“The gods have given me a bitter cup to drain,” replied the little man with dignity. “My daughter has had a sudden attack of illness. She is delirious, and no one is permitted to see her. The wedding must be deferred.”
Acestor made no reply, but stared angrily into vacancy.
“Strange!” he muttered, “A bride who falls ill on her wedding day—who ever heard of such a thing? By Zeus, this or something else seems to me a bad omen. Do not forget that you owe me compensation and, by the gods, a double one. In the first place the girl is beautiful enough for many to desire to wed her, even without a dowry, and secondly I had calculated on the amount agreed upon as a sum of which I was sure.”
“I will think of it,” replied Xenocles coldly, and went away even more displeased with Acestor than with himself.
On the walk home he recalled the events of the morning and, as Clytie’s flight, Maira’s reproaches, and Acestor’s greed passed through his mind, he sighed heavily and exclaimed:
“The gods know where all this will end.”
XX.
Two days after the hetaeria assembled at Lamon’s home. The house, where for many generations a large bleaching business had been carried on, stood on the side of the Museium. All the water used was laboriously drawn up by slaves or beasts of burden; but on the other hand the dust of the city did not rise here, so the cloth could be dried in the open air, and moreover there was no trouble with road-inspectors on account of the waste-water. It ran down the hill-side unheeded.
To reach the door, customers from the lower part of the city were obliged to pass around the longest wing of the house; this inconvenience had been endured for many generations. They followed, as it were, the customs of their forefathers and the idea of change did not occur to them.
But Lamon had understood how to help himself. By the side of the bleaching-room was one for hanging clothes which looked out upon the lower part of the city and this, for his customers’ convenience, he had transformed into an open shop, by first replacing the outer wall by a few pillars and then having a marble-topped counter built across the stone floor. On this customers laid their bundles and from it was delivered the finished work which, furnished with the owner’s mark, hung on the wall inside. In the evening the place of the outer wall was supplied by a curtain, and at night with a grating reaching from roof to floor.