“In place of Rabulla?” Truttidius queried, glancing up.
“Yes,” Brinnaria answered, “but I got off; my, but I was scared though.”
“You didn’t want to be a Vestal?” Truttidius asked, eyeing her over his work.
“Not I!” Brinnaria declared. “I can’t think of anything worse except being killed.”
“Well,” mused Truttidius, “there is no accounting for tastes. Most girls would be wild with delight at the idea. But there would be no sense in being a Vestal unless you wanted to be one.”
“I don’t,” Brinnaria proclaimed emphatically, “but I have been thinking about Vestals ever since Daddy threatened me and scared me so; I’ve been thinking about Vestals and sieves. Did anybody ever really carry water in a sieve, Truttidius?”
“Water in a sieve?” the old man exclaimed. “Not anybody that ever I saw. What do you mean?”
“You must have heard the story of Tuccia, the Vestal,” Brinnaria wondered, wide-eyed. “She lived ages ago, before Hannibal invaded Italy, when everything was different. They said she was bad and she said it was a lie and they said she could not prove it was a lie and she said she could. She said if she was all she ought to be the Goddess would show it by answering her prayer. And she took a sieve and walked down to the river, right by the end of the Sublician bridge, where the stairs are on the right-hand side. And the five other Vestals, and the flamens, and all the priests, and the Pontifex, and the consuls went with her. And she stood on the lowest step with her toes in the water and prayed out loud to the Goddess to help her and show that she had told the truth and then she stooped over and dipped up water with her sacrificing ladle and poured it into the sieve and it didn’t run through, and she dipped up more and more until the sieve was half full of water, as if it had been a pan. And then she hung her ladle at her girdle-hook and took the sieve in both hands and carried the water all the way to the temple. And everybody said that that proved that she had told the truth.
“That’s the story. Had you ever heard it?”
“Yes, little lady,” Truttidius said, “I have heard it.”