the while feeding them dried peas or grain with which their mother never
forgot to see their pockets were supplied.

If, by chance, they flung a handful on the ground, in a second there would
be a whole flock of pigeons, lighting on the pavement.

Then Maria would clap her hands, and Andrea would have all he could do to
see that no bird, greedier than the rest, got more than its share.

The children would be so absorbed that they would become quite unconscious
of the tourists that would gather to watch the pretty group, for Venice was
full of tourists in those days--people who came, even from far-off America,
to see the wonderful St. Mark's Square, and hard-hearted, indeed, was the
man or woman who could turn away without buying at least one bag of grain
from insistent vendors and join the children in feeding the pigeons.

But I have not yet begun to tell the wonders of St. Mark's Square. This was
in June, 1910; the Campanile was being built to replace the old one that
had fallen in 1902, and to little Maria and Andrea, there was a fascination
in watching the workmen lift the great stones into place from the confused
debris at its base.

If the Piazza was wonderful, so, too, was the piazzetta with the Ducal
Palace with the golden staircase and the two columns, the one surmounted
by the winged lion of St. Mark, the other by St. Theodore, standing on a
crocodile.

Sometimes, after having wandered to the edge of the Grand Canal and looked
away to the blue dome of the church of Maria della Salute, they would run
back to the Square and, hand in hand, go window-wishing among the shops