"Don't worry, my child," he cried, while tears of joy sprang to his eyes. "Do you know what that is? That's the dome of St. Peter's! Rome, my child, Rome!"
It was nine o'clock when we arrived at our destination, and in the midst of a great confusion I walked by Father Dan's side and held on to his vertical pocket, while he carried his own bag, and a basket of mine, down the crowded platform to an open cab outside the station.
Then Father Dan wiped his forehead with his print handkerchief and I sat close up to him, and the driver cracked his long whip and shouted at the pedestrians while we rattled on and on over stony streets, which seemed to be full of statues and fountains that were lit up by a great white light that was not moonlight and yet looked like it.
But at last we stopped at a little door of a big house which seemed to stand, with a church beside it, on a high shelf overlooking the city, for I could see many domes like that of St. Peter lying below us.
A grill in the little door was first opened and then a lady in a black habit, with a black band round her forehead and white bands down each side of her face, opened the door itself, and asked us to step in, and when we had done so, she took us down a long passage into a warm room, where another lady, dressed in the same way, only a little grander, sat in a big red arm-chair.
Father Dan, who was still wearing his knitted muffler, bowed very low to this lady, calling her the Reverend Mother Magdalene, and she answered him in English but with a funny sound which I afterwards knew to be a foreign accent.
I remember that I thought she was very beautiful, nearly as beautiful as my mother, and when Father Dan told me to kiss her hand I did so, and then she put me to sit in a chair and looked at me.
"What is her age?" she asked, whereupon Father Dan said he thought I would be eight that month, which was right, being October.
"Small, isn't she?" said the lady, and then Father Dan said something about poor mamma which I cannot remember.
After that they talked about other things, and I looked at the pictures on the walls—pictures of Saints and Popes and, above all, a picture of Jesus with His heart open in His bosom.