"Eat, eat," repeated Dido, retreating to the door, but Heron called her
back with vehement abuse; but when she began again her usual complaint,
"I never thought, when I was young--" Heron recovered the good temper he
had been rejoicing in so lately, and retorted: "Oh! yes, I know, I have
the daughter of a great potentate to wait on me. And if it had only
occurred to Caesar, when he was in Syria, to marry your sister, I should
have had his sister-in-law in my service. But at any rate I forbid
howling. You might have learned in the course of thirty years, that I do
not eat my fellow-creatures. So, now, confess at once what is wrong in
the kitchen, and then go and fetch Melissa." The woman was, perhaps,
wise to defer the evil moment as long as possible. Matters might soon
change for the better, and good or evil could come only from without.
So Dido clung to the literal sense of her master's question, and
something note-worthy had actually happened in the kitchen. She drew a
deep breath, and told him that a subordinate of the night-watch had come
in and asked whether Alexander were in the house, and where his painting-
room was.

"And you gave him an exact description?" asked Heron.

But the slave shook her head; she again began to fidget with her dress,
and said, timidly:

"Argutis was there, and he says no good can come of the night-watch. He
told the man what he thought fit, and sent him about his business."

At this Heron interrupted the old woman with such a mighty blow of his
fist on the table that the porridge jumped in the bowl, and he exclaimed
in a fury: