ver
postponing prayers to Lord Cupid until he has finished the last detail of
his ceremonial duties to Chief Cash, Greatest and Best."

CHAPTER II

A COUNTRY DINNER

Just then Tanno caught sight of a horseman approaching up the valley. I
looked where he pointed.

"That will be Entedius Hirnio," I said. "Of my dinner guests he lives
furthest away and so he always comes in first to any festivity."

"How far beyond Vediamnum does he live?" Tanno enquired.

"On the other side of the Vedian lands," I explained. "His property is
over the divide towards the Tolenus, in between Villa Vedia and Villa
Aemilia."

Entedius it was, as I made sure, when he drew nearer, by his magnificent
black mare. He covered the last hundred paces at a furious gallop, pulled
up his snorting mare abruptly, and dismounted jauntily. Plainly, at first
sight, he and Tanno liked each other. When I had introduced them they
looked each other up and down appraisingly, Entedius appearing to relish
Tanno's swarthy vigor, warm coloring and exuberant health as much as did
Tanno his hard-muscled leanness and weather-beaten complexion.

"Are you any relation to Entedia Jucunda?" Tanno queried.

"Very distant," Hirnio replied, "very distant indeed: too far for us to
call each other 'cousin.' When I am in Rome I always call on her; once in
a while she invites me to one of her very big dinners; otherwise we never
see each other."

Almost before they had exchanged greetings Mallius Vulso rounded the house
from the east and then Neponius Pomplio from the west; after he had been
presented, the two other Satronians, Bultius Seclator and Juventius Muso,
cantered up, followed closely by Fisevius Rusco and Lisius Naepor, both
adherents of the Vedian side of the feud.

As soon as the stable-boys had led off their horses we started bathwards,
delayed a moment by the arrival of a slave of Entedius, on a mule, leading
another heavily laden with two packs. We made a quick bath, with no
loitering, and at once went in to dinner. My uncle had been to the last
degree conservative and old-fashioned. He would have nothing to do with
any new inventions, save his own. So he would not hear of any alterations
in the furnishings of his villa, except those suggested by his ideas of
sanitation. Otherwise it had been kept just as my grandfather had left it
to him. In particular uncle could not be brought to like the newly popular
C-shaped dining sofas, which all Rome and