"Carpenters, painters, masons! I will send them out to make this old villa fresh and pretty for some one who, I hope, will come here to live in about a month.

No, don't run away," for Cornelia was trying to hide her flushed face by flight; "I have something else to get--a present for your own dear self.

What shall it be?
I am rich; cost does not matter." Cornelia pursed her lips in thought.
"Well," she remarked, "if you could bring me out a pretty boy, not too old or too young, one that was honest and quick-witted, he would be very convenient to carry messages to you, and to do any little business for me." Cornelia asked for a slave-boy just as she might have asked for a new pony, with that indifference to the question of humanity which indicated that the demarcation between a slave and an animal was very slight in her mind.
"Oh! that is nothing," said Drusus; "you shall have the handsomest and cleverest in all Rome.

And if Mamercus complains that I am extravagant in remodelling the house, let him remember that his wonderful Caesar, when a young man, head over ears in debt, built an expensive villa at Aricia, and then pulled it down to the foundations and rebuilt on an improved plan.

Farewell, Sir Veteran, I will take Cornelia home, and then come back for that dinner which I know the cook has made ready with his best art." Arm in arm the young people went away down the avenue of shade trees, dim in the gathering twilight.