as wise beyond his years, said it was just works in
the clock's insides. "It's no more a miracle than a stomach-ache inside
of you," he explained.

There was no time for further revelations on the day this happened, for
at that moment Carlotta called them. She was afraid the crowd would
disperse before she had coaxed money from their pockets. Every moment
that they were not dancing or singing, the children wandered about this
magic place, where in every direction they looked there were wonderful
stories in bronze, marble, or mosaic. One could stay there a year and
not begin to know them all. If it rained, they took refuge under the
arcade of the Ducal Palace or in the quiet interior of the Church of San
Marco itself. Sometimes they could even step in and pray before the
altar. Their prayers were always the same, that the Holy Virgin and
Saint Anthony, the special guide of those who were lost, would take care
of them and bring them safely again to their Babbo and Mammina and their
lovely home.

Many days passed in this way, and it was the middle of May before the
children ever rode in a boat, for though Giovanni's father had a
gondola, it was his business to take passengers about Venice just like a
cab-driver in our own cities, and he did not use it for pleasure rides
for Giovanni and his friends.

Then one afternoon when they returned from singing in the piazza, they
found Luigi waiting to show Carlotta the boat which he had bought with
the money he received for the donkeys and the van. It was not a
gondola, but a _sandalo_, a large row-boat, with a pair of oars, suited
to carry either passengers or freight.

"The weather is warm now," said Luigi to Carlotta; "the tourists are
already lingering on the canals for pleasure in the evenings, and I
believe we should do well to let the children go about with me in the
boat to sing."

Though they were weary from dancing and singing all day in the streets,
it would be far pleasanter to drift about on the canal in the evening
than to spend it tossing about on the husk mattresses in Giovanni's
squalid house, and the children listened with eager attention to
Carlotta's reply.

"As you like," she said, shrugging her shoulders; and that very evening
the plan was carried out. Luigi rowed the boat slowly about on the
Grand Canal, and the sweet voices of the children, floating out over the
still waters, attracted the gondolas about them, and many soldi were
flung to