The Unwilling Vestal | Page 9

pleasing in the eyes of her Goddess,
that she was in dire straits and that she prayed to the Goddess to aid her.
The Goddess helped her votary; the gods can do all things."
"The gods can do all things," Brinnaria echoed, her eyes flashing, "but
the gods don't do all things, not even for their favorites. There are lots
and lots of things no god ever did for any votary or ever will. What I
want to know is this: Is carrying water in a sieve one of the things the

gods not only can do but do do? Did anybody ever carry water in a
sieve truly?"
Truttidius smiled, his wrinkles doubling and quadrupling till his face
was all a network of tiny folds of hard, dry skin. He put down his work
and regarded his guest, his face serious after the fading of his brief
smile. The soft-footed sandalled throng that packed the narrow street
shuffled and padded by unnoticed. No customer interrupted them. They
might have been alone in a Sibyl's cell on a mountain side.
"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.
"In the first place, no god, not all the gods together, could give any
votary power to carry water in a sieve, be it rush or linen or horse-hair
or metal, of which the meshes had been first scrubbed with natron or
embalmers' salt or wood-ashes or fullers' earth. Water would run
through such a sieve, did even all the gods will that it be retained. No
one ever dipped a sieve into water and brought it up with water in it
and saw that water retained by the meshes. Once wet the under side of a
sieve and water will run through to the last drop.
"But if a sieve were ever so little greasy or oily, not dripping with oil or
clogged with grease, but greasy as a working slave's finger is greasy on
a hot day; if such