“You will solve this one,” returned 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 trampled the turf and another snatched from the boughs a flower or fruit.  More and more of the rabble came, and you can imagine what followed.  No one punished them for the crime, for they did not fear the barking of the lap-dog, and this gave even those who could read, courage not to heed the warning.  So the woman’s pretty garden soon lost its peculiar charm; and the fruit, too, was stolen.  When the rain at last washed the inscription from the tablet, and saucy boys scrawled on it, there was no harm done; for the garden no longer offered any attractions, and no one who looked into it cared to enter.  Then the owner closed her gate like the neighbours, and the next year she again enjoyed the green grass and the bright hues of the flowers.  She ate her fruit herself, and the lap-dog no longer disturbed her by its barking.”