e're so
funny; look at your professor, he's older than you are, and we're good
enough for him, but you're only a brat with the milk still in your nose
and all you can prattle is 'ma' or 'mu,' you're only a clay pot, a piece
of leather soaked in water, softer and slipperier, but none the better
for that. You've got more coin than we have, have you? Then eat two
breakfasts and two dinners a day. I'd rather have my reputation than
riches, for my part, and before I make an end of this--who ever dunned me
twice? In all the forty years I was in service, no one could tell
whether I was free or a slave. I was only a long-haired boy when I came
to this colony and the town house was not built then. I did my best to
please my master and he was a digniferous and majestical gentleman whose
nail-parings were worth more than your whole carcass. I had enemies in
his house, too, who would have been glad to trip me up, but I swam the
flood, thanks to his kindness. Those are the things that try your
mettle, for it's as easy to be born a gentleman as to say, 'Come here.'
Well, what are you gaping at now, like a billy-goat in a vetch-field?"

CHAPTER THE FIFTY-EIGHTH.

Giton, who had been standing at my feet, and who had for some time been
holding in his laughter, burst into an uproarious guffaw, at this last
figure of speech, and when Ascyltos' adversary heard it, he turned his
abuse upon the boy. "What's so funny, you curly-headed onion," he
bellowed, "are the Saturnalia here, I'd like to know? Is it December
now?

"When did you pay your twentieth? What's this to you, you gallows-bird,
you crow's meat? I'll call the anger of Jupiter down on you and that
master of yours, who don't keep you in better order. If I didn't respect
my fellow-freedmen, I'd give you what is coming to you right here on the
spot, as I hope to get my belly full of bread, I would. We'll get along
well enough, but those that can't control you are fools; like master like
man's a true saying. I can hardly hold myself in and I'm not hot-headed
by nature, but once let me get a start and I don't care two cents for my
own mother. All right, I'll catch you in the street, you rat, you
toadstool. May I never grow an inch up or down if I don't push your
master into a dunghill, and I'll give you the same medicine, I will, by
Hercules, I will, no matter if you call down Olympian Jupiter himself!
I'll take care of your eight inch ringlets and your two cent