usekeeper, who had been
his nurse and who loved him as her own son.

"I must go to my sister," he answered with a shrug. "We know her of old,"
said the old woman. "For nothing, and less than nothing, she has sent for
you be fore now; and you absolutely need rest. There--are your cushions
right--so? And let me ask you, has the humblest stone-carrier so hard a
life as you have? Even at meals you never have an hour of peace and
comfort. Your poor head is never quiet; the nights are turned into day;
something to do, always something to do. If one only knew who it is all
for?"

"Aye--who for, indeed?" sighed Pontius, pushing his arm under his head,
between it and the pillow. "But, you see, little mother, work must follow
rest as surely as day follows night or summer follows winter. The man who
has something he loves in the House--a wife and merry children, it may
be, for aught I care--who sweeten his hours of rest and make them the
best of all the day, he, I say is wise when he tries to prolong them; but
his case is not mine--"

"But why is it not yours, my son Pontius?"

"Let me finish my speech. I, as you know full well, do not care for
gossip in the bath nor for reclining long over a banquet. In the pauses
of my work I am alone, with myself and with you, my very worthy Leukippe.
So the hours of rest are not for me the fairest scenes, but empty waits
between the acts of the drama of life; and no reasonable man can find
fault with me for trying to abridge them by useful occupation."

"And what is the upshot of this sensible talk? Simply this: you must get
married."

Pontius sighed, but Leukippe added eagerly:

"You have not far to look! The most respectable fathers and mothers are
running after you and would bring their prettiest daughters into your
door."

"A daughter whom I do not know, and who might perhaps spoil the pauses
between the acts, which at present I can at any rate turn to some
account."

"They say," the old woman went on, "that marriage is a cast of the dice.
One throws a high number, another a low one; one wins a wife who is a
match for the busy bee, another gets a tiresome gnat. No doubt there is
some truth in it; but I have grown grey with my eyes open and I have
often seen it happen, that how the marriage turned out depended on the
husband. A man like you makes a bee out of a gnat--a bee that brings
honey to the hive. Of course a man must choose carefully."

"How, pray?"

"First see the par