“But don’t you think many of the little alleys delightful? And the squares, and the palaces, and the carved windows and balconies, and the bridges, and the shine of green below them, and the pictures, and everything?”
Henrietta shook her head sadly.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been around any, except just about here. I’m afraid. I don’t know why. I’ve never felt that way before. But the little alleys are so treacherous-like, and the people look so horrid, and it has rained all the time, and—oh dear, I just wish I’d never come!”
For a moment I thought that the dikes were down and we were lost. But even as my knees began to knock, Henrietta pulled herself together, dried her eyes for the last time, and said:
“Now I feel a lot better—now that I’ve told you all about it. Supposing you go ahead and tell me all about things. I’m going to make this trip pay for itself, if it doesn’t pay me.”
Could Henrietta have read my heart at that moment she might have made a Bantling out of me before I knew what she was up to. The idea of this poor girl so realising the dream of her childhood—of her stumbling blind into the loveliest city in the world, and falling among thieves, and miraculously escaping everything that there was of enchantment—moved me idiotically. And not only did the pathos of Henrietta move me. I was jealous for the honour of my chosen city, whose peerless charms I have been ready ever to maintain against any champion and all.
“My dear Miss Stackpole,” I cried, “you have been unlucky! But you must let me help you to put things right. I shall be your guide, if you don’t mind. And first of all you must change your hotel. I know of one which is just the place. Nobody will rob you there, and everybody speaks English, and you will meet any number of Americans, and your windows will open into the Grand Canal.”
“What is that?” inquired Henrietta, grasping her pencil.
“Madre di Dio!” I gasped. “Why, that is Venice!” This was a banality justified by my companion’s predicament. “Haven’t you been in a gondola yet? A gondóla?,” I emended hastily, detecting a cloud in Henrietta’s eye. “One of those boats?”
“No,” she answered. “They looked so queer; and then I didn’t know as I’d ever get back.”