The Emperor
THE EMPEROR, Part 1. By Georg Ebers Volume 2. CHAPTER V. Pontius had gone to the steward's room, with a frowning brow, but it was with a smile on his strongly-marked lips, and a brisk step that he returned to his work-people. The foreman came to meet him with looks of enquiry as he said. "The steward was a little offended and with reason; but now we are capital friends and he will do what he can in the matter of lighting." In the hall of the Muses he paused outside the screen, behind which Pollux was working, and called out: "Friend sculptor, listen to me, it is high time to have supper."
"Yes," said Eve Edgarton.
"In fact," hissed Barton through clenched teeth, "in fact I know it's
the hottest day I ever knew!"
"Really?" droned Eve Edgarton.
"Really!" choked Barton.
Creakily under their hot, chafing saddles the sweltering roans lurched
off suddenly through a great snarl of bushes into a fern-shaded
spring-hole and stood ankle-deep in the boggy grass, guzzling noisily
at food and drink, with the chunky gray crowding greedily against
first one rider and then the other.
Quite against all intention Barton groaned aloud. His sun-scorched
eyes seemed fairly shriveling with the glare. His wilted linen collar
slopped like a stale poultice around his tortured neck. In his sticky
fingers the bridle-rein itched like so much poisoned ribbon.
Reaching up one small hand to drag the soft flannel collar of her
shirt a little farther down from her slim throat, Eve Edgarton rested
her chin on her knuckles for an instant and surveyed him plaintively.
"Aren't--we--having--an--awful time?" she whispered.
THE EMPEROR, Part 1. By Georg Ebers Volume 2. CHAPTER V. Pontius had gone to the steward's room, with a frowning brow, but it was with a smile on his strongly-marked lips, and a brisk step that he returned to his work-people. The foreman came to meet him with looks of enquiry as he said. "The steward was a little offended and with reason; but now we are capital friends and he will do what he can in the matter of lighting." In the hall of the Muses he paused outside the screen, behind which Pollux was working, and called out: "Friend sculptor, listen to me, it is high time to have supper."