"I don't mind one bit about the fun and all that," said Stevie, decidedly; "and indeed, Hitty, I don't think papa'd object. You see, he told me the last thing, if anything happened while he was away I was to act just as he would do if he were here; now, you know, if he were here he'd just take care of Dave, himself--wouldn't he? Well, then, as he isn't here, I ought to do it--see? And really I'd like to."
"Why not let him try it anyhow, Hitty?" pleaded the little girls. And as she really saw no other way out of the difficulty, Mehitabel reluctantly consented, with the proviso that she should sit with Dave for an hour every afternoon while Stevie went for a gondola sail. Finally matters were arranged, and after a very short visit Mr. Joseph Lawrence started for Paris, leaving Dave in Venice, and the children went in to make their cousin's acquaintance.
What Mehitabel said was certainly true--Dave was a very trying boy. Though possessing naturally some good qualities, he had been so humored and indulged that his own will had become his law; he loved to tease, and hated to be thwarted in the slightest degree, and this made him often very exacting and tyrannical. Miss Higginson called him a "most exasperating boy," and she wasn't far wrong. He teased Kate and Eva so much that they hated to go into his room, or even in the gondola when he took, now and then, an airing. But, to everybody's surprise, he and Stevie got on better than was expected. Part of the secret of this lay in the fact that Dave had lived in America all his life--had just come from there, and was able to give Stevie long and glowing accounts of that country and everything in it--as seen from the other boy's standpoint. Stevie's rapt attention and implicit faith in him flattered Dave, and beside, though he wouldn't have acknowledged it for the world, he found the little fellow's willing ministrations very much pleasanter than those of the French valet, whose patience he had soon exhausted. And Stevie felt so sorry for the boy who had dearly loved to run and leap and climb, and who now lay so helpless that he could not even sit up for five minutes. Dave's heart was very sore over it sometimes--once or twice he had let Stevie see it; and then he had no dear loving mother as Stevie had, and his papa had never talked to him as Stevie's papa did to his little boy. So Stevie tried with all the strength of his brave, tender little heart to be patient with his cousin.