ALEXANDER THE SON OF PHILIP

ALEXANDER THE SON OF PHILIPIOn a very hot morning in May, at the corner of the Hotel de la Grande Bretagne, in the Square of the Constitution, in Athens, a dirty little boy with a sheaf of unsold newspapers under his arm was sitting on a shoeblack’s box, alternately munching a piece of bread and wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve.Another boy, not so dirty, stood beside him, with one foot on the edge of the box, watching the people in the square. He was fair for a Greek boy, with light hair which showed through the many holes of his cloth cap.There was a tug at his ragged tunic:—“Aleko! Aleko! You are not listening!”“What is it? I hear.” But he did not look down at the grubby little fellow who continued sniffing:—“I dreamt, I tell you, as truly as I see youhere I did, that I went away somewhere, and that I found a great big sweet shop, bigger than Yannaki’s or Doree’s, ever so much bigger, and in the shop there were dishes and jars and trays, and trays, and trays all around of chocolates, and baklava,1and kourabiedes, and little cakes with pink and green and white sugar all over them; and there were piles of comfits, and caramels,—oh, and heaps of other things; and …” warming to his description, “bottles and bottles of cherry syrup and lemonade, and I dreamt that the man of the shop waved his hand—so,—over everything and said ‘Please,’—Aleko, do you hear? ‘Please eat all the things you want.’ And then,” with a savage tug at the tunic, “then you came and waked me!”Aleko looked down at him for a minute:—“Did I want to wake you? It was time to get up. The big one sent me. And what are you crying about now, any way? For the sweets you never had?”The small boy, Andoni, gulped down a sob.“No!”“What then?”“I only sold two newspapers; the other boys got before me; and the big one will beat me when he sees all these left.”Aleko shrugged his shoulders.“You will cry when he beats you; what is the use of crying now?” Then he looked out again, over the square.Watching people and things always kept him very busy. There were so many things going on at once. Two coachmen, on the side of the square where the carriages stand, were swearing at each other, and they were using swear-words quite different from those Aleko had heard in his village. A man from Rhodes was trying to sell his embroidered bags to some foreigners, of those who walk about with little red books in their hands, at double the price he usually asked for them. Some men were carrying big trunks down the steps of the hotel, and three ladies with bright coloured sunshades were going towards the street of the shops.Two men, an old white bearded one and a fat one who walked with his legs wide apart and his hands behind his back, passed in front of the two boys.“Ah, my friend,” the older one was saying;“you are quite right, butγνῶθι σεαυτόν, know thyself, is a very difficult thing.”Suddenly Aleko stooped and pushed Andoni off the box.“Run!” he said, “they have no newspapers; run after them!”The dirty little boy picked up his sheaf of papers and rushed after the men, who had already turned the corner.In a few minutes he returned, jingling some copper coins in his hand.“They bought three,” he said, “the old one took theAcropolisand the fat one theEmbros, and theNea Himera. Why did you not sell them yours? You have some left.”“Because I am waiting here for a man whose shoes I black every morning. He always comes at this time, and I wait for him.”“Do you mean,” asked Andoni eagerly, “a big man with a beard, who wears a soft gray hat?”“Yes; why?”“Because I saw him now at the corner where the flower boys stand. Yoryi, the one who squints, had just polished his boots for him, and the gentleman was paying him.”Aleko wasted no words. He seized his box, and ran round the corner of the square with such speed that his feet raised a cloud of dust all around him.A group of shoeblacks and flower boys were standing about the end of the Kiphissia Road, but there was no sign of a client of any sort.Aleko rushed up to a boy much bigger than himself, with squinting eyes, and caught hold of his arm:—“Did you clean the boots of the man with the black beard?” he asked. “Do you not know he ismyclient?”The elder boy shook him off roughly.“You, with your clients!” he muttered.The other boys sniggered.“You are late, you see, to-day, Aleko; another got before you.”The lad’s face reddened.“He always asks for me, and I was waiting for him just there.”“Oh,” said one of the flower boys, tying up a big bunch of scarlet carnations as he spoke, “your client asked for you all right, but Yoryi here, told him that you had been sent on a message and that he was your partner.”Yoryi laughed noisily.“That is howIdo business.”But his laugh broke off in the middle. Aleko had come close to him, and with one well-directed kick had sent the big shoeblack’s box flying into the middle of the road.Brushes flew here and there, bottles of yellow and black polish were broken and their contents spilt in the dust, and round metal boxes rolled in all directions. Yoryi seized hold of Aleko by the neck and struck him savagely on the head.“A bad year to you!” he shouted, as blow followed blow. “Did you not know that you would eat stick if you played those tricks on me? Did you not know it? Take that then! And that! And that! Did you think you could touch me and go free?” and the blows came down like rain. At last he flung the smaller boy away from him and began sullenly collecting the scattered contents of his box.Aleko picked himself up, staggering a little as he stood.“Oh, I knew!” he shouted, staunching a bleeding nose on the sleeve of his tunic. “Ofcourse I knew. Do I not eat stick every day? Am I not the smallest? But it wasyouwho did not know!Youwho thought you could cheat me and be safe! You did not know that your box would be all over the road, that your bottles would be broken, that all your things would be so spoiled that you could not steal other lads’ clients this morning again! Pick them up then! Stoop! Yes, stoop in the dust and pick them up!”The other boys were laughing at Yoryi now.“He has played you a good trick, the little one!”“Did you think,” shouted Aleko, “that you could touch me and go free?” and before Yoryi, furious now with rage, could catch him a second time, he doubled, and ran round the corner of the University Road.Being fleet of foot, he left Yoryi far behind him, and running up one street and down another and across a third, he soon arrived safe and unpursued at the top end of Stadium Street and back again in Constitution Square.A sound of music came from the direction of the Palace and he looked up eagerly. The guard was changing; he could hear the measuredtread of the soldiers. Though he had been in Athens nearly two years the spectacle had never lost its charm for him.Pushing, stooping, dodging, he elbowed his way to the edge of the pavement and waited.On they came, the officer, the band, the marching men, the beautiful blue flag held aloft by a white-gloved sergeant. Aleko knew all about it, for a soldier had told him one day that you had to be a good-conduct man to be allowed to carry the flag, and that you had to wear white gloves: and the boy had long ago decided that when his time came to serve as a soldier, he would always carry the flag.Up sprang all the officers who happened to be sitting at the little café tables in the square, and stood saluting. Civilians who were passing stopped and uncovered; coachmen stood up on their boxes bare-headed; Aleko pulled off his tattered cap in imitation and stood with the hot sun shining on his tumbled fair hair.An old man looked down on him and smiled. Then, catching sight of the dust and smears of blood on the boy’s face, he remarked with a chiding gesture:—“Ah! you have been fighting.”“No,” answered Aleko, “I have been beaten.” Then emboldened he asked, “Tell me, why do people take their hats off?”The old man stared at the question.“Why, to the flag, of course.”“Yes, I know; but why?”“Why? To show respect to the flag, of course.”“Why does it show respect when one takes one’s hat off?”The old man answered by another question:—“From where are you my lad?”“From Megaloupolis.”“Ah, you do not see flags there, do you?”“At Easter, and on the twenty-fifth of March,2there was always a flag put up at the Town Hall but no one took his hat off.”“Well, in Athens you will learn many things,” said the old man walking away. Aleko looked after him.“I do not think,” he muttered, “that he knew why. How many people do not know things when you ask them.” Then he ran up the steps of the Hotel Grande Bretagne where oneof the head servants, standing on the verandah, had beckoned to him to clean his boots.“Make them shine well,” said the man, putting his foot on the little inclined rest of the box.“Be easy,” answered Aleko, “you will see your face in them.”He scraped, and rubbed, and polished vigorously; then when one foot was changed for the other, he suddenly asked without looking up:—“What does ‘Know thyself’ mean?”“Where did you pick up that fine phrase?”“One man who was passing said it to another, and he said it was a very difficult thing. What does it mean?”“If it be difficult how should I know it?” answered the head servant. “Do poor folk have time to go beyond the municipal classes at school?”“Doesheknow?” and Aleko with a backward jerk of his thumb indicated another servant, stout and gray-haired, standing within the portal of the hotel.“He! He can scarcely read the newspaper!”“Then who knows?”“Do you not go to the Parnassos School every night?”“Of course I go.”“Well, ask your schoolmaster.”“Oh, he has no time; we are many boys. You see I thought as you stand here so often doing nothing, if you knew you would have time to tell me.”The man scowled.“Enough words! There are your ten lepta. Go about your business and leave me to mine.”Aleko slung his box over his shoulder and descended the hotel steps slowly. He was beginning to feel sore all over and his head ached. He decided that he would go home and have a sleep. Home meant the cellar which he shared with the other boy, Andoni, and with the older shoeblack, “the big one” who had brought them over from Megaloupolis, and for whom they worked, till such time as they should have earned enough to set up for themselves.Bells were ringing for noon, and after that no one would be out in the sun-blaze of the streets to want boots cleaned; there would beno work again until the sales of the evening newspapers began.He trudged rather wearily up the steep streets towards the Square of the Kolonaki, near which he lived; and as he went, he wondered once more why so many people did not know things when you asked them.There were so many things he wanted to find out.Who lived in the Academy with the two statues on the tall columns, which he passed two or three times a day, and what did people do inside it? What was in the red books which the foreigners held in their hands when they looked up at the old temples? What was that statue in the Zappion Gardens where a woman was putting a crown of leaves on a man’s head? And most of all, what made automobiles go without horses when the driver turned that round wheel? The whole town was one great “Why” to him.When he reached the street behind the Kolonaki Square, and went down the steps to the cellar, he found it empty. From a shelf in one corner he took down the half of a loaf of bread, and a piece of white cheese wrapped in a sheetof paper. His mother was renowned in Megaloupolis as one of the tidiest housewives of the place, and it was from her that he had learned not to leave food about uncovered; this was also probably the reason why his face and hands were generally less grimy than those of most of the other shoeblacks.Nearly all the boys he knew were shoeblacks, or newspaper sellers and messenger boys, or they combined the three trades; and nearly all came from Megaloupolis in the charge of an older boy of eighteen or twenty years old, “the big one,” as they called him. He paid them a yearly wage and, except what was necessary for food, all their earnings went to him. Aleko was paid one hundred and fifty drachmæ a year; next year he was to have two hundred. Later on, he would work for himself, and doubtless when he was old enough he would in his turn employ smaller boys. He had no father, and the money was required to help his mother and the two small sisters in Megaloupolis. How could they live else?After he had eaten, he sat down and pulled out his morning’s earnings from the breast of his tunic. The copper coins and nickelsamounted to one drachma and thirty-five lepta; of these, he put aside thirty lepta for his supper, and screwing up the rest in a piece of old newspaper pushed it underneath a painted wooden chest to give to “the big one” when accounts were made in the evening. Then he threw himself on his mattress, doubled his arm under his head, and slept till the loud barking of a dog on the pavement outside awoke him with a start.He rushed up the cellar steps which led to the pavement of the narrow street, banging the door behind him, and nearly fell headlong over a fox-terrier busily occupied with the rubbish tin of the next house. The little dog yelped sharply as Aleko stumbled over him, and abandoning the rubbish tin, trotted quickly off towards the square.“Solon!” called Aleko. “Here Solon! Why do you run away? It is only I.”Solon stopped short, listened for a moment with uplifted paw, and then with a series of little joyful barks ran back towards the boy.Aleko stooped, and catching him up by the middle of his well-fed, white little body tucked him under his arm.“You little rascal! What do you mean by rooting in the rubbish? Have you not enough to eat in your house? I should be glad to have your luck.”Two little ears were cocked on one side of Aleko’s arm and a short tail wagged frantically on the other.“I wonder how it happens that you are out alone? Has Anneza lost you?”Just then, coming out on the Kolonaki Square, Aleko descried a young woman carrying a basket, who was looking all around her and peering under the bushes of the enclosure seemingly in great distress. He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled sharply.“Anneza! Eh! Here is your dog! It is I who have him!”The young woman wheeled around and came rapidly towards him. She was pretty, with black hair and a big white apron crossed over a pink cotton frock.“Do you not feed him enough?” Aleko asked her as he put down the dog. “I found him in my street with his nose in the rubbish tin.”“Feed him, indeed?” snorted the young woman, “he has of the best. If all poor peoplefared as he does, it would be well. The master is so fond of him he fears lest the wind should blow or the rain should drop on his body. He often comes himself into the kitchen to see what I give him to eat. But all the same the dirty dog is always grubbing in the rubbish tins. When I take him out he is always straying and making me go cold with fright for fear the ‘boya’3should catch him.”“The ‘boya’ only takes dogs who belong to no one. He would not take yours,” said Aleko, turning Solon over on his back with his foot as he spoke.“Do I know? Now, in this hot weather when dogs go mad, they say that the ‘boya’ gets paid one drachma for every dog he catches; and all he can lay hand on are thrown into his cart. If I had my way the dog should never stir out, but the master says he must have exercise, and if he sees me out without Solon, bad luck for me!”“Take your dog now,” said the boy, “I must go for my newspapers.”“Listen, Aleko.”“What?”“Come to the house in the morning; there are some curtains to beat.”“I will come.” Then, as he turned to go, he added, “Keep the dog by you! Do not let him stray again.”“I have no strap,” answered Anneza.Aleko was already some way off, but he called back over his shoulder:—“You need not tie him. Talk to him.”Anneza looked after the boy, whose bare feet were raising a cloud of dust as he ran, and tapped her forehead.“A good boy,” she murmured, “but …”

IOn a very hot morning in May, at the corner of the Hotel de la Grande Bretagne, in the Square of the Constitution, in Athens, a dirty little boy with a sheaf of unsold newspapers under his arm was sitting on a shoeblack’s box, alternately munching a piece of bread and wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve.Another boy, not so dirty, stood beside him, with one foot on the edge of the box, watching the people in the square. He was fair for a Greek boy, with light hair which showed through the many holes of his cloth cap.There was a tug at his ragged tunic:—“Aleko! Aleko! You are not listening!”“What is it? I hear.” But he did not look down at the grubby little fellow who continued sniffing:—“I dreamt, I tell you, as truly as I see youhere I did, that I went away somewhere, and that I found a great big sweet shop, bigger than Yannaki’s or Doree’s, ever so much bigger, and in the shop there were dishes and jars and trays, and trays, and trays all around of chocolates, and baklava,1and kourabiedes, and little cakes with pink and green and white sugar all over them; and there were piles of comfits, and caramels,—oh, and heaps of other things; and …” warming to his description, “bottles and bottles of cherry syrup and lemonade, and I dreamt that the man of the shop waved his hand—so,—over everything and said ‘Please,’—Aleko, do you hear? ‘Please eat all the things you want.’ And then,” with a savage tug at the tunic, “then you came and waked me!”Aleko looked down at him for a minute:—“Did I want to wake you? It was time to get up. The big one sent me. And what are you crying about now, any way? For the sweets you never had?”The small boy, Andoni, gulped down a sob.“No!”“What then?”“I only sold two newspapers; the other boys got before me; and the big one will beat me when he sees all these left.”Aleko shrugged his shoulders.“You will cry when he beats you; what is the use of crying now?” Then he looked out again, over the square.Watching people and things always kept him very busy. There were so many things going on at once. Two coachmen, on the side of the square where the carriages stand, were swearing at each other, and they were using swear-words quite different from those Aleko had heard in his village. A man from Rhodes was trying to sell his embroidered bags to some foreigners, of those who walk about with little red books in their hands, at double the price he usually asked for them. Some men were carrying big trunks down the steps of the hotel, and three ladies with bright coloured sunshades were going towards the street of the shops.Two men, an old white bearded one and a fat one who walked with his legs wide apart and his hands behind his back, passed in front of the two boys.“Ah, my friend,” the older one was saying;“you are quite right, butγνῶθι σεαυτόν, know thyself, is a very difficult thing.”Suddenly Aleko stooped and pushed Andoni off the box.“Run!” he said, “they have no newspapers; run after them!”The dirty little boy picked up his sheaf of papers and rushed after the men, who had already turned the corner.In a few minutes he returned, jingling some copper coins in his hand.“They bought three,” he said, “the old one took theAcropolisand the fat one theEmbros, and theNea Himera. Why did you not sell them yours? You have some left.”“Because I am waiting here for a man whose shoes I black every morning. He always comes at this time, and I wait for him.”“Do you mean,” asked Andoni eagerly, “a big man with a beard, who wears a soft gray hat?”“Yes; why?”“Because I saw him now at the corner where the flower boys stand. Yoryi, the one who squints, had just polished his boots for him, and the gentleman was paying him.”Aleko wasted no words. He seized his box, and ran round the corner of the square with such speed that his feet raised a cloud of dust all around him.A group of shoeblacks and flower boys were standing about the end of the Kiphissia Road, but there was no sign of a client of any sort.Aleko rushed up to a boy much bigger than himself, with squinting eyes, and caught hold of his arm:—“Did you clean the boots of the man with the black beard?” he asked. “Do you not know he ismyclient?”The elder boy shook him off roughly.“You, with your clients!” he muttered.The other boys sniggered.“You are late, you see, to-day, Aleko; another got before you.”The lad’s face reddened.“He always asks for me, and I was waiting for him just there.”“Oh,” said one of the flower boys, tying up a big bunch of scarlet carnations as he spoke, “your client asked for you all right, but Yoryi here, told him that you had been sent on a message and that he was your partner.”Yoryi laughed noisily.“That is howIdo business.”But his laugh broke off in the middle. Aleko had come close to him, and with one well-directed kick had sent the big shoeblack’s box flying into the middle of the road.Brushes flew here and there, bottles of yellow and black polish were broken and their contents spilt in the dust, and round metal boxes rolled in all directions. Yoryi seized hold of Aleko by the neck and struck him savagely on the head.“A bad year to you!” he shouted, as blow followed blow. “Did you not know that you would eat stick if you played those tricks on me? Did you not know it? Take that then! And that! And that! Did you think you could touch me and go free?” and the blows came down like rain. At last he flung the smaller boy away from him and began sullenly collecting the scattered contents of his box.Aleko picked himself up, staggering a little as he stood.“Oh, I knew!” he shouted, staunching a bleeding nose on the sleeve of his tunic. “Ofcourse I knew. Do I not eat stick every day? Am I not the smallest? But it wasyouwho did not know!Youwho thought you could cheat me and be safe! You did not know that your box would be all over the road, that your bottles would be broken, that all your things would be so spoiled that you could not steal other lads’ clients this morning again! Pick them up then! Stoop! Yes, stoop in the dust and pick them up!”The other boys were laughing at Yoryi now.“He has played you a good trick, the little one!”“Did you think,” shouted Aleko, “that you could touch me and go free?” and before Yoryi, furious now with rage, could catch him a second time, he doubled, and ran round the corner of the University Road.Being fleet of foot, he left Yoryi far behind him, and running up one street and down another and across a third, he soon arrived safe and unpursued at the top end of Stadium Street and back again in Constitution Square.A sound of music came from the direction of the Palace and he looked up eagerly. The guard was changing; he could hear the measuredtread of the soldiers. Though he had been in Athens nearly two years the spectacle had never lost its charm for him.Pushing, stooping, dodging, he elbowed his way to the edge of the pavement and waited.On they came, the officer, the band, the marching men, the beautiful blue flag held aloft by a white-gloved sergeant. Aleko knew all about it, for a soldier had told him one day that you had to be a good-conduct man to be allowed to carry the flag, and that you had to wear white gloves: and the boy had long ago decided that when his time came to serve as a soldier, he would always carry the flag.Up sprang all the officers who happened to be sitting at the little café tables in the square, and stood saluting. Civilians who were passing stopped and uncovered; coachmen stood up on their boxes bare-headed; Aleko pulled off his tattered cap in imitation and stood with the hot sun shining on his tumbled fair hair.An old man looked down on him and smiled. Then, catching sight of the dust and smears of blood on the boy’s face, he remarked with a chiding gesture:—“Ah! you have been fighting.”“No,” answered Aleko, “I have been beaten.” Then emboldened he asked, “Tell me, why do people take their hats off?”The old man stared at the question.“Why, to the flag, of course.”“Yes, I know; but why?”“Why? To show respect to the flag, of course.”“Why does it show respect when one takes one’s hat off?”The old man answered by another question:—“From where are you my lad?”“From Megaloupolis.”“Ah, you do not see flags there, do you?”“At Easter, and on the twenty-fifth of March,2there was always a flag put up at the Town Hall but no one took his hat off.”“Well, in Athens you will learn many things,” said the old man walking away. Aleko looked after him.“I do not think,” he muttered, “that he knew why. How many people do not know things when you ask them.” Then he ran up the steps of the Hotel Grande Bretagne where oneof the head servants, standing on the verandah, had beckoned to him to clean his boots.“Make them shine well,” said the man, putting his foot on the little inclined rest of the box.“Be easy,” answered Aleko, “you will see your face in them.”He scraped, and rubbed, and polished vigorously; then when one foot was changed for the other, he suddenly asked without looking up:—“What does ‘Know thyself’ mean?”“Where did you pick up that fine phrase?”“One man who was passing said it to another, and he said it was a very difficult thing. What does it mean?”“If it be difficult how should I know it?” answered the head servant. “Do poor folk have time to go beyond the municipal classes at school?”“Doesheknow?” and Aleko with a backward jerk of his thumb indicated another servant, stout and gray-haired, standing within the portal of the hotel.“He! He can scarcely read the newspaper!”“Then who knows?”“Do you not go to the Parnassos School every night?”“Of course I go.”“Well, ask your schoolmaster.”“Oh, he has no time; we are many boys. You see I thought as you stand here so often doing nothing, if you knew you would have time to tell me.”The man scowled.“Enough words! There are your ten lepta. Go about your business and leave me to mine.”Aleko slung his box over his shoulder and descended the hotel steps slowly. He was beginning to feel sore all over and his head ached. He decided that he would go home and have a sleep. Home meant the cellar which he shared with the other boy, Andoni, and with the older shoeblack, “the big one” who had brought them over from Megaloupolis, and for whom they worked, till such time as they should have earned enough to set up for themselves.Bells were ringing for noon, and after that no one would be out in the sun-blaze of the streets to want boots cleaned; there would beno work again until the sales of the evening newspapers began.He trudged rather wearily up the steep streets towards the Square of the Kolonaki, near which he lived; and as he went, he wondered once more why so many people did not know things when you asked them.There were so many things he wanted to find out.Who lived in the Academy with the two statues on the tall columns, which he passed two or three times a day, and what did people do inside it? What was in the red books which the foreigners held in their hands when they looked up at the old temples? What was that statue in the Zappion Gardens where a woman was putting a crown of leaves on a man’s head? And most of all, what made automobiles go without horses when the driver turned that round wheel? The whole town was one great “Why” to him.When he reached the street behind the Kolonaki Square, and went down the steps to the cellar, he found it empty. From a shelf in one corner he took down the half of a loaf of bread, and a piece of white cheese wrapped in a sheetof paper. His mother was renowned in Megaloupolis as one of the tidiest housewives of the place, and it was from her that he had learned not to leave food about uncovered; this was also probably the reason why his face and hands were generally less grimy than those of most of the other shoeblacks.Nearly all the boys he knew were shoeblacks, or newspaper sellers and messenger boys, or they combined the three trades; and nearly all came from Megaloupolis in the charge of an older boy of eighteen or twenty years old, “the big one,” as they called him. He paid them a yearly wage and, except what was necessary for food, all their earnings went to him. Aleko was paid one hundred and fifty drachmæ a year; next year he was to have two hundred. Later on, he would work for himself, and doubtless when he was old enough he would in his turn employ smaller boys. He had no father, and the money was required to help his mother and the two small sisters in Megaloupolis. How could they live else?After he had eaten, he sat down and pulled out his morning’s earnings from the breast of his tunic. The copper coins and nickelsamounted to one drachma and thirty-five lepta; of these, he put aside thirty lepta for his supper, and screwing up the rest in a piece of old newspaper pushed it underneath a painted wooden chest to give to “the big one” when accounts were made in the evening. Then he threw himself on his mattress, doubled his arm under his head, and slept till the loud barking of a dog on the pavement outside awoke him with a start.He rushed up the cellar steps which led to the pavement of the narrow street, banging the door behind him, and nearly fell headlong over a fox-terrier busily occupied with the rubbish tin of the next house. The little dog yelped sharply as Aleko stumbled over him, and abandoning the rubbish tin, trotted quickly off towards the square.“Solon!” called Aleko. “Here Solon! Why do you run away? It is only I.”Solon stopped short, listened for a moment with uplifted paw, and then with a series of little joyful barks ran back towards the boy.Aleko stooped, and catching him up by the middle of his well-fed, white little body tucked him under his arm.“You little rascal! What do you mean by rooting in the rubbish? Have you not enough to eat in your house? I should be glad to have your luck.”Two little ears were cocked on one side of Aleko’s arm and a short tail wagged frantically on the other.“I wonder how it happens that you are out alone? Has Anneza lost you?”Just then, coming out on the Kolonaki Square, Aleko descried a young woman carrying a basket, who was looking all around her and peering under the bushes of the enclosure seemingly in great distress. He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled sharply.“Anneza! Eh! Here is your dog! It is I who have him!”The young woman wheeled around and came rapidly towards him. She was pretty, with black hair and a big white apron crossed over a pink cotton frock.“Do you not feed him enough?” Aleko asked her as he put down the dog. “I found him in my street with his nose in the rubbish tin.”“Feed him, indeed?” snorted the young woman, “he has of the best. If all poor peoplefared as he does, it would be well. The master is so fond of him he fears lest the wind should blow or the rain should drop on his body. He often comes himself into the kitchen to see what I give him to eat. But all the same the dirty dog is always grubbing in the rubbish tins. When I take him out he is always straying and making me go cold with fright for fear the ‘boya’3should catch him.”“The ‘boya’ only takes dogs who belong to no one. He would not take yours,” said Aleko, turning Solon over on his back with his foot as he spoke.“Do I know? Now, in this hot weather when dogs go mad, they say that the ‘boya’ gets paid one drachma for every dog he catches; and all he can lay hand on are thrown into his cart. If I had my way the dog should never stir out, but the master says he must have exercise, and if he sees me out without Solon, bad luck for me!”“Take your dog now,” said the boy, “I must go for my newspapers.”“Listen, Aleko.”“What?”“Come to the house in the morning; there are some curtains to beat.”“I will come.” Then, as he turned to go, he added, “Keep the dog by you! Do not let him stray again.”“I have no strap,” answered Anneza.Aleko was already some way off, but he called back over his shoulder:—“You need not tie him. Talk to him.”Anneza looked after the boy, whose bare feet were raising a cloud of dust as he ran, and tapped her forehead.“A good boy,” she murmured, “but …”

On a very hot morning in May, at the corner of the Hotel de la Grande Bretagne, in the Square of the Constitution, in Athens, a dirty little boy with a sheaf of unsold newspapers under his arm was sitting on a shoeblack’s box, alternately munching a piece of bread and wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve.Another boy, not so dirty, stood beside him, with one foot on the edge of the box, watching the people in the square. He was fair for a Greek boy, with light hair which showed through the many holes of his cloth cap.There was a tug at his ragged tunic:—“Aleko! Aleko! You are not listening!”“What is it? I hear.” But he did not look down at the grubby little fellow who continued sniffing:—“I dreamt, I tell you, as truly as I see youhere I did, that I went away somewhere, and that I found a great big sweet shop, bigger than Yannaki’s or Doree’s, ever so much bigger, and in the shop there were dishes and jars and trays, and trays, and trays all around of chocolates, and baklava,1and kourabiedes, and little cakes with pink and green and white sugar all over them; and there were piles of comfits, and caramels,—oh, and heaps of other things; and …” warming to his description, “bottles and bottles of cherry syrup and lemonade, and I dreamt that the man of the shop waved his hand—so,—over everything and said ‘Please,’—Aleko, do you hear? ‘Please eat all the things you want.’ And then,” with a savage tug at the tunic, “then you came and waked me!”Aleko looked down at him for a minute:—“Did I want to wake you? It was time to get up. The big one sent me. And what are you crying about now, any way? For the sweets you never had?”The small boy, Andoni, gulped down a sob.“No!”“What then?”“I only sold two newspapers; the other boys got before me; and the big one will beat me when he sees all these left.”Aleko shrugged his shoulders.“You will cry when he beats you; what is the use of crying now?” Then he looked out again, over the square.Watching people and things always kept him very busy. There were so many things going on at once. Two coachmen, on the side of the square where the carriages stand, were swearing at each other, and they were using swear-words quite different from those Aleko had heard in his village. A man from Rhodes was trying to sell his embroidered bags to some foreigners, of those who walk about with little red books in their hands, at double the price he usually asked for them. Some men were carrying big trunks down the steps of the hotel, and three ladies with bright coloured sunshades were going towards the street of the shops.Two men, an old white bearded one and a fat one who walked with his legs wide apart and his hands behind his back, passed in front of the two boys.“Ah, my friend,” the older one was saying;“you are quite right, butγνῶθι σεαυτόν, know thyself, is a very difficult thing.”Suddenly Aleko stooped and pushed Andoni off the box.“Run!” he said, “they have no newspapers; run after them!”The dirty little boy picked up his sheaf of papers and rushed after the men, who had already turned the corner.In a few minutes he returned, jingling some copper coins in his hand.“They bought three,” he said, “the old one took theAcropolisand the fat one theEmbros, and theNea Himera. Why did you not sell them yours? You have some left.”“Because I am waiting here for a man whose shoes I black every morning. He always comes at this time, and I wait for him.”“Do you mean,” asked Andoni eagerly, “a big man with a beard, who wears a soft gray hat?”“Yes; why?”“Because I saw him now at the corner where the flower boys stand. Yoryi, the one who squints, had just polished his boots for him, and the gentleman was paying him.”Aleko wasted no words. He seized his box, and ran round the corner of the square with such speed that his feet raised a cloud of dust all around him.A group of shoeblacks and flower boys were standing about the end of the Kiphissia Road, but there was no sign of a client of any sort.Aleko rushed up to a boy much bigger than himself, with squinting eyes, and caught hold of his arm:—“Did you clean the boots of the man with the black beard?” he asked. “Do you not know he ismyclient?”The elder boy shook him off roughly.“You, with your clients!” he muttered.The other boys sniggered.“You are late, you see, to-day, Aleko; another got before you.”The lad’s face reddened.“He always asks for me, and I was waiting for him just there.”“Oh,” said one of the flower boys, tying up a big bunch of scarlet carnations as he spoke, “your client asked for you all right, but Yoryi here, told him that you had been sent on a message and that he was your partner.”Yoryi laughed noisily.“That is howIdo business.”But his laugh broke off in the middle. Aleko had come close to him, and with one well-directed kick had sent the big shoeblack’s box flying into the middle of the road.Brushes flew here and there, bottles of yellow and black polish were broken and their contents spilt in the dust, and round metal boxes rolled in all directions. Yoryi seized hold of Aleko by the neck and struck him savagely on the head.“A bad year to you!” he shouted, as blow followed blow. “Did you not know that you would eat stick if you played those tricks on me? Did you not know it? Take that then! And that! And that! Did you think you could touch me and go free?” and the blows came down like rain. At last he flung the smaller boy away from him and began sullenly collecting the scattered contents of his box.Aleko picked himself up, staggering a little as he stood.“Oh, I knew!” he shouted, staunching a bleeding nose on the sleeve of his tunic. “Ofcourse I knew. Do I not eat stick every day? Am I not the smallest? But it wasyouwho did not know!Youwho thought you could cheat me and be safe! You did not know that your box would be all over the road, that your bottles would be broken, that all your things would be so spoiled that you could not steal other lads’ clients this morning again! Pick them up then! Stoop! Yes, stoop in the dust and pick them up!”The other boys were laughing at Yoryi now.“He has played you a good trick, the little one!”“Did you think,” shouted Aleko, “that you could touch me and go free?” and before Yoryi, furious now with rage, could catch him a second time, he doubled, and ran round the corner of the University Road.Being fleet of foot, he left Yoryi far behind him, and running up one street and down another and across a third, he soon arrived safe and unpursued at the top end of Stadium Street and back again in Constitution Square.A sound of music came from the direction of the Palace and he looked up eagerly. The guard was changing; he could hear the measuredtread of the soldiers. Though he had been in Athens nearly two years the spectacle had never lost its charm for him.Pushing, stooping, dodging, he elbowed his way to the edge of the pavement and waited.On they came, the officer, the band, the marching men, the beautiful blue flag held aloft by a white-gloved sergeant. Aleko knew all about it, for a soldier had told him one day that you had to be a good-conduct man to be allowed to carry the flag, and that you had to wear white gloves: and the boy had long ago decided that when his time came to serve as a soldier, he would always carry the flag.Up sprang all the officers who happened to be sitting at the little café tables in the square, and stood saluting. Civilians who were passing stopped and uncovered; coachmen stood up on their boxes bare-headed; Aleko pulled off his tattered cap in imitation and stood with the hot sun shining on his tumbled fair hair.An old man looked down on him and smiled. Then, catching sight of the dust and smears of blood on the boy’s face, he remarked with a chiding gesture:—“Ah! you have been fighting.”“No,” answered Aleko, “I have been beaten.” Then emboldened he asked, “Tell me, why do people take their hats off?”The old man stared at the question.“Why, to the flag, of course.”“Yes, I know; but why?”“Why? To show respect to the flag, of course.”“Why does it show respect when one takes one’s hat off?”The old man answered by another question:—“From where are you my lad?”“From Megaloupolis.”“Ah, you do not see flags there, do you?”“At Easter, and on the twenty-fifth of March,2there was always a flag put up at the Town Hall but no one took his hat off.”“Well, in Athens you will learn many things,” said the old man walking away. Aleko looked after him.“I do not think,” he muttered, “that he knew why. How many people do not know things when you ask them.” Then he ran up the steps of the Hotel Grande Bretagne where oneof the head servants, standing on the verandah, had beckoned to him to clean his boots.“Make them shine well,” said the man, putting his foot on the little inclined rest of the box.“Be easy,” answered Aleko, “you will see your face in them.”He scraped, and rubbed, and polished vigorously; then when one foot was changed for the other, he suddenly asked without looking up:—“What does ‘Know thyself’ mean?”“Where did you pick up that fine phrase?”“One man who was passing said it to another, and he said it was a very difficult thing. What does it mean?”“If it be difficult how should I know it?” answered the head servant. “Do poor folk have time to go beyond the municipal classes at school?”“Doesheknow?” and Aleko with a backward jerk of his thumb indicated another servant, stout and gray-haired, standing within the portal of the hotel.“He! He can scarcely read the newspaper!”“Then who knows?”“Do you not go to the Parnassos School every night?”“Of course I go.”“Well, ask your schoolmaster.”“Oh, he has no time; we are many boys. You see I thought as you stand here so often doing nothing, if you knew you would have time to tell me.”The man scowled.“Enough words! There are your ten lepta. Go about your business and leave me to mine.”Aleko slung his box over his shoulder and descended the hotel steps slowly. He was beginning to feel sore all over and his head ached. He decided that he would go home and have a sleep. Home meant the cellar which he shared with the other boy, Andoni, and with the older shoeblack, “the big one” who had brought them over from Megaloupolis, and for whom they worked, till such time as they should have earned enough to set up for themselves.Bells were ringing for noon, and after that no one would be out in the sun-blaze of the streets to want boots cleaned; there would beno work again until the sales of the evening newspapers began.He trudged rather wearily up the steep streets towards the Square of the Kolonaki, near which he lived; and as he went, he wondered once more why so many people did not know things when you asked them.There were so many things he wanted to find out.Who lived in the Academy with the two statues on the tall columns, which he passed two or three times a day, and what did people do inside it? What was in the red books which the foreigners held in their hands when they looked up at the old temples? What was that statue in the Zappion Gardens where a woman was putting a crown of leaves on a man’s head? And most of all, what made automobiles go without horses when the driver turned that round wheel? The whole town was one great “Why” to him.When he reached the street behind the Kolonaki Square, and went down the steps to the cellar, he found it empty. From a shelf in one corner he took down the half of a loaf of bread, and a piece of white cheese wrapped in a sheetof paper. His mother was renowned in Megaloupolis as one of the tidiest housewives of the place, and it was from her that he had learned not to leave food about uncovered; this was also probably the reason why his face and hands were generally less grimy than those of most of the other shoeblacks.Nearly all the boys he knew were shoeblacks, or newspaper sellers and messenger boys, or they combined the three trades; and nearly all came from Megaloupolis in the charge of an older boy of eighteen or twenty years old, “the big one,” as they called him. He paid them a yearly wage and, except what was necessary for food, all their earnings went to him. Aleko was paid one hundred and fifty drachmæ a year; next year he was to have two hundred. Later on, he would work for himself, and doubtless when he was old enough he would in his turn employ smaller boys. He had no father, and the money was required to help his mother and the two small sisters in Megaloupolis. How could they live else?After he had eaten, he sat down and pulled out his morning’s earnings from the breast of his tunic. The copper coins and nickelsamounted to one drachma and thirty-five lepta; of these, he put aside thirty lepta for his supper, and screwing up the rest in a piece of old newspaper pushed it underneath a painted wooden chest to give to “the big one” when accounts were made in the evening. Then he threw himself on his mattress, doubled his arm under his head, and slept till the loud barking of a dog on the pavement outside awoke him with a start.He rushed up the cellar steps which led to the pavement of the narrow street, banging the door behind him, and nearly fell headlong over a fox-terrier busily occupied with the rubbish tin of the next house. The little dog yelped sharply as Aleko stumbled over him, and abandoning the rubbish tin, trotted quickly off towards the square.“Solon!” called Aleko. “Here Solon! Why do you run away? It is only I.”Solon stopped short, listened for a moment with uplifted paw, and then with a series of little joyful barks ran back towards the boy.Aleko stooped, and catching him up by the middle of his well-fed, white little body tucked him under his arm.“You little rascal! What do you mean by rooting in the rubbish? Have you not enough to eat in your house? I should be glad to have your luck.”Two little ears were cocked on one side of Aleko’s arm and a short tail wagged frantically on the other.“I wonder how it happens that you are out alone? Has Anneza lost you?”Just then, coming out on the Kolonaki Square, Aleko descried a young woman carrying a basket, who was looking all around her and peering under the bushes of the enclosure seemingly in great distress. He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled sharply.“Anneza! Eh! Here is your dog! It is I who have him!”The young woman wheeled around and came rapidly towards him. She was pretty, with black hair and a big white apron crossed over a pink cotton frock.“Do you not feed him enough?” Aleko asked her as he put down the dog. “I found him in my street with his nose in the rubbish tin.”“Feed him, indeed?” snorted the young woman, “he has of the best. If all poor peoplefared as he does, it would be well. The master is so fond of him he fears lest the wind should blow or the rain should drop on his body. He often comes himself into the kitchen to see what I give him to eat. But all the same the dirty dog is always grubbing in the rubbish tins. When I take him out he is always straying and making me go cold with fright for fear the ‘boya’3should catch him.”“The ‘boya’ only takes dogs who belong to no one. He would not take yours,” said Aleko, turning Solon over on his back with his foot as he spoke.“Do I know? Now, in this hot weather when dogs go mad, they say that the ‘boya’ gets paid one drachma for every dog he catches; and all he can lay hand on are thrown into his cart. If I had my way the dog should never stir out, but the master says he must have exercise, and if he sees me out without Solon, bad luck for me!”“Take your dog now,” said the boy, “I must go for my newspapers.”“Listen, Aleko.”“What?”“Come to the house in the morning; there are some curtains to beat.”“I will come.” Then, as he turned to go, he added, “Keep the dog by you! Do not let him stray again.”“I have no strap,” answered Anneza.Aleko was already some way off, but he called back over his shoulder:—“You need not tie him. Talk to him.”Anneza looked after the boy, whose bare feet were raising a cloud of dust as he ran, and tapped her forehead.“A good boy,” she murmured, “but …”

Another boy, not so dirty, stood beside him, with one foot on the edge of the box, watching the people in the square. He was fair for a Greek boy, with light hair which showed through the many holes of his cloth cap.

There was a tug at his ragged tunic:—

“Aleko! Aleko! You are not listening!”

“What is it? I hear.” But he did not look down at the grubby little fellow who continued sniffing:—

“I dreamt, I tell you, as truly as I see youhere I did, that I went away somewhere, and that I found a great big sweet shop, bigger than Yannaki’s or Doree’s, ever so much bigger, and in the shop there were dishes and jars and trays, and trays, and trays all around of chocolates, and baklava,1and kourabiedes, and little cakes with pink and green and white sugar all over them; and there were piles of comfits, and caramels,—oh, and heaps of other things; and …” warming to his description, “bottles and bottles of cherry syrup and lemonade, and I dreamt that the man of the shop waved his hand—so,—over everything and said ‘Please,’—Aleko, do you hear? ‘Please eat all the things you want.’ And then,” with a savage tug at the tunic, “then you came and waked me!”

Aleko looked down at him for a minute:—

“Did I want to wake you? It was time to get up. The big one sent me. And what are you crying about now, any way? For the sweets you never had?”

The small boy, Andoni, gulped down a sob.

“No!”

“What then?”

“I only sold two newspapers; the other boys got before me; and the big one will beat me when he sees all these left.”

Aleko shrugged his shoulders.

“You will cry when he beats you; what is the use of crying now?” Then he looked out again, over the square.

Watching people and things always kept him very busy. There were so many things going on at once. Two coachmen, on the side of the square where the carriages stand, were swearing at each other, and they were using swear-words quite different from those Aleko had heard in his village. A man from Rhodes was trying to sell his embroidered bags to some foreigners, of those who walk about with little red books in their hands, at double the price he usually asked for them. Some men were carrying big trunks down the steps of the hotel, and three ladies with bright coloured sunshades were going towards the street of the shops.

Two men, an old white bearded one and a fat one who walked with his legs wide apart and his hands behind his back, passed in front of the two boys.

“Ah, my friend,” the older one was saying;“you are quite right, butγνῶθι σεαυτόν, know thyself, is a very difficult thing.”

Suddenly Aleko stooped and pushed Andoni off the box.

“Run!” he said, “they have no newspapers; run after them!”

The dirty little boy picked up his sheaf of papers and rushed after the men, who had already turned the corner.

In a few minutes he returned, jingling some copper coins in his hand.

“They bought three,” he said, “the old one took theAcropolisand the fat one theEmbros, and theNea Himera. Why did you not sell them yours? You have some left.”

“Because I am waiting here for a man whose shoes I black every morning. He always comes at this time, and I wait for him.”

“Do you mean,” asked Andoni eagerly, “a big man with a beard, who wears a soft gray hat?”

“Yes; why?”

“Because I saw him now at the corner where the flower boys stand. Yoryi, the one who squints, had just polished his boots for him, and the gentleman was paying him.”

Aleko wasted no words. He seized his box, and ran round the corner of the square with such speed that his feet raised a cloud of dust all around him.

A group of shoeblacks and flower boys were standing about the end of the Kiphissia Road, but there was no sign of a client of any sort.

Aleko rushed up to a boy much bigger than himself, with squinting eyes, and caught hold of his arm:—

“Did you clean the boots of the man with the black beard?” he asked. “Do you not know he ismyclient?”

The elder boy shook him off roughly.

“You, with your clients!” he muttered.

The other boys sniggered.

“You are late, you see, to-day, Aleko; another got before you.”

The lad’s face reddened.

“He always asks for me, and I was waiting for him just there.”

“Oh,” said one of the flower boys, tying up a big bunch of scarlet carnations as he spoke, “your client asked for you all right, but Yoryi here, told him that you had been sent on a message and that he was your partner.”

Yoryi laughed noisily.

“That is howIdo business.”

But his laugh broke off in the middle. Aleko had come close to him, and with one well-directed kick had sent the big shoeblack’s box flying into the middle of the road.

Brushes flew here and there, bottles of yellow and black polish were broken and their contents spilt in the dust, and round metal boxes rolled in all directions. Yoryi seized hold of Aleko by the neck and struck him savagely on the head.

“A bad year to you!” he shouted, as blow followed blow. “Did you not know that you would eat stick if you played those tricks on me? Did you not know it? Take that then! And that! And that! Did you think you could touch me and go free?” and the blows came down like rain. At last he flung the smaller boy away from him and began sullenly collecting the scattered contents of his box.

Aleko picked himself up, staggering a little as he stood.

“Oh, I knew!” he shouted, staunching a bleeding nose on the sleeve of his tunic. “Ofcourse I knew. Do I not eat stick every day? Am I not the smallest? But it wasyouwho did not know!Youwho thought you could cheat me and be safe! You did not know that your box would be all over the road, that your bottles would be broken, that all your things would be so spoiled that you could not steal other lads’ clients this morning again! Pick them up then! Stoop! Yes, stoop in the dust and pick them up!”

The other boys were laughing at Yoryi now.

“He has played you a good trick, the little one!”

“Did you think,” shouted Aleko, “that you could touch me and go free?” and before Yoryi, furious now with rage, could catch him a second time, he doubled, and ran round the corner of the University Road.

Being fleet of foot, he left Yoryi far behind him, and running up one street and down another and across a third, he soon arrived safe and unpursued at the top end of Stadium Street and back again in Constitution Square.

A sound of music came from the direction of the Palace and he looked up eagerly. The guard was changing; he could hear the measuredtread of the soldiers. Though he had been in Athens nearly two years the spectacle had never lost its charm for him.

Pushing, stooping, dodging, he elbowed his way to the edge of the pavement and waited.

On they came, the officer, the band, the marching men, the beautiful blue flag held aloft by a white-gloved sergeant. Aleko knew all about it, for a soldier had told him one day that you had to be a good-conduct man to be allowed to carry the flag, and that you had to wear white gloves: and the boy had long ago decided that when his time came to serve as a soldier, he would always carry the flag.

Up sprang all the officers who happened to be sitting at the little café tables in the square, and stood saluting. Civilians who were passing stopped and uncovered; coachmen stood up on their boxes bare-headed; Aleko pulled off his tattered cap in imitation and stood with the hot sun shining on his tumbled fair hair.

An old man looked down on him and smiled. Then, catching sight of the dust and smears of blood on the boy’s face, he remarked with a chiding gesture:—

“Ah! you have been fighting.”

“No,” answered Aleko, “I have been beaten.” Then emboldened he asked, “Tell me, why do people take their hats off?”

The old man stared at the question.

“Why, to the flag, of course.”

“Yes, I know; but why?”

“Why? To show respect to the flag, of course.”

“Why does it show respect when one takes one’s hat off?”

The old man answered by another question:—

“From where are you my lad?”

“From Megaloupolis.”

“Ah, you do not see flags there, do you?”

“At Easter, and on the twenty-fifth of March,2there was always a flag put up at the Town Hall but no one took his hat off.”

“Well, in Athens you will learn many things,” said the old man walking away. Aleko looked after him.

“I do not think,” he muttered, “that he knew why. How many people do not know things when you ask them.” Then he ran up the steps of the Hotel Grande Bretagne where oneof the head servants, standing on the verandah, had beckoned to him to clean his boots.

“Make them shine well,” said the man, putting his foot on the little inclined rest of the box.

“Be easy,” answered Aleko, “you will see your face in them.”

He scraped, and rubbed, and polished vigorously; then when one foot was changed for the other, he suddenly asked without looking up:—

“What does ‘Know thyself’ mean?”

“Where did you pick up that fine phrase?”

“One man who was passing said it to another, and he said it was a very difficult thing. What does it mean?”

“If it be difficult how should I know it?” answered the head servant. “Do poor folk have time to go beyond the municipal classes at school?”

“Doesheknow?” and Aleko with a backward jerk of his thumb indicated another servant, stout and gray-haired, standing within the portal of the hotel.

“He! He can scarcely read the newspaper!”

“Then who knows?”

“Do you not go to the Parnassos School every night?”

“Of course I go.”

“Well, ask your schoolmaster.”

“Oh, he has no time; we are many boys. You see I thought as you stand here so often doing nothing, if you knew you would have time to tell me.”

The man scowled.

“Enough words! There are your ten lepta. Go about your business and leave me to mine.”

Aleko slung his box over his shoulder and descended the hotel steps slowly. He was beginning to feel sore all over and his head ached. He decided that he would go home and have a sleep. Home meant the cellar which he shared with the other boy, Andoni, and with the older shoeblack, “the big one” who had brought them over from Megaloupolis, and for whom they worked, till such time as they should have earned enough to set up for themselves.

Bells were ringing for noon, and after that no one would be out in the sun-blaze of the streets to want boots cleaned; there would beno work again until the sales of the evening newspapers began.

He trudged rather wearily up the steep streets towards the Square of the Kolonaki, near which he lived; and as he went, he wondered once more why so many people did not know things when you asked them.

There were so many things he wanted to find out.

Who lived in the Academy with the two statues on the tall columns, which he passed two or three times a day, and what did people do inside it? What was in the red books which the foreigners held in their hands when they looked up at the old temples? What was that statue in the Zappion Gardens where a woman was putting a crown of leaves on a man’s head? And most of all, what made automobiles go without horses when the driver turned that round wheel? The whole town was one great “Why” to him.

When he reached the street behind the Kolonaki Square, and went down the steps to the cellar, he found it empty. From a shelf in one corner he took down the half of a loaf of bread, and a piece of white cheese wrapped in a sheetof paper. His mother was renowned in Megaloupolis as one of the tidiest housewives of the place, and it was from her that he had learned not to leave food about uncovered; this was also probably the reason why his face and hands were generally less grimy than those of most of the other shoeblacks.

Nearly all the boys he knew were shoeblacks, or newspaper sellers and messenger boys, or they combined the three trades; and nearly all came from Megaloupolis in the charge of an older boy of eighteen or twenty years old, “the big one,” as they called him. He paid them a yearly wage and, except what was necessary for food, all their earnings went to him. Aleko was paid one hundred and fifty drachmæ a year; next year he was to have two hundred. Later on, he would work for himself, and doubtless when he was old enough he would in his turn employ smaller boys. He had no father, and the money was required to help his mother and the two small sisters in Megaloupolis. How could they live else?

After he had eaten, he sat down and pulled out his morning’s earnings from the breast of his tunic. The copper coins and nickelsamounted to one drachma and thirty-five lepta; of these, he put aside thirty lepta for his supper, and screwing up the rest in a piece of old newspaper pushed it underneath a painted wooden chest to give to “the big one” when accounts were made in the evening. Then he threw himself on his mattress, doubled his arm under his head, and slept till the loud barking of a dog on the pavement outside awoke him with a start.

He rushed up the cellar steps which led to the pavement of the narrow street, banging the door behind him, and nearly fell headlong over a fox-terrier busily occupied with the rubbish tin of the next house. The little dog yelped sharply as Aleko stumbled over him, and abandoning the rubbish tin, trotted quickly off towards the square.

“Solon!” called Aleko. “Here Solon! Why do you run away? It is only I.”

Solon stopped short, listened for a moment with uplifted paw, and then with a series of little joyful barks ran back towards the boy.

Aleko stooped, and catching him up by the middle of his well-fed, white little body tucked him under his arm.

“You little rascal! What do you mean by rooting in the rubbish? Have you not enough to eat in your house? I should be glad to have your luck.”

Two little ears were cocked on one side of Aleko’s arm and a short tail wagged frantically on the other.

“I wonder how it happens that you are out alone? Has Anneza lost you?”

Just then, coming out on the Kolonaki Square, Aleko descried a young woman carrying a basket, who was looking all around her and peering under the bushes of the enclosure seemingly in great distress. He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled sharply.

“Anneza! Eh! Here is your dog! It is I who have him!”

The young woman wheeled around and came rapidly towards him. She was pretty, with black hair and a big white apron crossed over a pink cotton frock.

“Do you not feed him enough?” Aleko asked her as he put down the dog. “I found him in my street with his nose in the rubbish tin.”

“Feed him, indeed?” snorted the young woman, “he has of the best. If all poor peoplefared as he does, it would be well. The master is so fond of him he fears lest the wind should blow or the rain should drop on his body. He often comes himself into the kitchen to see what I give him to eat. But all the same the dirty dog is always grubbing in the rubbish tins. When I take him out he is always straying and making me go cold with fright for fear the ‘boya’3should catch him.”

“The ‘boya’ only takes dogs who belong to no one. He would not take yours,” said Aleko, turning Solon over on his back with his foot as he spoke.

“Do I know? Now, in this hot weather when dogs go mad, they say that the ‘boya’ gets paid one drachma for every dog he catches; and all he can lay hand on are thrown into his cart. If I had my way the dog should never stir out, but the master says he must have exercise, and if he sees me out without Solon, bad luck for me!”

“Take your dog now,” said the boy, “I must go for my newspapers.”

“Listen, Aleko.”

“What?”

“Come to the house in the morning; there are some curtains to beat.”

“I will come.” Then, as he turned to go, he added, “Keep the dog by you! Do not let him stray again.”

“I have no strap,” answered Anneza.

Aleko was already some way off, but he called back over his shoulder:—

“You need not tie him. Talk to him.”

Anneza looked after the boy, whose bare feet were raising a cloud of dust as he ran, and tapped her forehead.

“A good boy,” she murmured, “but …”

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