Very soon there was a discovery—an eager outcry—some pottery! Roman vessels—a red thing that might have been a lamp, another that might have been a lachrymatory.
“Well,” said Ethel, “you know, Norman, I always told you that the children’s pots and pans in the clay ditch were very like Roman pottery.”
“Posthumus’s patty pan!” said Norman, holding it up. “No doubt this was the bottle filled with the old queen’s tears when Cloten was killed.”
“You see it is very small,” added Harry; “she could not squeeze out many.”
“Come now, I do believe you are laughing at it!” said Meta, taking the derided vessels into her hands. “Now, they really are genuine, and very curious things, are not they, Flora?”
Flora and Ethel admired and speculated till there was a fresh, and still more exciting discovery—a coin, actually a medal, with the head of an emperor upon it—not a doubt of his high nose being Roman. Meta was certain that she knew one exactly like him among her father’s gems. Ethel was resolved that he should be Claudius, and began decyphering the defaced inscription THVRVS. She tried Claudius’s whole torrent of names, and, at last, made it into a contraction of Tiberius, which highly satisfied her.
Then Meta, in her turn, read D.V.X., which, as Ethel said, was all she could wish—of course it was dux et imperator, and Harry muttered into Norman’s ear, “ducks and geese!” and then heaved a sigh, as he thought of the dux no longer. “V.V.,” continued Meta; “what can that mean?”
“Five, five, of course,” said Flora.
“No, no! I have it, Venus Victrix” said Ethel, “the ancestral Venus! Ha! don’t you see? there she is on the other side, crowning Claudius.”
“Then there is an E.”