She rang a bell on the top floor. The woman who opened the door looked nice and tidy. She showed them a room with two beds. It looked out over a grey backyard with washing hanging in the windows, but there were plants on the balconies; loggias and terraces with green shrubs rose above the grey roofs.
Francesca went on talking to the woman while she examined the beds and looked into the stove, and explained things to Helge:
"There's sun here all the morning. When one bed's moved out, the room will look bigger; and the stove is all right. The price is forty lire without light and fire, and two for servizio. It is cheap. Shall I say you take it? You can move in tomorrow, if you like."
"Don't thank me. I just loved to help you," she said, as they walked down the stairs. "I hope you will like it. Signora Papi is very clean, I know."
"It is not a common virtue here, I suppose?"
"No, indeed. But I don't think the people who let rooms in Christiania are much better. My sister and I lived once in rooms in Holbergsgate and I had a pair of patent leather shoes under the bed, but I never dared to take them out. Sometimes I peeped at them under the bed; they looked like two little white woolly lambs."
"I have no experience in that way. I have always lived at home."
Francesca burst out laughing all of a sudden. "The signora thought I was your moglie, do you know, and that we were going to live there together. I said I was your cousin, but she did not catch on. Cugina—it is not an accepted relationship anywhere in the world, it seems."
Both laughed.
"Would you care to go for a walk?" asked Miss Jahrman suddenly. "Shall we go to Ponte Molle? Have you been
