Poppa, as a stranger and unaccustomed to the motion, hoped this would
not be the case, but I knew him well enough to predict that if it were
so he would vindicate American gallantry at all risks.
Thus it was that, from the moment momma put her head out of the car
window, after Mestre, and exclaimed, "It's getting wateryer and
wateryer," Venice was a source of the completest joy and satisfaction to
both my parents. Dicky and I took it with the more moderate appreciation
natural to our years, but it gave us the greatest pleasure to watch the
simple and unrestrained delight of momma and poppa, and to revert, as it
were, in their experience, to what our own enjoyment might have been had
we been born when they were. "No express agents, no delivery carts, no
baggage checks," murmured poppa, as our trunks glided up to the hotel
steps, "but it gets there all the same." This was the keynote of his
admiration--everything got there all the same. The surprise of it was
repeated every time anything got there, and was only dashed once when we
saw brown-paper parcels being delivered by a boy at the back door of the
Palazzo Balbi, who had evidently walked all the way.
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