There are at least half a bushel of them."
"Sixteen cents for garbage like that!
The Signorina would better let me make her bargains for her.
Gia! Gia!
No Italian lady would have paid more than eleven sous for such useless roba.
It is evident that the Signorina's countrymen eat gold when at home, they think so little of casting it away!"
Altogether, what with the comfort and quiet of this little home, the numberless delightful things that there were to do and to see, and Viessieux's great library, from which they could draw books at will to make the doing and seeing more intelligible, the month at Florence passed only too quickly, and was one of the times to which they afterward looked back with most pleasure.
Amy grew steadily stronger, and the freedom from anxiety about her after their long strain of apprehension was restful and healing beyond expression to both mind and body.
Their very last excursion of all, and one of the pleasantest, was to the old amphitheatre at Fiesole; and it was while they sat there in the soft glow of the late afternoon, tying into bunches the violets which they had gathered from under walls whose foundations antedate Rome itself, that a cheery call sounded from above, and an unexpected surprise descended upon them in the shape of Lieutenant Worthington, who having secured another fifteen days' furlough, had come to take his sister on to Venice.
"I didn't write you that I had applied for leave," he explained, "because there seemed so little chance of my getting off again so soon; but as luck had it, Carruthers, whose turn it was, sprained his ankle and was laid up, and the Commodore let us exchange.
I made all the capital I could out of Amy's fever; but upon my word, I felt like a humbug when I came upon her and Mrs. Swift in the Cascine just now, as I was hunting for you.
How she has picked up!
I should never have known her for the same child."
"Yes, she seems perfectly well again, and as strong as before she had the fever, though that dear old Goody Swift is just as careful of her as ever.
She would not let us bring her here this afternoon, for fear we should stay out till the dew fell.
Ned, it is perfectly delightful that you were able to come.
It makes going to Venice seem quite a different thing, doesn't it, Katy?"
"I don't want it to seem quite different, because going to Venice was always one of my dreams," replied Katy, with a little laugh.
"I hope at least it doesn't make it seem less pleasant," said Mr. Worthington, as his sister stopped to pick a violet.
"No, indeed, I am glad," said Katy; "we shall all be seeing it for the first time, too, shall we not?
I think you said you had never been there."
She spoke simply and frankly, but she was conscious of an odd shyness.
"I simply couldn't stand it any longer," Ned Worthington confided to his sister when they were alone.
"My head is so full of her that I can't attend to my work, and it came to me all of a sudden that this might be my last chance. You'll be getting north before long, you know, to Switzerland and so on, where I cannot follow you.
So I made a clean breast of it to the Commodore; and the good old fellow, who has a soft spot in his heart for a love-story, behaved like a brick, and made it all straight for me to come away."
Mrs. Ashe did not join in these commendations of the Commodore; her attention was fixed on another part of her brother's discourse.
"Then you won't be able to come to me again?
I sha'n't see you again after this!" she exclaimed.
"Dear me!
I never realized that before.
What shall I do without you?"
"You will have Miss Carr.
She is a host in herself," suggested Ned Worthington. His sister shook her head.
"Katy is a jewel," she remarked presently; "but somehow one wants a man to call upon.
I shall feel lost without you, Ned."
The month's housekeeping wound up that night with a "thick tea" in honor of Lieutenant Worthington's arrival, which taxed all the resources of the little establishment.
Maria was sent out hastily to buy pan forte da Siena and vino d'Asti, and fresh eggs for an omelette, and chickens' breasts smothered in cream from the restaurant, and artichokes for a salad, and flowers to garnish all; and the guest ate and praised and admired; and Amy and Mabel sat on his knee and explained everything to him, and they were all very happy together.
Their merriment was so infectious that it extended to the poor giantess, who had been very pensive all day at the prospect of losing her good place, and who now raised her voice in the grand aria from
"Orfeo," and made the kitchen ring with the passionate demand
"Che faro senza Eurydice?"
The splendid notes, full of fire and lamentation, rang out across the saucepans as effectively as if they had been footlights; and Katy, rising softly, opened the kitchen door a little way that they might not lose a sound.
The next day brought them to Venice.
It was a "moment," indeed, as Katy seated herself for the first time in a gondola, and looked from beneath its black hood at the palace walls on the Grand Canal, past which they were gliding.
Some were creamy white and black, some orange-tawny, others of a dull delicious ruddy color, half pink, half red; but all, in build and ornament, were unlike palaces elsewhere.
High on the prow before her stood the gondolier, his form defined in dark outline against the sky, as he swayed and bent to his long oar, raising his head now and again to give a wild musical cry, as warning to other approaching gondolas.
It was all like a dream.
Ned Worthington sat beside her, looking more at the changes in her expressive face than at the palaces.
Venice was as new to him as to Katy; but she was a new feature in his life also, and even more interesting than Venice.
They seemed to float on pleasures for the next ten days.
Their arrival had been happily timed to coincide with a great popular festival which for nearly a week kept Venice in a state of continual brilliant gala.