The Unwilling Vestal | Page 4

a great brute of a slave, bigger even than her
father, a gigantic Goth, pink-skinned, blue-eyed and yellow-haired.
"Now listen to me, Guntello," his little mistress said, "for if you make
any mistake about my errand you'll get me into no end of trouble."
The Goth, manifestly devoted to her, leaned his ear close and grinned
amiably. She repeated her directions twice and made him repeat them
after her in his broken Latin. When she was sure that he understood,
she despatched him with a whispered injunction:
"Hurry! Hurry!"
Meanwhile, in the gorgeous atrium, the fathers' conference had

continued. The moment she had gone Pulfennius said:
"I do not believe in discussing misunderstandings before females;
evidently there is some misunderstanding here. I want for my son a
bride younger than he is, even if he has to wait two or even four years
to claim her. You assured me that your daughter Brinnaria was not yet
ten years of age and you show me a grown woman and tell me that she
is Brinnaria. What is the explanation?"
"A very simple explanation," he was answered. "Merely that Brinnaria
is unusually well grown and well developed for her age. I have seen
other cases of early ripening in children and so must you."
"I've seen girls grown beyond their years," Pulfennius admitted, "but no
case comparable to this. Why, man, that girl who has just left us would
be taken for over eighteen years old by any stranger at first sight of her,
and no one on earth could look at her carefully and hazard the
conjecture that she might possibly be under sixteen."
"Quite so," his host agreed, "and the better you know Brinnaria the
more you wonder at her. She not only looks sixteen or eighteen and
acts as if she were that age, but she talks as if she were that old and
thinks as if she were even older, and she is actually three full months,
more than three months, to be precise three months and twelve days,
under ten years of age."
"Amazing!" spluttered Pulfennius, "astounding! inexplicable!"
"Don't you believe me?" Brinnarius queried sharply.
"Certainly I believe you," his guest disclaimed, "but I cannot realize
that it can be true; I am bewildered; I am dazed."
"Perhaps," the other suggested, "you would realize it better if Quartilla
added her assurances to mine."
"Oh," the other deprecated, "I do not require anybody's corroboration to
your statement. But if her mother is at home, perhaps her presence
would be as well for other reasons."
When summoned his host's wife appeared as a medium-sized woman,
neither plump nor slender, with a complexion neither brown nor white,
with yellow-brown hair, gray-brown eyes, and in every outline, hue,
and feature as neutral and inconspicuous a creature as could be
conceived of.
"Yes," Quartilla said, "everybody is surprised at Brinnaria's growth. I
was scared, when she first began to grow so fast, and had special

prayers offered and sacrifices made at the temples of Youth and Health.
Also I had a Babylonian seer consult the stars concerning her
birth-signs. Everybody said she was born to long life, good health and
great luck. But I can't fancy what ever made her grow so. She was fed
like her brothers and sisters and she never seems to eat any heartier or
any oftener. Till she was two and a half she was just like any other
child. But she has grown more in seven years than any other child I
ever knew of ever grew in fourteen and she's so old for her years too.
Not but that she plays with dolls and toys and jacks; and she runs about
just like any other child of her age, in spite of her size; but she says
such grown-up things and she has such a womanly mind. She
understands the family accounts better than I do, is keen on economy
and could oversee the providing for the entire household. She
astonishes me over and over. But there is no doubt about her age. Both
my sisters were with me when she was born and Nemestronia too. Ask
any of the three. Or I can tell you a dozen other ladies who know just as
well. Brinnaria will not be ten years old until the Ides of September."
"Wonderful! marvellous!" Pulfennius exclaimed. "Madam, you amaze
me. But if this is true so much the better. I had thought my boy must
wait two years or more for a wife, as I am determined that no more of
my sons shall marry wives of their own age, let alone older. If your
daughter is so young, she will just suit me, and since she is already
grown up we shall not have to wait for her to grow up.