"We live in too late an age for all the old romances and poetry except what still lingers through association and imagination. So quiet, Jo? It isn't like you not to have a word to say."
"I'm listening, Miss Helen, and am having such a good time that I am hugging myself for want of a better way to express my delight. I do love all this so much better than I expected to. I'm afraid I hadn't given much thought to the places over here till I actually came. They were names that I ticked off something like this: Paris—gay streets and shops; good place to get smart clothes. London—fogs, omnibuses, Dickens' stories; Munich—beer, picture-galleries. Venice—gondolas; all water."
Miss Helen laughed. "That is the way those places appear in the minds of a good many persons, I'm afraid. You are glad you came, Jo, aren't you? I remember Nan said you were not very enthusiastic at first."
"You bet I'm glad." Jo spoke with more force than elegance. "I could bat my head against the wall when I think of what a goose I was about coming. What an ignoramus I was not to study up more before I came. Nan enjoys things and gets so excited over them lots of times when I don't know what in the world she is driving at. Then by the time I have learned a little history and stuff it is time to leave, and there is not any chance for my enthusiasm to break out. I can't imagine how Daniella kept up with her party. You all are way ahead of me when it comes to literature and pictures and things, and what must she have been?"
"At least she got a taste of the sweets," said Miss Helen, "and I have not a doubt but that it will awaken her ambition as nothing else could do."
"She always had plenty of ambition," said Nan, "but she knew scarcely anything of what was outside a very small world."
"And the way she will work to keep up with her new self will be a caution," said Jo. "Dear me," she sighed, "there's the trouble; when you don't know and haven't seen you feel twice as complacent. You have a few rather nice ideas and some little knowledge, Jo Keyes, I patted myself on the head and said, but now, gracious! I feel as if I didn't know as much as one of the San Marco pigeons."
"So much the better," Miss Helen told her. "There is nothing so hopeless as self-complacency. You will forge ahead now, Jo, with twice the ardor you did before."
Just then a sudden hail from a passing gondola startled them all. Some one was standing up waving his hat violently. "Hallo, Nan Corner! Hallo, Jack!" came a voice as the gondola swung alongside.
Jack peered into the neighboring bark and cried out, "Carter! It's Carter, Nan. I know it is."