, and a merry, roguish smile lurking round her rosy mouth
and in the dimples of her cheeks and chin.

She stooped to pick a rose, dashed the dew from it into the face of her
old nurse, laughing at her naughty trick till the clear bell-like tones
rang through the garden; fixed the flower in her dress and began to sing
in a wonderfully rich and sweet voice--

Cupid once upon a bed
Of roses laid his weary head;
Luckless urchin! not to see
Within the leaves a slumbering bee.
The bee awak'd--with anger wild
The bee awak'd, and stung the child.
Loud and piteous are his cries;
To Venus quick he runs, he flies;
"Oh mother! I am wounded through--
"I die with pain--in sooth I do!
"Stung by some little angry thing.
"Some serpent on a tiny wing,
"A bee it was--for once, I know,
"I heard a rustic call it so."

"Isn't that a very pretty song?" asked the laughing girl. "How stupid of
little Eros to mistake a bee for a winged snake! Grandmother says that
the great poet Anacreon wrote another verse to this song, but she will
not teach it me. Tell me, Melitta, what can there be in that verse?
There, you are smiling; dear, darling Melitta, do sing me that one
verse. Perhaps though, you don't know it yourself? No? then certainly
you can't teach it me."

"That is a new song," answered the old woman, evading her darling's
question, "I only know the songs of the good old times. But hark! did
not you hear a knock at the gate?"

[The last lines which contain the point of this song are:

Thus he spoke, and she, the while,
Heard him with a soothing smile;
Then said, "My infant, if so much
"Thou feel the little wild bee's touch,
"How must the heart, ah! Cupid be,
"The hapless heart that's stung by thee?"

--Translation from one of Anacreon's songs]

"Yes, of course I did, and I think the sound of horses' hoofs too.
Go and see who seeks admission so early. Perhaps, after all, our kind
Phanes did not go away yesterday, and has come to bid us farewell once
more."

"Phanes is gone," said Melitta, becoming serious, "and Rhodopis has
ordered me to send you in when visitors arrive. Go child, that I may
open the gate. There, they have knocked again."

Sappho pretended to run in, but instead of obeying her nurse's orders,
stopped and h