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A Foregone Conclusion by William Dean Howells
page 81 of 230 (35%)
her forehead.

"I'm always getting it on askew," Mrs. Vervain said for greeting to
Ferris. "How do you do, Don Ippolito? But I suppose you think I've kept
you long enough to get it on straight for once. So I have. I _am_
a fuss, and I don't deny it. At my time of life, it's much harder to
make yourself shipshape than it is when you're younger. I tell Florida
that anybody would take _her_ for the _old_ lady, she does seem
to give so little care to getting up an appearance."

"And yet she has the effect of a stylish young person in the bloom of
youth," observed Ferris, with a touch of caricature.

"We had better lunch with our things on," said Mrs. Vervain, "and then
there needn't be any delay in starting. I thought we would have it
here," she added, as Nina and the house-servant appeared with trays of
dishes and cups. "So that we can start in a real picnicky spirit. I
knew you'd think it a womanish lunch, Mr. Ferris--Don Ippolito likes
what we do--and so I've provided you with a chicken salad; and I'm
going to ask you for a taste of it; I'm really hungry."

There was salad for all, in fact; and it was quite one o'clock before
the lunch was ended, and wraps of just the right thickness and thinness
were chosen, and the party were comfortably placed under the striped
linen canopy of the gondola, which they had from a public station, the
house-gondola being engaged that day. They rowed through the narrow
canal skirting the garden out into the expanse before the Giudecca, and
then struck across the lagoon towards Fusina, past the island-church of
San Giorgio in Alga, whose beautiful tower has flushed and darkened in
so many pictures of Venetian sunsets, and past the Austrian lagoon
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