“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.”

“Oh, there you are wrong,” said Jocunda.  “Marrying is like your dinner:  one is not always in stomach for it, and one’s meat is another’s poison.  Now who knows but this pilgrimage may be the very thing to bring the girl round?  I’ve seen people cured of too much religion by going to Rome.  You know things a’n’t there as our little saint fancies.  Why, between you and me, the priests themselves have their jokes on those who come so far to so little purpose.  More shame for ’em, say I, too; but we common people mustn’t look into such things too closely.  Now take it cheerfully, and you’ll see the girl will come back tired of tramping and able to settle down in a good home with a likely husband.  I have a brother in Naples who is turning a pretty penny in the fisheries; I will give you directions to find him; his wife is a wholesome Christian woman; and if the little one be tired by the time you get there, you might do worse than stop two or three days with them.  It’s a brave city; seems made to have a good time in.  Come, you let her just run up to the Convent to bid goodbye to the Mother Theresa and the sisters.”

“I don’t care where she goes,” said Elsie, ungraciously.