one of the kitchen-boys, who asked for me so tragically and so urgently
and was so positive that no one else would suffice, that I went down into
the kitchen in a towering rage at being interrupted and wondering why on
earth I could be needed. I found Ofatulena, wife of the Villa-farm
bailiff, in violent altercation with my head-cook. He asserted that she
had no business in his kitchen and must get out. Her contention was that
she, as bailiff's wife, was above all slaves whatever, that she knew her
place and that when a distinguished stranger visited the Villa she would
show him what old-fashioned Sabine cooking was like, so she would. The
cook had had, through Agathemer, my directions for a formal dinner and he
declared that one more guest made no difference and that his dinner was
good enough for anybody. I compromised by telling him to continue as he
had planned, but to allow Ofatulena to prepare one dish for each course
and to add to each one of her own. I was rather pleased at her intrusion,
for there was no better cook in Sabinum, and anything old-fashioned was
sure to be a novelty to Tanno.

I found Tanno on the terrace, basking comfortably in the late sunshine and
gazing down the valley.

"What is that big hill away off to the East?" he asked.

"That is on the Aemilian property," I answered. "Villa Aemilia has a
direct outlet to the Via Valeria and the Aemilian Estate does not belong
to this neighborhood at all. It runs back to the Tolenus and mostly drains
and slopes that way. Huge as the Vedian estates are, and though the
Satronian estates are still huger, yet the Aemilian estates are so vast
that they are larger than both the Vedian and Satronian lands together.
The Aemilian land has much woodland along its western borders and blankets
and almost encloses the Vedian and Satronian estates and all of us in