Page:The Eleven Comedies (1912) Vol 1.djvu/276

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So, here’s another trying to escape to go home and strip her flax forsooth!

Oh! I swear by the goddess of light, the instant I have put it in condition I will come straight back.

You shall do nothing of the kind! If once you began, others would want to follow suit.

Oh! goddess divine, Ilithyia, patroness of women in labour, stay, stay the birth, till I have reached a spot less hallowed than Athené’s Mount!

What mean you by these silly tales?

I am going to have a child—now, this minute.

But you were not pregnant yesterday!

Well, I am to-day. Oh! let me go in search of the midwife, Lysistrata, quick, quick!

What is this fable you are telling me? Ah! what have you got there so hard?

A male child.

No, no, by Aphrodité! nothing of the sort! Why, it feels like something hollow—a pot or a kettle. Oh! you baggage, if you have not got the sacred helmet of Pallas—and you said you were with child!