look as mild as a lamb, I’d be boiling inside and sometime I’d burst out with a yell just to relieve my feelings or I’d jab a shawl-pin into the Pontifex to see him jump, or put out my toe and trip up somebody just to see him sprawl. I couldn’t help it. The more I’d bottle myself up the farther the naughtiness in me would spurt when it burst through the skin. I know. No Vestaling for me! I wasn’t born for that trade!” “Nonsense!” Flexinna disclaimed vigorously. “You’d g-g-get used to the whole thing in a m-m-month and be the most s-s-statuesque of the six in t-t-ten years. Think of it! I’m just raging inside at your f-f-folly. To have the right to an interview with the Emperor whenever you d-d-demand it, to see the m-m-magistrates’ lictors lower their fasces to you and s-s-stand aside at the s-s-salute and let you p-p-pass whenever you m-m-meet them in p-p-public. To live in one of the finest p-p-palaces in Rome, one of the most m-m-magnificent residences on earth, to have the ch-ch-chance at all that and m-m-miss it; I’ve no p-p-patience with you!” “That’s all very fine,” Brinnaria countered, “but there’s much to be said on the other side. I’ve been in the Atrium. Aunt Septima took me there to call on Causidiena. It’s big, it’s gorgeous, it’s luxurious, that’s all true. But I love sunlight. I’d loathe living in that hole in the ground; why, the shadow of the Palace falls across the courtyard before noon and for all the rest of the day it’s gloomy as the bottom of a well. I heard Causidiena tell Aunt Septima how shoes mould and embroideries mildew and what a time they have with the inlays popping off the furniture on account of the dampness and about the walls and lamp-standards sweating moisture. I’d hate the dark, poky, cold place.” “Oh,” Flexinna admitted, “there are d-d-drawbacks to any s-s-situation in life, but, really the higher the s-s-station the fewer the drawbacks. The p-p-plain truth is that being a Vestal is the highest s-s-station in Rome except being an Empress. No g-g-girl dare aspire to be an Empress; it would be treason. If any g-g-girl d-d-dreams of it she k-k-keeps her d-d-dreams to herself. But any g-g-girl has a right to aspire to be a Vestal, if she is made perfect and is under ten and has her f-f-father and m-m-mother noble and alive. You’ve got all that and you are offered what any g-g-girl would envy you and you throw it away! I’ve no patience with you.” “You forget,” Brinnaria argued, “that I’m in love with Almo and I’d have to give up Almo.” “Not f-f-forever,” Flexinna retorted. “He’s enough in love with you to wait for you, to wait for you! You could have pledged him to wait till your term of service was up and then you two could have married just the same.” “Just the same!” Brinnaria echoed. “A lot of good it’d do me to marry after I’d be an old wrinkled, gray-haired woman of forty, dried up and withered.”