Aunt Kathryn was saying, "If I hire a gondolier, I want to get a singer." As if he were a sewing-machine, or a canary-bird! And Beechy was complaining that she felt "very funny;" she believed the motion of the gondola was making her seasick, just as she used to be in her cradle, when she was too young to protest except by a howl. It was a relief to my feelings when we turned out of the wide lagoon into a canal, for then they did at least speak of the scene around them, asking questions about the tall palaces that walled us in; who lived here; who lived there; what was the name or history of that? The odour of seaweed was more pungent, and there was a smell of water mingling with it too; something like fresh cucumbers, and the roots of flowers when they have just been pulled out of the earth. I could not have believed that water could have such clearness and at the same time hold so many colours, as the water in this, my first canal of Venice. It was like a greenish mirror, full of lights, and wavering reflected tints from the crumbling palaces whose old bricks, mellow pink, gold, and purple, showed like veins through the skin of peeling stucco. Down underneath the shining mirror, one could see the old marble steps, leading up to the shut mystery of water gates. There were shimmering gleams of pearly white and ivory yellow, under beardy trails of moss old as the marble out of which it grew. And over high walls, delicate branches of acacia and tamarisk beckoned us, above low-hung drapery of wistaria, that dropped purple tassels to the lapping water's edge. So we wound through one narrow, palace-walled Rio after another, until Venice began to seem like a jewelled net, with its carved precious stones intricately strung on threads of silver; and then suddenly, to my surprise, we burst into a great canal. I saw a bridge, which I knew from many pictures must be the Rialto, but there was no disappointment, no flatness in the impression of having seen this all before, for not the greatest genius who ever lived could paint Venice at her every day best. Palace after palace; and by-and-by a church with a front carved in ivory by the growing moonlight, thrown up against a background of rose. "Palladio, it must be!" I cried. "Yes; it's San Georgio Maggiore, Terry Barrymore's favourite church in Venice," said Sir Ralph, who had been almost as silent as I. "And here we are at the Hotel Britannia." "Why, it has a garden!" exclaimed Aunt Kathryn. "I never thought of a garden in Venice." "There are several of the loveliest in Italy," replied Sir Ralph. "But the Britannia's the only hotel that has one."