"Ragna is going, we shall never see her again!" she sobbed. Lars Andersen reproved her sternly. "Stop this nonsense, Ingeborg!" he ordered, "I will have none of this foolish superstition in my house. The future rests with God." But though he spoke boldly, yet his heart sank. Ingeborg's predictions had a strange way of coming true. BOOK II CHAPTER I "Astrid," said Ragna, "do make haste! It will be luncheon time before we get out, and you can perfectly well finish your letter this evening." Astrid looked up from her writing-board, nibbling her pen-holder reflectively. She was sitting near one window of the room, and by the other stood Ragna, pulling on her gloves impatiently. They had been in Rome a few weeks, and the first fervour of sight-seeing over, had fallen into a go-as-you-please sort of existence. Fru Bjork left the girls largely to their own devices; the long flight of stairs to be climbed after every outing so tired her legs and shortened her breath, that she declined to face them more than once a day, and she had conscientious scruples against eating in a restaurant, when her meals must be paid for, in any case, at the pension. Estelle Hagerup preferred to wander about alone; she would start out valiantly in the morning, her hat tied firmly on her sleek head, her skirt looped up in festoons by a series of flaps and buttons, displaying her sturdy broad-toed boots. The very glasses perched on her prominent nose gave an earnest inquiring expression to her face. Night-fall would see her home again, tired, dusty, radiant and quite unable to give a connected account of her peregrinations. She would blissfully say: "I am drinking in the atmosphere, I am saturating myself with the essence of Rome!" and the word "Rome" as she said it with an awed expression and bated breath suggested a hoary cavern of antiquity, haunted by the ghosts of buried Cæsars. Her short-sighted eyes would grow round and she would clasp her large bony hands ecstatically. Good-natured Fru Bjork smiled at her enthusiasm and if the girls made fun of her at times, they did it pleasantly.