“Little lady,” spoke the sieve-maker, “you are, indeed, very old for your age, not only in height and build, but in heart and mind. What other child would bother her head about so subtle a problem? What other child would perceive the verity at the heart of the puzzle and put it so neatly in so few words? To you an old man cannot help talking as to an experienced matron, because to you an old man can talk as to a woman of sense. You deserve to be answered in the spirit of the question.” He reflected. Brinnaria, fascinated and curious, hardly breathed in her intentness, watching his face and waiting for his answer. “Little lady,” he said, after a long silence, “the gods can, indeed, do all things. But as you have yourself perceived the gods do not do all things, even for their favorites. The gods work miracles to vindicate their votaries, but as you divine, each miracle is the happening by the special ordinance of the gods of what might happen even without their mandate, but which does not happen because it is only once in countless ages that all the circumstances necessary to bring about that sort of happening concur to produce so unusual an effect. What folks call a miracle is the occurrence, by the beneficent will of heaven, at just the right time and place, of what might happen anywhere to any one, but almost never does happen anywhere to any one, because it is so unlikely that all things should conspire to bring about so unlikely a result. “So of carrying water in a sieve. “Anybody might carry water in a sieve any day. But very seldom, oh, very, very seldom can it come to pass that the kind of person capable of carrying water in a sieve can be just in the condition of muscle and mood to do so and can at just that moment be in possession of just the kind of sieve that will hold water and not let it through. For an actual breathing woman of flesh and blood to carry water in a real ordinary sieve of rush-fibres, or linen thread or horsehair or metal wire, in such a sieve as pastry-cooks use to sift their finest flour; for that to happen in broad daylight under the open sky before a crowd of onlookers, that requires the special intervention of the blessed gods, or of the most powerful of them. And not even all of them together could make that happen to a woman of ordinary quality of hand and eye, with a usual sieve, as most sieves are.” “Explain!” Brinnaria half whispered, “what kind of woman could actually carry water in a sieve and in what kind of a sieve, and under what circumstances?” “That’s three questions,” Truttidius counted, “and one at a time is enough.