The great bath, that indispensable feature of a Roman
establishment, could still be seen, with its beautiful tesselated
pavement, inlaid with mosaics of doves, cupids, and designs of fruit and
flowers. The heating system also, with the leaden pipes and remains of
furnaces, was a testimony to the civilization of the period, and the
amount of comfort that the legions brought with them into their foreign
exile. A large shed had been fitted up as a museum, and held a number of
objects that had been dug up during the excavations. The girls, poring
over the glass cases, looked with interest at a Roman lady's silver
hand-mirror, toilet pots, and tiny shears that must have been the early
substitute for scissors. More fascinating still were the toys from a
little child's grave, small glass bottles, roughly-made animals of clay,
and a carved object that no doubt had been at one time a treasured doll,
though now it was crumbling into dust.

Among the pile of broken statues or fragments of ornamental stonework in
the corner was a monumental tablet, cracked across in two places, but
pieced together for preservation with iron rivets. The inscription ran:

"D.M. Simpliciae Florentinae Animae Innocentissimae quae vixit menses
decem. Felicius Simplex Pater fecit. Leg. vi, V."

(To the Divine Shades. To Simplicia Florentina, a most innocent
soul, who lived ten months. Felicius Simplex of the Sixth Legion,
the Victorious, the father, erected this.)

Some of the girls glanced at the tablet, and the English translation of
the inscription which lay near, and turned away without much notice. But
Ingred stood gazing at them with a catch in her throat. They brought a
whole pathetic human story to life again. She could picture the noble
Roman father, leader of the victorious legion, sent over from Italy and
making his home here in a conquered foreign land, as our officers do in
India, and bringing with him his lady with her Roman customs and her
slaves. Those few brief words--"a most innocent soul who lived ten
months"--told the tragedy of the cherished little daughter whose frail
life faded in the fogs of the British climate about eighteen hundred
years ago. Hearts are the same all the world over, and the pretty
dark-eyed Roman baby must have been laid to its rest with as much grief
and sadness as the fair-haired darlings whom British mothers sometimes
bury in Indian soil.

"It's a sweet name, too--Simplicia Floren