"Yes; when they are fairly on their last legs the gondolas are burnt in the glass-factories."
May watched the water-logged craft as it vanished under a distant bridge.
"I like that idea about the gondolas," she remarked, a few minutes later, as Pauline and Uncle Dan, who had been taking a turn in the Giudecca, came to pick them up. "The poor old things must be glad to breathe their dying breath into those exquisite flasks and vases."
"What's that about dying breaths?" Uncle Dan demanded, as he handed his niece into the gondola. "Yes; it is a happy fate to die in a good cause," he admitted, when the matter was explained to him,—and he wondered whether it could possibly be Kenwick who had put the child in a sentimental mood.
"But a happier fate to serve a good cause and live," Kenwick maintained; adding, lightly: "Miss May tells me I have taught her something, and I desire to live long to remember it."
