“Madam, Carpentarius is afraid of extending his communication lest he increase the number of his lashes.”
“Well, well!” exclaimed the mistress, “We may remit the lashes—let him answer.”
“Carpentarius,” said the steward, “Her ladyship, out of the superabundance of her compassion, will let you off the thirty lashes, if you say where be Eboracus and the young lady, your mistress Domitia Longina.”
“Sir,” answered the porter, “that I cannot answer positively; but—unless my eyes deceive me, I see a small boat on the water, within it a rower and a young girl.”
“By the Immortal Brothers! he is right,” exclaimed Plancus. “See, lady, yonder is a cockle boat, that has been unmoored from the mole, and there be in it a rower, burly, broadbacked, who is certainly the Briton, and in the bow is as it were a silver dove—and that can be none other than your daughter.”
“As the Gods love me,” gasped Duilia, throwing herself back in the litter; “what indelicacy! It is even so, the child is besotted. She dotes on her father, whom she has not seen since we left Antioch. And she has actually gone to meet him. O Venus Kalypyge! What are we coming to, when children act in this independent, indecent manner. O Times! O Morals!”
CHAPTER II.
AN ILL-OMEN.
It was even so.