a-singing a Thessalian catch beginning ‘My friend the Wolf’; whereupon Cynisca bursts out a-weeping and a-wailing like a six-year-old maiden in want of a lap. Then—you know me, Thyonichus,—I up and fetched her a clout o’ the ear, and again a clout. Whereat she catched up her skirts and was gone in a twink. ‘Am I not good enough, my sweet mischief? Hast ever a better in thy lap? Go to, pack, and be clipping another. Yon’s he thou weep’st apples over.’ Now a swallow, mark you, that bringeth her young eaves-dwellers their pap, gives and is gone again to get her more; so quickly that piece was up from her cushions and off through door-place and through door, howsoever her feet would carry her. Aye, ’tis an old story how the bull went through the wood.
Let me see, ’twas the twentieth o’ the month. Eight, nine, ten; to-day’s the eleventh. You’ve only to add ten days and ’twill be two months[1] since we parted; and I may be Thracian-cropped[2] for aught she knows. Ah! ’tis all Wolf nowadays; Wolf hath the door left open for him o’ nights; as for me, I forsooth am altogether beside the reckoning, like miserable Megara,[3] last i’ the list. ’Tis true, if I would but take my love off the wench, all would go well. But alack! how can that be? When
- ↑ “Add ten days and ’twill be two months”: the meaning is ‘in another week it will be the 20th of the next month but one’; ten is a round number, for in Greece the weeks were of ten days, cf. σχεδόν 10. 12. The carouse took place, say, on the 20th April; in another ‘week’ it will be the 20th June.
- ↑ “Thracian-cropped”: cf. 1. 4: the Thracian barbarians wore their hair long.
- ↑ “Megara”: the Megarians, upon asking the oracle which was the finest people in Greece, were told that Thrace had fine horses, Sparta fine women, and Syracuse fine men, but Argos surpassed them all; and as for Megara, she was out of the reckoning altogether.
