It is much the same with the busybody. Ignoring the topics and questions which are open to all, and which no one prevents him from asking about or is annoyed with him if he does ask, [Sidenote: E] he goes picking out of every house the troubles which it is endeavouring to bury out of sight. But surely it was a neat answer which the Egyptian made to the man who asked him what he was carrying in that wrapper. ‘That,’ said he, ‘is why it _is_ in a wrapper.’ And why, pray, are you so inquisitive about a thing which is being concealed? If it had not been something undesirable, there would have been no concealment. It is not usual to walk into another man’s house without knocking at the door. Nowadays there are doorkeepers—formerly knockers were beaten upon the doors in order to give warning—the intention being that the stranger shall not surprise the lady of the [Sidenote: F] house or her daughter in the open, or come upon a slave receiving punishment, or the handmaids screaming. But these are exactly the things which the busybody steals in to see. At a staid and quiet household he would have no pleasure in looking, even if he were invited. His object is to uncover and make public those things to which keys, bolts, and the street-door owe their existence. ‘The winds which vex us most,’ says Ariston, ‘are those which pull up our cloaks.’ But the busybody strips off not only our mantles and tunics, but our walls; he spreads our doors wide open, and makes his way like a piercing wind through the ‘_maiden of tender skin_‘, prying and sneaking into [Sidenote: 517] her bacchic revels, her dances, and her all-night festivals. As Cleon in the comedy had _His hands in Askthorpe and his thoughts in Thefton_,