"All the same," she said, as they were rowing towards home, half-an-hour later; "I should much rather have had Mr. Daymond's sketch. It is not a likeness, yet there's twice as much of May in it."
"Do you think so?" May queried, doubtfully. "Seems to me he didn't give me any nose."
"Oh, yes, he did; there was a little dot that did very well for a nose. And, besides, there isn't very much of you in your nose."
"I wish you had told me that my hat was tipped up on one side," May continued, reproachfully. She was examining Kenwick's sketch with much interest.
"It would have spoiled it if it hadn't been; your hair wouldn't have showed half as well."
"Perhaps not; and the hair does look pretty," May admitted. "Do you remember how pretty Mamma's hair was, Uncle Dan?"
"Of course I do. It was prettier than yours," the Colonel declared, cheerfully perjuring his soul in the cause of discipline.
"So I thought," said May. "There's always something better than ours. I wonder how it would seem to have anything really superlative."
As the gondola came up to the steps of the Venezia, May turned, and looking back at the gondolier, said: "The papaveri are beautiful, Nanni."
She was delighted with her acquisition of a new word, and still more so with the flash of pleasure her thanks called forth.