"I remember," said Carmel, "when Mother and Daddy took me to Rome, we saw the busts of the Emperors, and of all sorts of clever people, who'd lived in about the first century, and we all said: 'Oh, aren't their faces just like people of to-day?' We amused ourselves with saying one was a lawyer, and another a doctor, and calling some of them after our friends. Then we went afterwards to an exhibition of sixteenth-century portraits; perhaps the artists hadn't learnt to paint well, but at any rate the faces were utterly different from people of to-day. They seemed quite another type altogether--not so intelligent or so interesting. We were tremendously struck with the difference." "It marks my point," said Miss Adams. "What else do Gorgo and Praxinoe do?" asked Edith. "They go into Alexandria for the festival, and find the streets so crowded that they are almost frightened to death, and have hard work not to lose Eunoe, the slave girl, whom they have taken with them; she nearly gets squeezed as they pass in at the door. They go into raptures over an exhibition of embroideries. 'Lady Athene,' says Praxinoe, 'what spinning-women wrought them? What painters designed their drawings, so true they are?' I haven't time to read it all to you now, but I must just give you the little bit where they quarrel with a stranger. It's too absolutely priceless. "_A Stranger._ You weariful women, do cease your endless cooing talk! You bore one to death with your eternal broad vowels! "_Gorgo._ Indeed! And where may this person come from? What is it to you if we _are_ chatterboxes? Give orders to your own servants, sir. Do you pretend to command ladies of Syracuse? If you must know, we are Corinthians by descent, like Bellerophon himself, and we speak Peloponnesian. Dorian women may lawfully speak Doric, I presume?" "Oh, _do_ let me be Gorgo!" begged Dulcie. "I love her; she's so smart and sarcastic. Isn't it exactly like somebody talking during a concert, and a person in the row in front objecting, and a friend butting in with rude remarks? That's what generally happens." "Did people's accent matter in Greek as much as it does in English?" asked Prissie. "Evidently. The Alexandrian gentleman--who sounds a decided fop--did not approve of a Doric pronunciation. No doubt broad vowels were out of fashion. I believe I shall give his part to Edith. It's a small one, but it has scope for a good deal of acting." "And who is to be Praxinoe, please?" "I think I must choose Carmel. She ought to act in an idyll by Theocritus, as he was a Sicilian like herself. Would he find Sicily much altered, Carmel, if he came back? Or is it the same after two thousand years?" "There are still goatherds on the mountains, though we don't see wood nymphs now!"