“I do not fancy it, eating by myself.”

Then, with a puzzled glance at Dido, he asked in a tone of vexation: 

“Well, why are you waiting here?  And what is the meaning of all that nipping and tugging at your dress?  Have you broken another dish?  No?  Then have done with that cursed head-shaking, and speak out at once!”

“Eat, eat,” repeated Dido, retreating to the door, but Heron called her back with vehement abuse; but when she began again her usual complaint, “I never thought, when I was young—­” Heron recovered the good temper he had been rejoicing in so lately, and retorted:  “Oh! yes, I know, I have the daughter of a great potentate to wait on me.  And if it had only occurred to Caesar, when he was in Syria, to marry your sister, I should have had his sister-in-law in my service.  But at any rate I forbid howling.  You might have learned in the course of thirty years, that I do not eat my fellow-creatures.  So, now, confess at once what is wrong in the kitchen, and then go and fetch Melissa.”  The woman was, perhaps, wise to defer the evil moment as long as possible.  Matters might soon change for the better, and good or evil could come only from without.  So Dido clung to the literal sense of her master’s question, and something note-worthy had actually happened in the kitchen.  She drew a deep breath, and told him that a subordinate of the night-watch had come in and asked whether Alexander were in the house, and where his painting-room was.

“And you gave him an exact description?” asked Heron.

But the slave shook her head; she again began to fidget with her dress, and said, timidly: 

“Argutis was there, and he says no good can come of the night-watch.  He told the man what he thought fit, and sent him about his business.”

At this Heron interrupted the old woman with such a mighty blow of his fist on the table that the porridge jumped in the bowl, and he exclaimed in a fury: 

“That is what comes of treating slaves as our equals!  They begin to think for themselves.  A stupid blunder can spoil the best day!  The captain of the night-watch, I would have you to know, is a very great man, and very likely a friend of Seleukus’s, whose daughter Alexander has just painted.  The picture is attracting some attention.—­Attention?  What am I saying?  Every one who has been allowed to see it is quite crazy about it.  Everything else that was on show in the embalmers’ hall was mere trash by comparison.  Often enough have I grumbled at the boy, who would rather be anywhere than here; but, this time, I had some ground for being proud to be his father!  And now the captain of the watch sends his secretary, or something of the kind, no doubt, in order to have his portrait, or his wife’s or daughter’s—­if he has one—­painted by the artist who did Korinna’s; and his own father’s slave—­it drives me mad to think of it—­makes a face at the messenger and sends him all astray.  I