Ferris broke into a laugh. “I don’t believe Padre Girolamo would come in quality of distinguished foreigner, Mrs. Vervain, and I don’t think he’d know what to do with one of our cordial receptions.”
“Well, he ought to go to America, any way. He can’t really know anything about us till he’s been there. Just think how ignorant the English are of our country! You will come, won’t you? I should be delighted to welcome you at my house in Providence. Rhode Island is a small State, but there’s a great deal of wealth there, and very good society in Providence. It’s quite New-Yorky, you know,” said Mrs. Vervain expressively. She rose as she spoke, and led the way back to the gondola. She told Padre Girolamo that they were to be some weeks in Venice, and made him promise to breakfast with them at their hotel. She smiled and nodded to him after the boat had pushed off, and kept him bowing on the landing-stairs.
“What a lovely place, and what a perfectly heavenly morning you have given us, Mr. Ferris I We never can thank you enough for it. And now, do you know what I’m thinking of? Perhaps you can help me. It was Byron’s studying there put me in mind of it. How soon do the mosquitoes come?”
“About the end of June,” responded Ferris mechanically, staring with helpless mystification at Mrs. Vervain.
“Very well; then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t stay in Venice till that time. We are both very fond of the place, and we’d quite concluded, this morning, to stop here till the mosquitoes came. You know, Mr. Ferris, my daughter had to leave school much earlier than she ought, for my health has obliged me to travel a great deal since I lost my husband; and I must have her with me, for we’re all that there is of us; we haven’t a chick or a child that’s related to us anywhere. But wherever we stop, even for a few weeks, I contrive to get her some kind of instruction. I feel the need of it so much in my own case; for to tell you the truth, Mr. Ferris, I married too young. I suppose I should do the same thing over again if it was to be done over; but don’t you see, my mind wasn’t properly formed; and then following my husband about from pillar to post, and my first baby born when I was nineteen—well, it wasn’t education, at any rate, whatever else it was; and I’ve determined that Florida, though we are such a pair of wanderers, shall not have my regrets. I got teachers for her in England,—the English are not anything like so disagreeable at home as they are in traveling, and we stayed there two years,—and I did in France, and I did in Germany. And now, Italian. Here we are in Italy, and I think we ought to improve the time. Florida knows a good deal of Italian already, for her music teacher in France was an Italian, and he taught her the language as well as music. What she wants now, I should say, is to perfect her accent and get facility. I think she ought to have some one come every day and read and converse an hour or two with her.”
Mrs. Vervain leaned back in her seat, and looked at Ferris, who said, feeling that the matter was referred to him, “I think—without presuming to say what Miss Vervain’s need of instruction is—that your idea is a very good one.” He mused in silence his wonder that so much addlepatedness as was at once observable in Mrs. Vervain should exist along with so much common-sense. “It’s certainly very good in the abstract,” he added, with a glance at the daughter, as if the sense must be hers. She did not meet his glance at once, but with an impatient recognition of the heat that was now great for the warmth with which she was dressed, she pushed her sleeve from her wrist, showing its delicious whiteness, and letting her fingers trail through the cool water; she dried them on her handkerchief, and then bent her eyes full upon him as if challenging him to think this unlady-like.
“No, clearly the sense does not come from her,” said Ferris to himself; it is impossible to think well of the mind of a girl who treats one with tacit contempt.
“Yes,” resumed Mrs. Vervain, “it’s certainly very good in the abstract. But oh dear me! you’ve no idea of the difficulties in the way. I may speak frankly with you, Mr. Ferris, for you are here as the representative of the country, and you naturally sympathize with the difficulties of Americans abroad; the teachers will fall in love with their pupils.”
“Mother!” began Miss Vervain; and then she checked herself.
Ferris gave a vengeful laugh. “Really, Mrs. Vervain, though I sympathize with you in my official capacity, I must own that as a man and a brother, I can’t help feeling a little sorry for those poor fellows, too.”