"To the gondolas in waiting."
"What are they painted so for?"
"The colours belonging to the family arms."
"Whose family?"
"The family to whom the house belongs."
"Dolly," said Mrs. Copley, "we shall not want to stay here long. We might go on and try Rome. Mrs. Thayer says spring-time is the best at Naples."
"It will all look very different, Mrs. Copley, when you see it by sunlight," said Lawrence. "Wait a little."
Dolly would have enjoyed every inch of the way, if her mother would have let her. To her eyes the novel strangeness of the scene was entrancing. Not beautiful, certainly; not beautiful yet; by mist and rain and darkness how should it be? but she relished the novelty. The charmed stillness pleased her; the gliding gondolas; the but half revealed houses and palaces; the odd conveyance in which she herself was seated; the wonderful water-ways, the strange cries of the gondoliers. It was not half spoiled for her, as it was; and she trusted the morning would bring for her mother a better mood.
Something of a better mood was produced that evening when Mrs. Copley found herself in a warm room, before a good supper. But the next morning it still rained. Dark skies, thick atmosphere, a gloomy outlook upon ways where no traveller for mere pleasure was to be seen; none but people bent on business of one sort or another. Yet everything was delightful to Dolly's eyes; the novelty was perfect, the picturesqueness undeniable. What she could see of the lagoon, of the vessels at anchor, the flying gondolas, the canals and the bridges over them, and the beautiful Riva, put Dolly in a rapture. Her eye roved, her heart swelled. "O mother!" she exclaimed, "if father would only come!"
"What then?" said Mrs Copley dismally. "He would take us away, I hope."