hild, that you do not stir out a step without me; so if
you must go, I must go too,--and like enough it's for my soul's health.
I suppose it is," she added, after a reflective pause.

"How beautiful it was that we were welcomed so last night!" said
Agnes,--"that dear lady was so kind to me!"

"Ay, ay, and well she might be!" said Elsie, nodding her head. "But
there's no truth in the kindness of the nobles to us, child. They don't
do it because they love us, but because they expect to buy heaven by
washing our feet and giving us what little they can clip and snip off
from their abundance."

"Oh, grandmother," said Agnes, "how can you say so? Certainly, if any
one ever spoke and looked lovingly, it was that dear lady."

"Yes, and she rolls away in her carriage, well content, and leaves you
with a pair of new shoes and stockings,--you, as worthy of a carriage
and a palace as she."

"No, grandmamma; she said she should send for me to talk more with her."

"_She_ said she should send for you?" said Elsie. "Well, well, that is
strange, to be sure!--that is wonderful!" she added, reflectively. "But
come, child, we must hasten through our breakfast and prayers, and go to
see the Pope, and all the great birds with fine feathers that fly after
him."

"Yes, indeed!" said Agnes, joyfully. "Oh, grandmamma, what a blessed
sight it will be!"

"Yes, child, and a fine sight enough he makes with his great canopy and
his plumes and his servants and his trumpeters;--there isn't a king in
Christendom that goes so proudly as he."

"No other king is worthy of it," said Agnes. "The Lord reigns in him."

"Much you know about it!" said Elsie, between her teeth, as they started
out.

The streets of Rome through which they walked were damp and cellar-like,
filthy and ill-paved; but Agnes neither saw nor felt anything of
inconvenience in this: had they been floored, like those of the New
Jerusalem, with translucent gold, her faith could not have been more
fervent.

Rome is at all times a forest of quaint costumes, a pantomime of
shifting scenic effects of religious ceremonies. Nothing there, however
singular, strikes the eye as out-of-the-way or unexpected, since no
one knows precisely to what religious order it may belong, or what
individual vow or purpose it may represent. Neither Agnes nor Elsie,
therefore, was surprised, when they passed through the door-way to the
street, at the apparition of a man covered from head to foot in a