To her luxurious but austerely managed villa, Aunt Septima welcomed Brinnaria with heartfelt, if repressed affection. Until the second sunrise Brinnaria controlled herself. Then the good lady endured her overgrown niece for some strenuous days, suffered impatiently for a few more, but finally packed off to Rome “that unspeakable child.” At home again Brinnaria demanded pork and cabbage.
“My insides are as empty as the sky,” she wailed. “Asparagus is all very well, but it’s none too filling, even if you can eat all you want, and aunty says ten stalks is enough for any one meal. Chicken-breast is good, hot or cold, but aunty would never let me have a second helping. She wouldn’t even let me have as much bread as I wanted and only one little dish of strawberries. I filled up on raw eggs, all I could find in the nests. But, my six days of raw eggs was five days too many for me. I’m wild for cabbage, all I want, and pork, big hunks of it.”
She got it and slept a sound night’s sleep.
The next day she craved an outing on foot. Her mother, prone to the shortest cut to peace on all occasions, acquiesced at once and let her go out with her one-eyed maid, Utta.
Utta, born somewhere beyond the Rhine, had been brought to Rome when a small child and had no memories except memories of Italy. She was the most placid and acquiescent creature imaginable. Her little mistress led her first of all to the nearest pastry-cook’s shop where the two ate till they could not swallow another crumb.
Brinnaria, like many eccentric children born to wealth and position, had special favorites, almost cronies, among the lowly. Chief among them was the old sieve-maker of the Via Sacra. To his shop she made Utta lead her. Utta interposed no objection. Utta never objected to anything. But in this case she was especially complaisant, since opposite the sieve-maker’s was a fascinating embroidery shop, the keeper of which was entirely willing, when he had no customers, to let Utta lounge on one of his sofas and inspect embroideries to her heart’s content. So lounging, rapt in the contemplation of Egyptian appliques, Syrian gold-thread borders, Spanish linen-work, silk flower patterns from Cos, Parthian animal designs and Celtic cord-labyrinths after originals in leather thongs, Utta could glance up from time to time and make sure that her charge was safe with the sieve-maker.
Safe she would have been without any maid to watch her, for old Truttidius adored her. He was a small, hale, merry, wizened man, his seamed and wrinkled face brown as berry in spite of his lifelong habit of indoor labor and comparative inertia. He had more than a little tact and was an excellent listener. Brinnaria was entirely at ease with him.
His shop was rather large for those days, nearly fifteen feet wide and fully twenty deep. It faced directly on the street, from which it was separated only by the stone counter which occupied all the front except a narrow entrance at one side. Above the counter projected the heavy shutters which closed the shop at night and which, being hinged at the top, were by day pushed upward and outward so as to form a sort of pent like a wooden substitute for an awning. The entrance by the end of the counter was closed by a solid little gate. Behind the counter was the low stool from which Truttidius rose to chaffer with customers, and on which, when not occupied in trading, he sat at work, his bench and brazier by his side, his tools hanging on the wall by his hand, orderly in their neat racks or on their neat rows of hooks. Except for the trifling wall-space which they occupied, the walls were hidden under sieves hanging close together; bronze sieves, copper sieves, rush sieves with rims of white willow wood, white horse-hair sieves whose hoops were stout ash, sieves of black horse-hair stretched in rims of clean steamed oak and linen sieves hooped about with birch. Sieves were piled on the counter, mostly fancy sieves with hoops of carved wood strung with black and white horse-hair interlaced in bold patterns, or copper sieves, polished till they shone, they being most likely to catch the eyes of the passing throng.
Brinnaria, sprawled on the sofa against the wall behind the work-bench, surveyed her surroundings and sighed happily, entirely at home. Truttidius was beating copper wire, a process always fascinating to watch.
“I’ve had an awful time in the country with Aunt Septima,” Brinnaria chatted, “and I had an awful scare before they sent me to the country. Daddy threatened to make me a Vestal.”