I could see that poppa was still strongly under the influence of the Venetian sentiment when he invited me to go out in a gondola with him after dinner, and pointedly neglected to suggest that either momma or Dicky should come too.  I had a presentiment of his intention.  If I have seemed, thus far, to omit all reference to Mr. Page in Boston, since we left Paris, it is, first, because I believe it is not considered necessary in a book of travels to account for every half hour, and second, because I privately believed him to be in correspondence with the Senator the whole time, and hesitated to expose his duplicity.  I had given poppa opportunities for confessing this clandestine business, but in his paternal wisdom he had not taken them.  I was not prepared, therefore, to be very responsive when, from a mere desire to indulge his sense of the fitness of things, poppa endeavoured to probe my sentiments with regard to Mr. Page by moonlight on the Grand Canal.  To begin with, I wasn’t sure of them—­so much depended upon what Arthur had been doing; and besides, I felt that the perfect confidence which should exist between father and daughter had already been a good deal damaged at the paternal end.  So when poppa said that it must seem to me like a dream, so much had happened since the day momma and I left Chicago at twenty-four hours’ notice, six weeks ago, I said no, for my part I had felt pretty wide awake all the time; a person had to be, I ventured to add, with no more time to waste upon Southern Europe than we had.

“You mean you’ve been sleeping pretty badly,” said the Senator sympathetically.

“Where was it,” I inquired, “you would give us pounded crabs and cream for supper after we’d been to hear masses for the repose of somebody’s soul?  That was a bad night, but I don’t think I’ve had any others.  On the contrary.”

“Oh, well,” said poppa, “it’s a good thing it isn’t undermining your constitution,” but he looked as if it were rather a disappointment.

“The American constitution can stand a lot of transportation,” I remarked.  “Railways live on that fact.  I’ve heard you say so yourself, Senator.”

Then there was an interval during which the oars of the gondoliers dipped musically, and the moon made a golden pathway to the marble steps of the Palazzo Contarina.  Then poppa said, “I refer to the object of our tour.”

“The object of our tour wasn’t to undermine my constitution,” I replied.  “It was to write a book—­don’t you remember.  But it’s some time since you made any suggestions.  If you don’t look out, the author of that volume will practically be momma.”

The Senator allowed himself to be diverted.  “I think,” he said, “you’d better leave the chapter on Venice to me; you can’t just talk anyhow about this city.  I’ll write it one of these nights before I go to bed.”

“But the main reason,” he continued, “that sent us to glide this minute over the canal system of the Bride of the Adriatic was the necessity of bracing you up after what you’d been through.”