Richard took them to the Litza, the pretty park that is thronged with Sienese, old and young, every afternoon, and he explained the nearness of the farms that Irma had noticed between the Litza and the back of their hotel.
Finally in the afternoon she went with Richard and Marion to visit the house of the famous Saint Catherine, in the street of the dyers, for Catherine's father, Bernincasa, had been a dyer, and in this small house Catherine was born in 1347.
Every room of the small house on this steep street had been turned into a chapel or oratory. Life-size paintings of St. Catherine were on the wall. The pavement she had trodden was covered with wooden slats. The rooms where, as a little girl, she had helped her mother in her humble household tasks were now richly decorated with paintings. There was a certain solemnity in all the rooms, in the smaller oratories, as in the larger lower church. The pictures on the walls spoke of the saint's good deeds, and Richard told stories he had read of her kindness to the poor, of her comfort to prisoners, in one case staying by young Niccolo di Toldo, holding his head even while the executioners were severing it. One of her missions was to the pope at Avignon, another to Rome, where she went with a band of her disciples, and her influence made itself felt wherever she was.
"She must have been a wonderful woman. Her memory is as fresh in Siena as if she had lived but last year, and the reverence for her began even before her death, more than six hundred years ago."
The rest of the afternoon passed quickly, and all the young people spent the evening pleasantly together. Although Irma was aware of a slight unfriendliness on Katie's part, the two girls talked and laughed about Cranston people, some of whom Katie knew better than Irma, as she had made many visits at her grandmother's in Cranston.
When the day dawned when Mrs. Sanford and her party were to drive to San Gimignano, it was clear that Richard had carried his point. Aunt Caroline at breakfast announced that she had decided to shorten her stay at Siena. "Our trunks have already gone on to Florence, and there is nothing to prevent our driving to San Gimignano with the Sanfords." The plan pleased Irma, who was really anxious to see the strange town that Richard had described. Uncle Jim professed to be resigned to anything that suited Aunt Caroline; and Marion, although he said nothing, was evidently interested in what promised to be a novel experience.
Accordingly, toward four o'clock, two large comfortable carriages drove up to the door of the pension, each drawn by a pair of sturdy horses, with a young, red-cheeked, amiable driver. All the employes of the house, down to the cook and a little scullion, lined up beside the door, with hands extended for the centimes and francs that Uncle Jim and Richard doled out, some of the boarders waved a good-by from the little balcony—and then they were off.
At first Marion and Aunt Caroline were in the carriage with Mrs. Sanford and Katie.