But in Tacitus’s unfortunate figure Quadratilla saw her chance to annoy him by belittling the conversation.  To everyone’s despair, she intruded maliciously:  “To my thinking, the finding of my emerald would show to advantage the cut of our aristocratic wits.”  Cornelia had just whispered to Rufus, “I wish we could lose her as adequately out of our setting,” when Lucius came into the loggia with the sealed package for Pliny.  A question from his master gave him a chance to tell Marcus’s story, which lost nothing in the friendly, rustic narration.  A chorus of praise for the boy rose from the eager listeners.  Even Quadratilla remarked that he was a decent little clod-hopper, as she demanded a lamp by which to examine her jewel.  Pliny and Calpurnia’s eyes met in swift response to each other’s thoughts.  They examined the farmer’s seal and questioned Lucius more closely.  Calpurnia’s eyes filled with tears at his account of the old grandfather—­“ruined,” she exclaimed to the others, “in the very month that Pliny’s name, as we afterwards discovered, was put on the prescription list.  We were so anxious at the time—­that must explain our never following the family up.  I will go early to-morrow,” she added, turning to her husband, “and see the mother.  We must make up for lost time.”  “Find out,” said Pliny, “whether the boy wants to go to school.”

A cackle of laughter came from Quadratilla’s chair back of the group that had gathered around the servant.  “How like my Pliny!” she remarked genially.  “A dirty little rascal restores my property in the hope of picking up a reward.  His heart’s desire is doubtless a strip of bacon for his stomach on a holiday.  And Pliny offers him an education!”

III

Marcus had been in his pasture for many an hour when Calpurnia came to the farm.  His mother was on her knees washing up the stone floor of the kitchen.  A sweet voice sounded in her ears, and she looked up to see a goddess—­as she thought in the first blinding moment—­a goddess dressed in silvery white with a gleam of gold at her throat.  Neither woman ever told all that passed between them in their long talk in the sunlit courtyard, where they sought solitude, but when Marcus’s mother kissed her visitor’s hands at parting, Calpurnia’s eyes shone with tears and her own were bright as with a vision.

When she went back into the kitchen, she found on the stone table a great hamper, from which a bottle of wine generously protruded.  Her father-in-law from his chair in the window began an excited and incoherent story.  She ran to him and knelt by his side and begged him to understand while she told him of a miracle.  The dull old eyes looked only troubled.  So she choked back her tears and stroked his hands gently and said over and over, until his face brightened, “You are never going to be cold or hungry again—­never cold or hungry.”