"I intended no offence, I'm sure, sir; it was only meant in a friendly way." "That is the offence, sir; that _is_ the offence! But, there, we'll say no more about it; you can't help your profession, and I can't help my prejudices. What was it you wanted to ask me?" "Well," said Leander, "I was desirous of getting some information respecting--ahem--a party by the name of (if I've caught the foreign pronounciation) Haphrodite, otherwise known as Venus. Do you happen to have heard tell of her?" "Have I had a classical education, sir, or haven't I? Heard of her? Of course I have. But why, in the name of Mythology, any hairdresser living should trouble his head about Aphrodite, passes my comprehension. Leave her alone, sir!" "It's her who won't leave _me_ alone!" thought Leander; but he did not say so. "I've a very particular reason for wishing to know; and I'm sure if you could tell me all you'd heard about her, I'd take it very kind of you." "Want to pick my brains; well, you wouldn't be the first. But I am here, sir, to rest my brain and refresh my body, not to deliver peripatetic lectures to hairdressers on Grecian mythology." "Well," said Leander, "I never meant you to give your information peripatetic; I'm willing to go as far as half a crown." "Conf----But, there, what's the good of being angry with you? Is this the sort of thing you want for your half-crown?--Aphrodite, a later form of the Assyrian Astarte; the daughter, according to some theogonies, of Zeus and Dione; others have it that she was the offspring of the foam of the sea, which gathered round the fragments of the mutilated Uranos----" "That don't seem so likely, do it, sir?" said Leander. "If you are going to crop in with idiotic remarks, I shall confine myself to my supper." "Don't stop, Mr. Freemoult, sir; it's most instructive. I'm attending." But the old gentleman, after a manner he had, was sunk in a dreamy abstraction for the moment, in which he apparently lost the thread, as he resumed, "Whereupon Zeus, to punish her, gave her in wedlock to his deformed son, Hephaestus." "She never mentioned him to _me_," thought Leander; "but I suppose she's a widow goddess by this time; I'm sure I _hope_ so." "Whom," Mr. Freemoult was saying, "she deceived upon several occasions, notably in the case of ----" And here he launched into a scandalous chronicle, which determined Leander more than ever that Matilda must never know he had entertained a personage with such a past. "Angered by her indiscretions, Zeus inspired her with love for a mortal man." "Poor devil!" said Leander, involuntarily. "And what became of _him_, sir?" "There were several thus distinguished; amongst others, Anchises, Adonis, and Cinyras. Of these, the first was struck by lightning; the second slain by a wild boar; and the third is reputed to have perished in a contest with Apollo." "They don't seem to have had no luck, any of them," was Leander's depressed conclusion.