for my guests."

"Well," he said, "you have one guest here already and that's enough. Let's
bathe once, at once, and you can bathe again when your Sabine clodhoppers
get here. Life is too short for a man to get enough baths, anyhow. Two a
day is never enough for me. A pretext for two in an afternoon is always
welcome. Come on, let's bathe quick, so as to have it over with before the
first of the other guests arrives, then we can get a breath of fresh air
and be as keen for the second bath as for the first."

Conversation with Tanno consisted mostly in listening and interjecting
questions. He wallowed in the cold tank like a porpoise; caught me and
ducked me until I yelled for mercy, and while I was trying to get my
breath, half drowned me with the water he splashed over me with both
hands; talking incessantly, except when his head was under water. When we
lay down on the divan in the warm room he rattled on.

"You needn't tell me," he said, "that your runners haven't taken letters
to Vedia, but she is supposed not to hear from you, so, as I told of two
of your letters to me, I have, in a way been held responsible for you and
have been pelted with inquiries. Nemestronia loves you like a grandson,
and, if you ask me, I say Vedia is in love with you out and out. As I had
heard from you and nobody else had, I began to feel as if I ought to look
after you. Everything was abominably humdrum and I deceived myself into
thinking I should enjoy the smell of green fields. I certainly should have
turned back less than half way if I had been concerned with anybody else
than you; and when we turned off the Via Salaria into your country byroad
I cursed you and your neighbors and all Sabinum. The most deserted stretch
of road I ever travelled in all my life. I saw only six human beings
before I reached your villa and I had heard that this valley was populous
and busy. I slept last night at Vicus Novus and I started this morning,
bright and early. When we turned up the road below Villa Satronia I was
never more disgusted in my life. My men are perfectly matched in height,
weight, pace and action and any eight of the lot will carry me at full
speed as smoothly as a pleasure-barge. But they could make nothing of that
road. It is all washed, guttered, dusty in the open places, puddly where
trees hang over it and full of loose stones on top everywhere.

"I was so horribly jolted that I called the bearers to stop. I made
Dromanus get off h