his back on the convalescents, he murmured to himself:
"Here again is something to cheer us in the midst of all this
trouble-these two, and little Mary."

Rufinus, before starting on his journey, had sent back all the crippled
children he had had in his care to their various parents; thus the
anteroom was empty.

The women apparently were at breakfast in the dining-room. No, he was
mistaken; it was yet too early, and Pulcheria was still busy laying the
table. She did not notice him as he went in, for she was busy arranging
grapes, figs, pomegranates and sycamore-figs, a fruit resembling
mulberries in flavor which grow in clusters from the trunk of the
tree-between leaves, which the drought and heat of the past weeks had
turned almost yellow. The tempting heap was fast rising in an elegant
many-hued hemisphere; but her thoughts were not in her occupation, for
tears were coursing each other down her cheeks.

"Those tears are for her father," thought the leech as he watched her
from the threshold. "Poor child!"--How often he had heard his old friend
call her so!

And till now he had never thought of her but as a child; but to-day he
must look at her with different eyes--her own father had enjoined it.
And in fact he gazed at her as though he beheld a miracle.

What had come over little Pulcheria?--How was it that he had never
noticed it before?--It was a well-grown maiden that he saw, moving
round, snowwhite arms; and he could have sworn that she had only thin,
childish arms, for she had thrown them round his neck many a time when
she had ridden up and down the garden on his back, calling him her fine
horse.

How long ago was that? Ten years! She was now seventeen!

And how slender, and delicate, and white her hands were--those hands for
which her mother had often scolded her when, after building castles of
sand, she had sat down to table unwashed.

Now she was laying the grapes round the pomegranates, and he remembered
how Horapollo, only yesterday, had praised her dainty skill.

The windows were well screened, but a few sunbeams forced their way into
the room and fell on her red-gold hair. Even the fair Boeotians, whom he
had admired in his student-days at Athens, had no such glorious crown of
hair. That she had a sweet and pretty face he had always known; but now,
as she raised her eyes and first observed him, meeting his gaze with
maidenly embarrassment and sweet surprise, and yet with perfect welcome,
he fe