Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 2.djvu/208

190 all much better behaved than those of Boccaccio's party.

A few drops of rain quenched the fun at its height, and sent the revellers home as fast as four horses could take them, leaving the town gaping after them, and our ladies much enlivened by the delights of the day.

This third and last event pleasantly ended their sojourn at Albano; for a day or two later they vanished, leaving the dear officers disconsolate till the next batch of travelling ladies came to comfort their despair.

A week was spent in Venice, floating about all day from one delightful old church to another, or paying visits to Titians and Tintorettos; buying little turtles, photographs, or Venetian glass; eating candied fruit and seeing the doves fed in the square of San Marco; visiting shops full of dusty antiquities, or searching the stalls on the Rialto for Moor's-head rings; being rowed to the Lido by Giacomo in a red sash; and lulled to sleep at night by the songs of a chorus that floated under the windows in the moonlight.

Lavinia never could get used to seeing the