“Be of good courage,” Varrus said; “my son has rescued both the child and the maiden. See! they are already safe!”
“Yes, dear Claudius,” Cynthia struggled to say, as, breathlessly, and her clothes heavy with water, Claudius bent anxiously over her.
“Yes, safe; and the little child—is he safe?”
“Thanks to your noble efforts, fair lady,” Heraclitus said, “no harm is done. Hearken!” And a loud scream from the little boy, as his mother, who carelessly allowed him to stray too near the edge of the fountain, clasped him frantically to her breast, testified to the truth of the young man’s words.
“It is all well, then. Nay, good Claudius, do not be frightened. I will go home now, and change my wet garments. Ah! look at my poor handkerchief; see, the gold border is spoiled.”
She said this with childlike earnestness, and then, helped to her feet by Varrus, she said—
“Who is my father, Casca, to thank for coming to my rescue? You, too, brave sir, will need change of garments. Claudius, do bid my deliverer to come to our house.”
Cynthia was fighting against a feeling of faintness and exhaustion which the sudden plunge into the water had caused; and Heraclitus was quite forgetting his own share in the rescue of the child, in the admiration he felt for the beautiful maiden who had so promptly gone to save the child’s life.
“Come home with us,” Claudius said, in a tremulous voice; “come home, and let my friend Casca and me show our gratitude. Our greatest treasure has been in peril, and we owe her preservation to you.”
The mother of the little boy, less grateful than she might have been, hastened away with her struggling, screaming son, and very soon the voice of the fountain, which had for the time been lost in the tumult, was again heard, and the gentle motion of the clear waters rocked the budding lilies on its breast undisturbed, as before.