"Oh--le' me think, Master Benjamin--'Let peace in this house be everlasting as the sea'--it was real pretty." She wiped an eye and sighed. "Boys, I was thinking--maybe it's foolish, maybe it a'n't even right I should try such a thing, but I was thinking, what if I was to make that motto something in the _Latin_? He'd favor it so--wouldn't he?" "The very thing!" Reuben exclaimed. "Hark 'ee: _Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori._ That's Virgil, Kate." "Think of that! That's real Latin, Master Reuben? But--but a'n't it terrible short?" "Oh, Kate!--greatest things said with fewest words." "It do sound pretty. What's it mean?" "Love conquereth all things, let us yield to love." "You wouldn't play no jape on me, would you?" "Save us!" Ben knew his brother was genuinely shocked. "Not about the sampler, Kate!" "I know, dear." "Only ask Mr. Hibbs whether my translation be right, if you doubt me." "Nay nay, Reuben, love, I don't at all.... Love conquereth--" Ben said: "Love conquereth all things." "Ah me!" She came near, a soft hand on Ben's shoulder, her small sweet mouth like pink petals fallen in bread dough. "Ben, boy, you be a little changed. Something happen, Master Benjamin?--maybe Monday?" "Monday? Why, Uncle John's _Artemis_ came home from her maiden voyage that day, and a prettier vessel you never--" "Oh, bother old _Artemis_! And ha' done with talk of the sea too--ask Mr. John, what's it ever done but make widows, and empty graves in the God's acre?" Reuben said to his empty plate: "The tale goes, it may have been filled by the tears of Chronos who was before all the gods." * * * * * "Ha?--oh, your talk, Master Reuben. But only look at Ben boy there a-blushing! Bound to happen--I knowed it, I knowed it, I know all the signs of what makes the world go 'round, and who should know 'em better? O Ben, oh dearie me, soon you'll be a-moping about with a long face, there'll be a wringin' of hands, you'll go sighing with the springtime in your loins and no living with you at all. Ben dear! Tell Kate. Is she fair, Ben? Is she kind?" "Now, Kate, truly!" _He will go where I cannot go. Three years past he told me something of his dreams, but I dream never that way, never._ "Why, Ben, not a word! Mumchance. But I know, for a'n't I _alway_ said it was love 't makes the world go 'round? Oh dearie me, they do grow to be men before there's time a spider should build her web over the cradle where they was rocked." "Can't help it, Kate, the way you stuff Reuben and me with sausage and kindness, we're bound to get big and bad and greasy." _Where he goeth I cannot go, and he will be much loved, as he ought to be, but I ... I think that I...._ "Phoo, didn't I marry for love me own self, the more fool me for not listening to wiser heads, however and moreover I don't regret it nor won't to my dying day, though it was a whoreson hard thing to learn the cull was na' but a file, dearie." "A file, Kate?"