"I do not see anything extraordinary about it," I disclaimed. "A man needs an income, a lover most of all."
"Income!" he snorted. "Isn't your income from your Bruttian estates ten times the gross return from the property?"
"More than ten times," I admitted.
"Why worry about it at all then?" he demanded. "Isn't your Bruttian income enough?"
"No income is enough," I declared, "if a man has a chance to get in more."
"Of course," he beamed, "you do not see anything extraordinary in your petting this property. A Sabine would use up a year to get in a sesterce from a frog pond. You are a Sabine. All Sabines worship the Almighty Sesterce. But to anybody not a Sabine it is amazing to see a lover postponing prayers to Lord Cupid until he has finished the last detail of his ceremonial duties to Chief Cash, Greatest and Best."
CHAPTER II
A COUNTRY DINNER
Just then Tanno caught sight of a horseman approaching up the valley. I looked where he pointed.
"That will be Entedius Hirnio," I said. "Of my dinner guests he lives furthest away and so he always comes in first to any festivity."