.
But there's a kind of local spell about this place----"

"There are various kinds of local smells," interrupted Dicky, whom Mrs.
Portheris still evaded, but this levity received no encouragement from
the Senator. He said instead that he hadn't noticed them himself. For
his part he had come to Venice to use his eyes, not his nose; and Dicky,
thus discouraged, faded visibly upon his stem.

I could see that poppa was still strongly under the influence of the
Venetian sentiment when he invited me to go out in a gondola with him
after dinner, and pointedly neglected to suggest that either momma or
Dicky should come too. I had a presentiment of his intention. If I have
seemed, thus far, to omit all reference to Mr. Page in Boston, since we
left Paris, it is, first, because I believe it is not considered
necessary in a book of travels to account for every half hour, and
second, because I privately believed him to be in correspondence with
the Senator the whole time, and hesitated to expose his duplicity. I had
given poppa opportunities for confessing this clandestine business, but
in his paternal wisdom he had not taken them. I was not prepared,
therefore, to be very responsive when, from a mere desire to indulge his
sense of the fitness of things, poppa endeavoured to probe my sentiments
with regard to Mr. Page by moonlight on the Grand Canal. To begin with,
I wasn't sure of them--so much depended upon what Arthur had been doing;
and besides, I felt that the perfect confidence which should exist
between father and daughter had already been a good deal damaged at the
paternal end. So when poppa said that it must seem to me like a dream,
so much had happened since the day momma and I left Chicago at
twenty-four hours' notice, six weeks ago, I said no, for my part I had
felt pretty wide awake all the time; a person had to be, I ventured to
add, with no more time to waste upon Southern Europe than we had.

"You mean you've been sleeping pretty badly," said the Senator
sympathetically.

"Where was it," I inquired, "you would give us pounded crabs and cream
for supper after we'd been to hear masses for the repose of somebody's
soul? That was a bad night, but I don't think I've had any others. On
the contrary."

"Oh, well," said poppa, "it's a good thing it isn't undermining your
constitution," but he looked as if it were rather a di