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Updated: June 5, 2025
Kenwick, taking his cue from the Colonel, had mischievously carried out the principle, by presenting a soldo to each one of the assembly having the slightest pretence to comeliness. Upon which the two Pollys, unable to tolerate such cruel discrimination, had offered prompt reparation to the feelings of the ugly ones.
He employed himself with handing plates about, while Geof dispensed the strawberries. It was a pretty and peaceful scene. Kenwick had stepped into Mrs. Daymond's gondola, and was invited to take the seat beside her; Geof stood on the shore talking with the men.
Geoffry was asking. "I thought it was the poppies you wanted," said May, suspiciously. "It is! it is!" cried Kenwick with fervour. "But you make such a pretty setting," Daymond explained; "your dress, you know, and the general colour-scheme." "What fun to be a colour-scheme," cried May. "Uncle Dan, do you think I might be a colour-scheme?"
Happily, there was no one to be misled, for Pietro, with all his advantages, had not yet mastered a word of English. The only feature of the situation intelligible to him, was, that Kenwick, too, discarded his pipe at this juncture, and the gondolier was, accordingly, obliged to stow away his own half-finished cigarette, 4th quality, in the cavernous recesses of the stern.
May had been quite correct in her surmise that Kenwick was shamming, though this was merely based on general theories. Not only did he see her as she emerged with Geoffry Daymond from the comparative obscurity of the stone lion's neighbourhood, but he had been for some moments furtively watching them both, himself lost to view in the crowd about the band-stand.
Geof declared; and then, with an accession of spirits which rendered him suddenly loquacious, "And I say, Mother!" he exclaimed, "what a jolly old boy the Colonel is! I just wish you could have heard him fire up the other day, when Kenwick got off one of his cynicisms at the expense of Abraham Lincoln. Tell you what, the sparks flew! Oliver was up a tree like a cat! Hullo!
She feared that Kenwick might go in pursuit of Geof and May, who had disappeared round the corner into the Piazzetta, and knowing that he liked to talk of his millionaire friends and their steam-yacht, she proceeded to draw him out upon the subject.
In the intervals of conversation Kenwick, watching the straggling group in front, found it curiously gratifying to observe that Daymond did not seem to have much to say for himself. Kenwick had not by any means made up his mind to cut Geof out, but the possibility of such a feat gave a new zest to his intercourse with May.
"I suppose it is the breeze, or perhaps the walk in the meadows." "Yes," Kenwick answered, and there was something so very like sincerity in his tone, that it did convey a dim impression of what was almost a genuine feeling; "it was the walk in the meadow!" May laughed lightly, yet a trifle constrainedly, he pleased himself with fancying.
"That's a fact," the Colonel answered, turning up on the artist a glance of quick distrust. "What's to be done about it?" "That is for you to say," Kenwick replied. "The sketch is yours." The Colonel's face flushed. He had a very lively appreciation of a graceful act, and he was really delighted with the picture. "Why, bless my soul!" he cried; "that's a present worth having! Eh, Polly?"
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