your poultry daily feeds upon
our barley."

"I'm surprised you don't brand us as robbers!" cried Semestre. "Yes, if
you had beaten me yourself with a stick, you would say a dry branch of
a fig or olive tree had accidentally fallen on my back. I know you well
enough, and Leonax, Alciphron's son, not your sleepy Phaon, whom people
say is roaming about when he ought to be resting quietly in the house,
shall have our girl for his wife. It's not I who say so, but Lysander,
my lord and master."

"Your will is his," replied Jason. "Far be it from me to wound the sick
man with words, but ever since he has been ill you've played the master,
and he ought to be called the house-keeper. Ay, you have more influence
under his roof than any one else, but Aphrodite and Eros are a thousand
times more powerful, for you rule by pans, spits, and soft pillows--they
govern hearts with divine, irresistible omnipotence."

Semestre laughed scornfully, and, striking the hard stone floor with her
myrtle-staff, exclaimed:

"My spit is enough, and perhaps Eros is helping it with his arrows,
for Xanthe no longer asks for your Phaon, any more than I fretted for a
person now standing before me when he was young. Eros loves harder
work. People who grow up together and meet every day, morning, noon, and
night, get used to each other as the foot does to the sandal, and the
sandal to the foot, but the heart remains untouched. But when a handsome
stranger, with perfumed locks and costly garments, suddenly meets the
maiden, Aphrodite's little son fits an arrow to his golden bow."

"But he doesn't shoot," cried Jason, "when he knows that another shaft
has already pierced the maiden's heart. Any man can win any girl, except
one whose soul is filled with love for another."

"The gray-headed old bachelor speaks from experience," retorted
Semestre, quickly. "And your Phaon! If he really loved our girl, how
could he woo another or have her wooed for him? It comes to the same
thing. But I don't like to waste so many words. I know our Xanthe better
than you, and she no more cares for her playfellow than the column on
the right side of the hearth yearns toward the one on the left, though
they have stood together under the same roof so long."

"Do you know what the marble feels?"

"Nothing, Jason, nothing at all; that is, just as much as Xanthe feels
for Phaon. But what's that noise outside the door?"

The house-keeper was still talking, when one of the fol