I regarded my companion with no little uncertainty. What finesses might lurk behind so intriguing a question?
“Ve——?” But even as I began to repeat the name, it flashed into my thick head that so had a gentleman from California once denominated to me some egregious Venice of his native State; and my eyes opened very wide. “Why, yes,” I replied, hesitating. “That is, if ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is Shakespeare. I rather like the water, myself.”
While she neither agreed with nor challenged this remark, I observed that it produced a visible satisfaction in her. And she went on:
“I want to find out all about it. There’s simply no end of things I want to ask—for my letters, you know. I write for a syndicate as well as for the Reviewer, and you’re the first person I’ve met that I can really talk to. I hardly know where to begin. What is this big building next door, for one thing? It’s awfully queer looking.”
“It is rather queer,” I admitted. “The Patriarchate, I suppose you mean? In the Piazzetta dei Leoncini?”
“I don’t know any names, but I mean the checker-board one, with piazzas all around and a picket fence along the top.”
“Oh!” I ejaculated, staring at her very hard. “That is the Doges’ Palace.”
“What palace? These I-talian names are too much for me.”
“Call it the Ducal Palace, then,” I answered, experiencing a profound sensation. The young lady thereupon applied herself anew to her pad; and it dawned upon me that her strange alphabet might be that of stenography. “I should think that you would find a Baedeker convenient,” I added, discovering that the intensity of my gaze had drawn Miss Stackpole’s eye.
“Oh, I guess I’m bright enough to get around by myself, thank you!” she rejoined with some irony. “I’ve travelled enough. This isn’t the first time I’ve been to Europe, either—though it’s the first I’ve been to Italy.”