“What is done cannot be undone, and if quarrels and dissentions come of it, it will make you ill.”

“Vagabonds! impudent rascals! who fill my palace with quarrelsome curs,” muttered Keraunus without listening to his daughter, and as he settled the folds of his pallium he growled “Arsinoe! why is it that girl never hears me.”

When she appeared he desired her to heat the irons to curl his hair.

“They are ready by the fire,” answered Arsinoe.  “Come into the kitchen with me.”

Keraunus followed her, and had his locks curled and scented, while his younger children stood round him waiting for the porridge which Selene usually prepared for them at this hour.

Keraunus responded to their morning greetings with nods as friendly as Arsinoe’s tongs, which held his head tightly by the hair, would allow.  It was only the blind Helios, a pretty boy of six, that he drew to his side and gave a kiss on his cheek.  He loved this child, who, though deprived of the noblest of the senses, was always merry and contented, with peculiar tenderness.  Once he even laughed aloud when the child clung to his sister, as she brandished the tongs, and said: 

“Father, do you know why I am sorry I cannot see?”

“Well?” said his father.

“Because I should so like to see you for once with the beautiful curls which Arsinoe makes with the irons.”  But the steward’s mirth was checked when his daughter, pausing in her labors, said half in jest, but half in earnest: 

“Have you thought any more about the Emperor’s arrival, father?  I smarten and dress you so fine every day—­but to-day you ought to think of dressing me.”

“We will see about it,” said Keraunus evasively.  “Do you know,” said Arsinoe, after a short pause, as she twisted the last lock in the freshly-heated tongs, “I thought it all over last night again.  If we cannot succeed any way in scraping together the money for my dress, we can still—­”

“Well?”

“Even Selene can say nothing against it.”

“Against what?”

“But, you will be angry!”

“Speak out.”

“You pay taxes like the rest of the citizens.”

“What has that to do with it?”

“Well then, we are justified in expecting something from the city,”

“What for?”

“To pay for my dress for the festival which is got up for the Emperor, not by an individual, but by the citizens as a body.  We could not accept alone, but it is folly to refuse what a rich municipality offers.  That is neither more nor less than making them a present.”

“You be silent,” cried Keraunus, really furious, and trying in vain to remember the argument with which, only yesterday, he had refused the same suggestion.  “Be silent, and wait till I begin to talk about such matters.”

Arsinoe flung the tongs on the hearth with so much annoyance that they fell on the stone with a loud clatter; but her father quitted the kitchen and returned to the sitting-room.  There he found Selene lying on a couch, and the old slave-woman, who had tied a wet handkerchief round the girl’s head, pressing another to her bare left foot.