VII.
Ferris stood cleaning his palette, after Don Ippolito was gone, scraping the colors together with his knife and neatly buttering them on the palette’s edge, while he wondered what the priest meant by pumping him in that way. Nothing, he supposed, and yet it was odd. Of course she had a bad temper....
He put on his hat and coat and strolled vaguely forth, and in an hour or two came by a roundabout course to the gondola station nearest his own house. There he stopped, and after an absent contemplation of the boats, from which the gondoliers were clamoring for his custom, he stepped into one and ordered the man to row him to a gate on a small canal opposite. The gate opened, at his ringing, into the garden of the Vervains.
Florida was sitting alone on a bench near the fountain. It was no longer a ruined fountain; the broken-nosed naiad held a pipe above her head, and from this rose a willowy spray high enough to catch some colors of the sunset then striking into the garden, and fell again in a mist around her, making her almost modest.
“What does this mean?” asked Ferris, carelessly taking the young girl’s hand. “I thought this lady’s occupation was gone.”
“Don Ippolito repaired the fountain for the landlord, and he agreed to pay for filling the tank that feeds it,” said Florida. “He seems to think it a hard bargain, for he only lets it play about half an hour a day. But he says it’s very ingeniously mended. He didn’t believe it could be done. It is pretty.
“It is, indeed,” said the painter, with a singular desire, going through him like a pang, likewise to do something for Miss Vervain. “Did you go to Don Ippolito’s house the other day, to see his traps?”
“Yes; we were very much interested. I was sorry that I knew so little about inventions. Do you think there are many practical ideas amongst his things? I hope there are—he seemed so proud and pleased to show them. Shouldn’t you think he had some real inventive talent?”
“Yes, I think he has; but I know as little about the matter as you do.” He sat down beside her, and picking up a twig from the gravel, pulled the bark off in silence. Then, “Miss Vervain,” he said, knitting his brows, as he always did when he had something on his conscience and meant to ease it at any cost, “I’m the dog that fetches a bone and carries a bone; I talked Don Ippolito over with you, the other day, and now I’ve been talking you over with him. But I’ve the grace to say that I’m ashamed of myself.”