"It will do beautifully only I wish you could be with us. How shall we know how to get a boatman, or tell him where to take us? I am sure I couldn't, and Hannah's Italian is not very good, although," with a mischievous smile, "I suppose she could use her dictionary."
"I will arrange everything with a gondolier before I leave for the bankers'," Uncle Bob answered. "Now I must be running along. Suppose the gondola is here at half-past nine."
"The earlier the better," cried Jean.
Promptly at the hour set the gondola glided up to the steps of the Grand Canal Hotel where Jean and Hannah were waiting. It was an unusually beautiful gondola, with scarlet curtains and a gilded prow carved in the shape of a woman's head.
Jean sprang forward, all eagerness, her eyes on the magic apparition. Then suddenly her foot slipped on the slime left by the tide on the marble step, and she would have fallen into the water had not a young boy, with rare presence of mind, leaped forward and caught her.
Another moment and Hannah, white with fright, had the girl in her arms.
"Oh, my dear child!" she wailed. "My precious lamb! Thank goodness, you are safe. Think if you'd been drowned before you had had a chance to see Venice at all! But you are quite safe now, honey. Don't be frightened. Young man," and she turned to the boy, "that was a good deed of yours. What is your name? But there—how silly to be asking him when he can't understand a word I'm saying. I forgot no one could understand anything in this queer, upside-down town where the streets are water when they ought to be land."
To her utter astonishment, however, the boy answered in English, which, although slightly broken, was perfectly intelligible.
"My name is Giusippe Cicone."
"Say it again," demanded Hannah. "Say it more slowly."