urned Barine; "but we really have no time
to lose. So-my beautiful dove was a good, wise thought, and what it
carried in its basket you shall hear presently. You see, mother, many
will blame us, though here and there some one may pity; but this state of
things must not continue. I feel it more and more plainly with each
passing day; and several years must yet elapse ere this scruple becomes
wholly needless. I am too young to welcome as a guest every one whom this
or that man presents to me. True, our reception-hall was my father's
work-room and you, my own estimable, blameless mother, are the hostess
here; but though superior to me in every respect, you are so modest that
you shield yourself behind your daughter until the guests think of you
only when you are absent. So those who seek us both merely say, 'I am
going to visit Barine'--and there are too many who say this--I can no
longer choose, and this thought--"

"Child! child!" interrupted her mother joyfully, "what god met you as you
went out this morning?"

"Surely you know," she answered gaily; "it was seven doves, and, when I
took the little basket from the bill of the first and prettiest one, it
told me a story. Do you want to hear it?"

"Yes, yes; but be quick, or we shall be interrupted."

Then Barine leaned farther back among the cushions, lowered her long
lashes, and began: "Once upon a time there was a woman who had a garden
in the most aristocratic quarter of the city--here near the Paneum, if
you please. In the autumn, when the fruit was ripening, she left the gate
open, though all her neighbours did the opposite. To keep away unbidden
lovers of her nice figs and dates, she fastened on the gate a tablet
bearing the inscription: 'All may enter and enjoy the sight of the
garden; but the dogs will bite any one who breaks a flower, treads upon
the grass, or steals the fruit.'

"The woman had nothing but a lap-dog, and that did not always obey her.
But the tablet fulfilled its purpose; for at first none came except her
neighbours in the aristocratic quarter. They read the threat, and
probably without it would have respected the property of the woman who so
kindly opened the door to them. Thus matters went on for a time, until
first a beggar came, and then a Phoenician sailor, and a thievish
Egyptian from the Rhakotis--neither of whom could read. So the tablet
told them nothing; and as, moreover, they distinguished less carefully
between mine and thine, one