many birds come flying before the Emperor as gulls before a storm.
If only they would leave us in peace--"

"Hark, that is Pollux; I know by the dogs," said the woman, hastening
as fast as she could over the threshold and out to meet him. But
the expected visitor was already at the door. He picked up the three
four-footed Graces who leaped round him, one after the other by the
skin of the neck, and gave each a tap on its nose. Then, seeing the
old woman, he took her head between his hands, and kissed her forehead,
saying, "Good-evening, little Mother," and shook hands with the singer,
adding, "How are you, great, big Father?"

"You are as big as I am," replied the man thus addressed, and he drew
the younger man towards him, and laid one of his broad hands on his own
grey head and the other on that of his first-born, with its wealth of
brown hair.

"As if we were cast in the same mould," cried the youth; and in fact he
was very like his father--like, no doubt, as a noble hunter is like
a worn-out hack--as marble is like limestone--as a cedar is like a
fir-tree. Both were remarkably tall, had thick hair, dark eyes, and
strongly aquiline noses, exactly of the same shape; but the cheerful
brightness which irradiated the countenance of the youth had certainly
not been inherited from the lute-player, but from the little woman who
looked up into his face and patted his arm.

But whence did he derive the powerful, but indescribable something which
gave nobility to his head, and of which it was impossible to say whether
it lay in his eye, or in the lofty brow, arched so differently to that
of either parent?

"I knew you would come," cried his mother. "This afternoon I dreamed it,
and I can prove that I expected you, for there, on the brazier, stands
the stewed cabbage and sausage waiting for you."

"I cannot stay now," replied Pollux. "Really, I cannot, though your
kind looks would persuade me, and the sausage winks at me out of the
cabbage-pan. My master, Papias, is gone on ahead, and in the palace
there we are to work wonders in less time than it generally takes to
consider which end the work should be begun at."

"Then I will carry the cabbage into the palace for you," said Doris,
standing on tip-toe to hold a sausage to the lips of her tall son.
Pollux bit off a large mouthful and said, as he munched it:

"Excellent! I only wish that the thing I am to construct up there
may turn out as good a statue as this savory c