Phrygia, take the child, and keep him amused, call in the dog, and
shut the street door!"

"It's exactly like anybody going out to-day!" commented Carmel, as Miss
Adams came to a pause.

"Why does it seem so modern?" asked Dulcie.

"Because it was written during the zenith of Greece's history, and one
great civilization always resembles another. England of to-day is far
more in touch with the times of ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece and Rome,
than with the Middle Ages. Read Chaucer, and you find his mental outlook
is that of a child of seven. In the days of the Plantagenets grown men
and women enjoyed stories of a crude simplicity that now only appeals
to children. The human race is always progressing in great successive
waves of civilization; after each wave breaks, a time of barbarism
prevails, till man is again educated to a higher growth. We're living at
the top of a wave at present!"

"I remember," said Carmel, "when Mother and Daddy took me to Rome, we
saw the busts of the Emperors, and of all sorts of clever people, who'd
lived in about the first century, and we all said: 'Oh, aren't their
faces just like people of to-day?' We amused ourselves with saying one
was a lawyer, and another a doctor, and calling some of them after our
friends. Then we went afterwards to an exhibition of sixteenth-century
portraits; perhaps the artists hadn't learnt to paint well, but at any
rate the faces were utterly different from people of to-day. They seemed
quite another type altogether--not so intelligent or so interesting. We
were tremendously struck with the difference."

"It marks my point," said Miss Adams.

"What else do Gorgo and Praxinoe do?" asked Edith.

"They go into Alexandria for the festival, and find the streets so
crowded that they are almost frightened to death, and have hard work not
to lose Eunoe, the slave girl, whom they have taken with them; she
nearly gets squeezed as they pass in at the door. They go into raptures
over an exhibition of embroideries. 'Lady Athene,' says Praxinoe, 'what
spinning-women wrought them? What painters designed their drawings, so
true they are?' I haven't time to read it all to you now, but I must
just give you the little bit where they quarrel with a stranger. It's
too absolutely priceless.

"_A Stranger._ You weariful women, do cease your endless cooing talk!
You bore one to death with your eternal broad vowels!

"_Gorgo._ Indeed! And where may this p