"Please, mother," I wheedled, "you don't know where I lodge, do you?"
Delighted with such humorous affability, "What's the reason I don't" she
replied, and getting upon her feet, she commenced to walk ahead of me. I
took her for a prophetess until, when presently we came to a more obscure
quarter, the affable old lady pushed aside a crazy-quilt and remarked,
"Here's where you ought to live," and when I denied that I recognized the
house, I saw some men prowling stealthily between the rows of name-boards
and naked prostitutes. Too late I realized that I had been led into a
brothel. After cursing the wiles of the little old hag, I covered my
head and commenced to run through the middle of the night-house to the
exit opposite, when, lo and behold! whom should I meet on the very
threshold but Ascyltos himself, as tired as I was, and almost dead; you
would have thought that he had been brought by the self-same little old
hag! I smiled at that, greeted him cordially, and asked him what he was
doing in such a scandalous place.