The plan was to row out over the lagoon, and have tea at Santa Rosa. Tea made the centre of the afternoon, round which the rest appeared to be grouped in the minds of the Osbornes. Then they were to return to Venice in time to look in at St. Mark’s, and loiter in the piazza, where Mrs. Osborne, it was hoped, would find at one of the photograph shops the representation of the fish market on which she had set her heart. Accordingly the labouring gondoliers propelled the laden craft across to the little island, tied up to the bank, and procured strawberries from the fruit farm to add to their tea. Mrs. Osborne at first had a sort of vague prejudice against them, for abroad it was impossible to tell “who hadn’t been touching them,” and, it is to be feared, it was only because the rest of the party found them remarkably good that she joined them. But she was charmed with their picnic, and saw a great similarity between the little waterway of the island and the Regent’s Park Canal.
They dined that evening at Dora’s house—meals somehow had leaped into sudden importance and preponderance since the arrival of her father-in-law in Venice, though they had no more meals than usual—and Mrs. Osborne as well as her husband was voluble over all they had seen.
“Just to think that all the floor of St. Mark’s is in marble!” said she. “Why, it seems almost a shame, doesn’t it? I’m sure there’s not a cathedral in England that’s got such a grand floor, and St. Mark’s, so you said—didn’t you, Dora?—was only Roman Catholic?”
“Well, well, mother,” said Mr. Osborne, “it’s the Church of the country, you see, just as the English Church is ours. You’d think more of the Roman, if you’d been brought up to it. But I’m surprised at their letting the floor get into that state: it was all ups and downs, and I’m sure I scarcely knew where I should be setting my foot next. So dark it was, too, that one couldn’t see as much as one would like. If I were them, I should send for some good English architect as knows when a building’s safe, and when it isn’t, and make him cut half a dozen sensible windows somewhere, or perhaps take down one of them domes, and put in a glass roof to it instead. Five domes there are, for I counted them, and that’s beyond all reason.”
Dora felt that this was too much for her: simply she could not think of any reply whatever. If somebody proposed putting a glass dome in St. Mark’s, what answer was possible? But there was no need for one. Mrs. Osborne instantly joined in again.
“And never did I think to see such shops in Venice,” she said. “Why, there was electric fittings at one I passed, beautiful they were, with nymphs and such-like holding up the globes, the same as you might get in the most superior shops in town. And I need never have brought out stationery with me, for there was a stationer’s there as I could have bought the best cream-laid at. And not expensive either, if you recollect that a lira is but tenpence, though its strange to have your silver coins worth tenpence instead of a shilling. It wants a deal of thinking back into pounds and shillings.”
“They seem to have a notion of building, too,” said Mr. Osborne. “I’m sure that great square tower they were building was as solid a piece of work as you could find anywhere. And to think that the original had stood there five hundred years. How it takes you back!”
Claude nodded at Dora.
“What did I tell you?” he said. “Didn’t I say the mater and pater would like Venice near as much as you do?”
“Yes, dear, you were quite right,” said Dora, with a sort of despairing acquiescence in even this. “And what should you like to do to-morrow, Dad?” she asked.