"Do you call your ass Semestre?" Mopsus blushed, and answered:

"In future I shall call all she-asses that, but the old Megaera named
this one Jason."

"Why, see," cried the steward, "how kindly the worthy woman remembers me!
But she, too, was not forgotten, for, whenever you lifted your stick, you
thought, I should suppose, of her."

"Indeed I did!" cried Mopsus; then, while stroking the stripes on the
donkey's flanks, added kindly:

"Poor Jason, you too have nothing for which to thank the old woman. If
you only knew how abominable this woman is--"

"I do know," the steward interrupted, "but she is an old woman, and it
does not beseem you to abuse her; she represents the house under its
invalid ruler."

"I'd willingly lay both these hands under his feet," cried the youth,
"but Semestre has driven me out of his service for nothing, away from
here and Dorippe, and where can I find a place in the neighborhood?"

The almost whining tone of the complaint contrasted oddly with the
appearance of the tall, broad-shouldered Mopsus, yet tears filled his
eyes, as he now told the steward about the juggler, the dance, Semestre's
anger, his banishment from Lysander's house, and the house-keeper's
commission to carry a sucking-pig to Aphrodite's temple for her.

Jason listened with only partial attention, for the low grunting of a
pig, that reached his ears from one of the baskets on the donkey, seemed
to him far more interesting than the poor fellow's story. He knew the
ways of every domestic animal, and such sounds were only uttered by a
little pig that felt comfortably fat, and lived under favorable
circumstances.

A great thought awoke in his mind, and must have pleased him hugely, for
his eyes began to sparkle, his mouth puckered in a smile, and he looked
exactly like a satyr thrusting his thick lips toward the largest and
ripest bunches of grapes in the vineyard.

When Mopsus paused, he angrily noticed what an enlivening influence his
sorrowful story had had upon the old man, but soon laughed too; for, ere
he could give expression to his dissatisfaction, Jason had opened the
basket on the left of the donkey, taken out Semestre's gayly-decked pig,
put his own lanky animal in its place, and said, giggling with pleasure:

"After what Semestre has done to a poor fellow like you, she doesn't
deserve the favor of our goddess. Let me offer Aphrodite this most
charming of pigs, and you offer my little beast in the house-k