rs which awaited him, and examined some
drawings which his assistants had prepared during his absence.

"Give yourself an hour's respite," said the old housekeeper, 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.