"Did you see a picturesque-looking shepherd, dressed in shaggy skins, driving his flock through the square at midnight?"
Rafael asked the question at the breakfast table one morning, about two weeks after their arrival in Rome.
"No, indeed!" Edith answered. "I was fast asleep. How could you see what he wore?"
"It was bright moonlight," Rafael told her in reply. "I could see plainly his sheepskin jacket and the long hair of his goatskin leggins. He had a great white dog to help him guide the sheep, and they entered the square and passed through it so silently that it seemed almost like a dream."
"Perhaps it was a dream," said Edith; but Rafael shook his head, and the girl went on, "Now I had a dream about the geese that saved Rome; but you will no doubt tell me that if I had looked out of the window I should have seen them following old Mother Goose through the square."
Rafael laughed. "I do not know your old Mother Goose," he said, and left the table to telephone for the guide who was to take them to see some of the famous ruins of ancient Rome.
In a short time the guide arrived, and they were ready to drive through the city streets. This guide was Professor Gates, a man who had lived in Rome over twenty-five years, studying its history and ancient ruins, and he had already taken Rafael, with Edith and Mrs. Sprague, to see many interesting places.
"Where are we going to-day?" Edith asked, as they took their seats in the carriage.
"I want you to drive a little distance along the Appian Way," replied their guide; "but we will look first at some of the arches of the old aqueduct which was built by Appius Claudius, many years before the birth of Christ, to bring water to the city from the mountains sixty miles away."
It was a lovely morning for a drive, and Edith and Rafael saw many sights to point out to each other. Near the foot of one of the arches of the aqueduct they found a group of models picking flowers, and Edith asked them to pose for a picture.