Marion looked up quickly. "Is Conradin one of your heroes, too?"
"His whole story is so sad," replied Irma, "that I have always been interested in it. Though he was only seventeen when he died, if he had lived to be old enough, he would probably have become a real hero."
"Can't a boy of seventeen be a real hero?" asked Marion anxiously.
"I did not mean that he couldn't."
"But you said——" began Marion.
"Stop, children. You'll find yourselves quarrelling," interposed Aunt Caroline. Then she spoke a word or two to the coachman.
"I have asked him," she said, "to drive us to the Conradin monument."
Within the church all admired the beautiful reliefs from Thorwaldsen's designs, and the statue itself realized all Irma's ideals of a hero. In the Piazza del Mercato, they saw two fountains marking the spot where Conradin and Frederic of Baden were beheaded, by order of Charles of Anjou.
On their way home, as their carriage skirted the poorer section, where goats and fowls wandered about as freely as the children who were playing with them, Uncle Jim told amusing stories of goats he had seen going intelligently from door to door to be milked by regular customers, in some cases even walking up several pairs of stairs to the right apartment.