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We feel that with a linen sieve not only Brinnaria would be, as Lutorius expressed it, severely handicapped for water-carrying, but that, as he also said, I fear irreverently, that Vesta herself would be too much handicapped in respect to miracle-working." "A mighty sensible remark," Commodus cut in, "and one with which I concur. You are more of a sport than I thought you, Lutorius."
When Lutorius Rusco, the new Pontifex of Vesta, called on her she was less explosive, but still fuming. She received him in the large room at the east end of the peristyle of the Atrium, a sort of parlor which had on either side of it three very small rooms, the six, used as private offices by the six Vestals.
I grind my teeth over the mere legal consequences of his having been a gladiator. He will forfeit half the properties he inherited and he can never hold any office, civil or military." "All that," said Lutorius, "the Emperor will attend to in full. And your thinking of such trifles shows that you even yet care more for Almo than you admit to yourself. "You must let me tell you about him.
"I am," Brinnaria confessed. Lutorius nodded. "Now, do not take umbrage," he said, "at what I am about to ask. If you must say no, say no without being offended. May I tell the Emperor what you have said to me?" "Certainly," Brinnaria authorized him. "Aurelius is so good a friend to me that sometimes I think he is the best friend I have on earth."
"Next," she said, "it ought to be definitely agreed how far I must carry the sieve with the water in it." "You do not need to carry it at all," said Commodus. "If you stand up and hold the sieve of water as high as your chin, you will have proved the favor of your Goddess for you." Lutorius, tactful and bland, here spoke up.
Outside, in Almo's arms, she was hurried through winding alleys, up narrow stone stairways, to the Palace. At the end of a deep, dark passageway between high walls Lutorius, with some of the Emperor's aides, was waiting for them at a small door. He guided them to where they were eagerly expected.
During the latter months of Bambilio's oversight Brinnaria had felt restive and as if some inward force was forever driving her to feverish activities; under the care of Lutorius she became placid and thought less of her stock-raising, journeys to and fro to her estates, talks with grooms and such like activitie and devoted herself with more cool ardor to her duties.
Lutorius, who had a warm personal affection for Brinnaria, had been hovering about her, as it were, for some days, and on this last full day of her service he kept, so to speak, fluttering in and out of the Atrium, repeatedly returning to confer about some trifle or other which he had forgotten. So it happened that he was approaching the portal as she came out for her afternoon airing.
"No danger," she said; "my heart is Almo's as always." "And now, if you have nothing urgent to discuss, I'm off!" "Where to?" asked Lutorius. "I don't care," said Brinnaria, "I don't even want to know. Give the coachman any orders that come into your head, sketch a round-about drive for me. I'm in the humor to have nothing on my mind."
Numisia indicated the sieve on the forward arm of the second cross-piece of the fourth pole from the bow. Lutorius, at the Emperor's bidding, called the directions to Truttidius, who, bowed and bent with age until he looked almost like a clothed ape, wizened so that his leathery, wrinkled face was like a dried apple, was standing near the middle of the boat.
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