"Well, at any rate, don't cry, pretty one! Your grandmamma is worked with hard thoughts. We old folks are twisted and crabbed and full of knots with disappointment and trouble, like the mulberry-trees that they keep for vines to run on. But I'll speak to her; I know her ways; she shall let you go; I'll bring her round." "So-ho, sister!" said the old soul, hobbling to the door, and looking in at Elsie, who was sitting flat on the stone floor of her cottage, sorting a quantity of flax that lay around her. The severe Roman profile was thrown out by the deep shadows of the interior,--and the piercing black eyes, the silver-white hair, and the strong, compressed lines of the mouth, as she worked, and struggled with the ghosts of her former life, made her look like no unapt personification of one of the Fates reviewing her flax before she commenced the spinning of some new web of destiny. "Good morning to you, sister!" said Jocunda. "I heard you were off tomorrow, and I came to see what I could do to help you." "There's nothing to be done for me, but to kill me," said Elsie. "I am weary of living." "Oh, never say that! Shake the dice again, my old man used to say,--God rest his soul! Please Saint Agnes, you'll have a brave pilgrimage." "Saint Agnes be hanged!" said Elsie, gruffly. "I'm out with her. It was she put all these notions into my girl's head. Because she didn't get married herself, she don't want any one else to. She has no consideration. I've done with her: I told her so this morning. The candles I've burned and the prayers I've gone through with, that she might prosper me in this one thing! and it's all gone against me. She's a baggage, and shall never see another penny of mine,--that's flat!" Such vituperation of saints and sacred images may be heard to this day in Italy, and is a common feature of idol-worship in all lands; for, however the invocation of the saints could be vitalized in the hearts of the few spiritual, there is no doubt that in the mass of the common people it had all the well-defined symptoms of the grossest idolatry, among which fits of passionate irreverence are one. That feeling, which tempts the enlightened Christian in sore disappointment and vexation to rise in rebellion against a wise Providence, in the childish twilight of uncultured natures finds its full expression unawed by reverence or fear. "Oh, hush, now!" said Jocunda. "What is the use of making her angry just as you are going to Rome, where she has the most power? All sorts of ill luck will befall you. Make up with her before you start, or you may get the fever in the marshes and die, and then who will take care of poor Agnes?" "Let Saint Agnes look after her; the girl loves her better than she does me or anybody else," said Elsie. "If she cared anything about me, she'd marry and settle down, as I want her to."