The snow-white bird, with the yellow head, scratched seventeen times
before Xanthe, and, on reaching Mopsus, twenty-three times, which was
perfectly correct.
"Now tell us this honorable lady's age too," said the conjurer to the
hen.
Semestre told Chloris to repeat what the little man had said, and was
already reflecting whether she should not let him have the second cheese,
in consideration of the "honorable lady," when the hen began to scratch
again.
Up to sixty she nodded assent, as she watched the bird's claw; at sixty-
five she compressed her lips tightly, at seventy the lines on her brow
announced a coming storm, at eighty she struck the ground violently with
her myrtle-staff, and, as the hen, scratching faster and faster,
approached ninety, and a hundred, and she saw that all the spectators
were laughing, and her master was fairly holding his sides, rushed
angrily into the house.
As soon as she had vanished behind the doors, Lysander threw the man half
a drachm, and, clapping his hands, exclaimed:
"Now, children, kick up your heels; we sha'n't see Semestre again
immediately. You did your business well, friend: but now come here and
interpret your hen's oracles."
The conjurer bowed, by bending his big head and quickly raising it again,
for his short back seemed to be immovable, approached the master of the
house, and with his little round fingers grasped at the leaf in
Lysander's hand; but the latter hastily drew it back, saying:
"First this girl, then I, for her future is long, while mine--"
"Yours," interrupted the dwarf, standing before Lysander--"yours will be
a pleasant one, for the hen has drawn for you a leaf that means peaceful
happiness.
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