one o’clock before
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 forts with their coronets of guns threatening every point , and the Croatian sentinels pacing to and fro on their walls . They stopped long enough at one of the customs barges to declare to the swarthy , amiable officers the innocence of their freight , and at the mouth of the Canal of the Brenta they paused before the station while a policeman came out and scanned them . He bowed to Don Ippolito 's cloth , and then they began to push up the sluggish canal , shallow and overrun with weeds and mosses , into the heart of the land .