“Stupid creatures,” answered Pulcheria.  “Let them find me a young man who is more lovable than my father; and if Philippus—­yes you, Philippus—­were ten or twenty years over nine and twenty, would that make you less clever or kind?”

“Not less ugly, at any rate,” said the physician.  Pulcheria laughed, but with some annoyance, as though she had herself been the object of the remark.  “You are not a bit ugly!” she exclaimed.  “Any one who says so has no eyes.  And you will hear nothing said of you but that you are a tall, fine man!”

As the warm-hearted girl thus spoke, defending her friend against himself, Paula stroked her golden hair and added to the physician: 

“Pulcheria’s father is so far right that she, at any rate, measures men by a true and straight standard.  Note that, Philippus!—­But do not take my questioning ill.—­I cannot help wondering how a man of one and thirty and one of seventy should have been studying in the high schools at the same time?  The moon will not be eclipsed for a long time yet—­how bright and clear it is!—­So you, Rufinus, who have wandered so far through the wide world, if you would do me a great pleasure, will tell us something of your past life and how you came to settle in Memphis.”

“His history?” cried Joanna.  “If he were to tell it, in all its details from beginning to end, the night would wane and breakfast would get cold.  He has had as many adventures as travelled Odysseus.  But tell us something husband; you know there is nothing we should like better.”

“I must be off to my duties,” said the leech, and when he had taken a friendly leave of the others and bidden farewell to Paula with less effusiveness than of late, Rufinus began his story.

“I was born in Alexandria, where, at that time, commerce and industry still flourished.  My father was an armorer; above two hundred slaves and free laborers were employed in his work-shops.  He required the finest metal, and commonly procured it by way of Massilia from Britain.  On one occasion he himself went to that remote island in a friend’s ship, and he there met my mother.  Her ruddy gold hair, which Pul has inherited, seems to have bewitched him and, as the handsome foreigner pleased her well—­for men like my father are hard to match nowadays—­she turned Christian for his sake and came home with him.  They neither of them ever regretted it; for though she was a quiet woman, and to her dying day spoke Greek like a foreigner, the old man often said she was his best counsellor.  At the same time she was so soft-hearted, that she could not bear that any living creature should suffer, and though she looked keenly after everything at the hearth and loom, she could never see a fowl, a goose, or a pig slaughtered.  And I have inherited her weakness—­shall I say ‘alas!’ or ‘thank God?’

“I had two elder brothers who both had to help my father, and who were to carry on the business.  When I was ten years old my calling was decided on.  My mother would have liked to make a priest of me and at that time I should have consented joyfully; but my father would not agree, and as we had an uncle who was making a great deal of money as a Rhetor, my father accepted a proposal from him that I should devote myself to that career.  So I went from one teacher to another and made good progress in the schools.