hour where the going is easiest. I don’t want to drive him into that wind.”
“The tide is quite high with this wind,” the girl said. “Some of our places he couldn’t get under the bridges. May I tell him where to go?”
“Of course, Daughter.”
“Stow that ice bucket aboard,” the Colonel said to the second waiter, who had come out with them.
“The Gran Maestro said to tell you, as you embarked, that this bottle of wine was his present.”
“Thank him properly and tell him he can’t do that.”
“He had better go into the wind a little first,” the girl said. “Then I know how he should go.”
“The Gran Maestro sent this,” the second waiter said.
It was a folded, old U. S. O. D. blanket. Renata was talking to the gondoliere, her hair blowing. The gondoliere wore a heavy blue navy sweater and he was bareheaded too.
“Thank him,” the Colonel said.
He slipped a bill into the second waiter’s hand. The second waiter returned it. “You already made the notation on the check. Neither you nor I nor the Gran Maestro are starving.”
“What about the moglie and the bambini?”
“I don’t have that. Your mediums smacked our house in Treviso.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You needn’t be,” the second waiter said. “You were a foot soldier as I was.”
