"Buy my roses, my handsome gentlemen," she said in a clear, melodious voice, "to put in your sweethearts' hair." Zopyrus took the flowers, and holding the girl's hand fast in his own, answered, "I come from a far country, my lovely child, and have no sweetheart in Naukratis yet; so let me put the roses in your own golden hair, and this piece of gold in your white little hand." The girl burst into a merry laugh, showed her sister the handsome present, and answered: "By Eros, such gentlemen as you cannot want for sweethearts. Are you brothers?" "No." "That's a pity, for we are sisters." "And you thought we should make three pretty couples?" "I may have thought it, but I did not say so." "And your sisters?" [This passage was suggested by the following epigram of Dionysius "Roses are blooming on thy cheek, with roses thy basket is laden, Which dost thou sell? The flowers? Thyself? Or both, my pretty maiden?"] The girls laughed, as if they were but little averse to such a connection, and offered Bartja and Darius rosebuds too. The young men accepted them, gave each a gold piece in return, and were not allowed to leave these beauties until their helmets had been crowned with laurel. Meanwhile the news of the strangers' remarkable liberality had spread among the many girls, who were selling ribbons, wreaths and flowers close by. They all brought roses too and invited the strangers with looks and words to stay with them and buy their flowers. Zopyrus, like many a young gentleman in Naukratis, would gladly have accepted their invitations, for most of these girls were beautiful, and their hearts were not difficult to win; but Darius urged him to come away, and begged Bartja to forbid the thoughtless fellow's staying any longer. After passing the tables of the money-changers, and the stone seats on which the citizens sat in the open air and held their consultations, they arrived at the house of Theopompus. The stroke given by their Greek guide with the metal knocker on the house-door was answered at once by a slave. As the master was at the market, the strangers were led by the steward, an old servant grown grey in the service of Theopompus, into the Andronitis, and begged to wait there until he returned. They were still engaged in admiring the paintings on the walls, and the artistic carving of the stone floor, when Theopompus, the merchant whom we first learnt to know at the house of Rhodopis, came back from the market, followed by a great number of slaves bearing his purchases. [Men of high rank among the Greeks did not disdain to make purchases at market, accompanied by their slaves, but respectable women could not appear there. Female slaves were generally sent to buy what was needed.]