were
costumes and scenery in wonderful variety for her to look over; the
children were bright and friendly, and she had enjoyed playing with
them, for all her little tricks and rhymes, which Papias was familiar
with by this time, were to them new and delightful. It amused her,
too, to see what the domestic difficulties were of which the singer had
described himself as being a victim.

Medius was one of those men who buy everything that strikes them as
cheap--for instance, that very morning, at Kibotus he had stood to watch
a fish auction and had bought a whole tub-full of pickled fish for "a
mere trifle;" but when, presently, the cargo was delivered, his wife
flew into a great rage, which she vented first on the innocent lad who
brought the fish, and then on the less innocent purchaser. They would
not get to the bottom of the barrel and eat the last herring, she
asserted, till they were a century old. Medius, while he disputed so
monstrous a statement, vehemently declared that such wholesome and
nutritious food as those fish was undoubtedly calculated to prolong the
lives of the whole family to an exceptionally great age.

This discussion, which was not at all by way of a jest, amused Dada
far more than the tablets, cylinders and cones covered with numbers and
cabalistic signs, to which Medius tried to direct her attention.
She darted off in the midst of his eager explanations to show his
grandchildren how a rabbit sniffs and moves his ears when he is offered
a cabbage-leaf.

The report, which reached them in the afternoon, of the proceedings in
the square by the Prefect's house, disturbed Medius greatly, and he set
off at once for the scene of action.

He did not return till evening, and then he looked like an altered man.
He must have witnessed something very terrible, for his face was as
pale as death, and his usually confident and swaggering manner had given
place to a stricken and care-worn air. He walked up and down the room,
groaning as he went; he flung himself on the divan and stared fixedly at
the ground; he wandered into the atrium and gazed cautiously out on the
street. Dada's presence seemed suddenly to be the source of much anxiety
to him, and the girl, painfully conscious of this, hastened to tell him
that she would prefer to return home at once to her uncle and aunt.

"You can please yourself," was all he said, with a shrug and a sigh.
"You may stay for aught I care. It is all the same now!"

So