X

XThe big white caique at Piræus was ready laden, only waiting for its captain, and an hour later, Mattina, in a little corner between two planks of wood and a big case, lay curled up on the low deck, with the cool night wind blowing salt and fresh on her face. She listened to the water flap-flapping against the wooden sides of the boat, and dimly saw the great white sails bellying out above her head. She heaved a big sigh of content and stretched out her feet under a loose piece of sack-cloth.The harbor lights of Piræus were already far behind them when, rocked by the softly swaying movement, she fell asleep.And how good it was the next morning to awake at sea, with the sun high above the horizon on a blue September day, to feel safe and free, to lean over the side of the boat, munching the hunk of bread and the piece of “touloumi”29cheese which one of the sailors hadgiven her, while she watched the swish and sparkle of the water as the tall prow of the caique divided it, and listened to Capetan Thanassi’s loud orders to his men, as they tacked round by the lighthouse.Ah! and how good it was, as soon as they turned the corner, to see in the distance the white houses of Poros!It was even better when she stepped down the plank thrown from the boat to the shore and was treading Poros soil once more. Then it was like dreams coming true! The caique had anchored far away from the village, in a little creek before one came to the Beach of the Little Pines. Someone from Athens was building a house there, a big house with balconies and terraces. Capetan Thanassi had brought a boat load of wood-work for the doors and windows, and the workmen were busy unloading it almost before the anchor had been dropped.“What will you do?” the old captain asked Mattina. “Before noon, when this unloading is over, I shall sail into the village. Will you wait?”“I thank you, Capetan Thanassi. For thegood that you have done me, may you find it from God; but I cannot wait. I will go along the shore, and reach the house and the little one long before you have finished your work.”“Go then, my girl! Go!” and Mattina ran up the slope of the hill leading to the Beach of the Little Pines, and did not stop to take breath until she reached the top.There she stood still, waist-high in a tangle of bushes. The thyme was all dried up of course, but the heather was in bloom and the lentisk bushes were laden with thick clusters of red berries.She dropped on her knees, with a little cry of joy, beside a big bush on which the bright crimson berries seemed thicker than the tiny leaves. “Fairy-cherries,” the children of the Red House on the hill, called them. Mattina had never heard this, but she loved the little tight bunches of red berries because they were so pretty and because she had never seen them but in Poros. In a moment she got up and began the descent of the hill.The glorious curve of the Beach of the Little Pines seemed almost entirely deserted. The morning sea in lines of deep golden green nearthe pines of the shore, and of deep blue beyond, blue as the sky, blue as the flag, bore not a single fisher boat on its surface. Only far away in the distance under the big round fig tree Mattina could distinguish a flock of sheep, and still farther away the figure of a man coming down the next hill, but whether it was the shepherd or not she could not tell. Down she came through the tall white spikes of the dog-onions waving all over the hill side, till she stood at last on a flat gray rock on the very edge of the sea. The perfectly smooth water showed the shining yellow and green and gray pebbles lying below, as though a sheet of glass had been placed over them. In and out between the stones swam tiny black-striped fishes, and now and then a ripple trembled over the surface and broke softly against the rock. And it was clear and beautiful, and herveryown sea, and she lifted her face to its breath, and she fell on her knees and stretched out her bare brown arms that the water might flow and ripple over them!In the water close to the shore, every tiny green branch, and every vein of the gray rocks, and every clump of red earth, was reflectedline for line, and tint for tint, and through these reflections ran long straight lines of bright, bright blue. Suddenly Mattina remembered Antigone, the serving maid of the next house, who had said to her, “You! with your trees, and your rocks, and your sea!” And she thought, “She has never seen them, the poor one! If she were only here now!”But she did not know that Antigone was of those people who would never see some things, even if she were to touch them with her hand. She would find that the rocks hurt her feet and spoiled her Sunday shoes.The morning light would never bring a light into her eyes, and certainly a little cool soft breeze blowing in her face could never have made her feel so entirely and unreasonably joyful.Mattina could never have explained, nor did she understand as other children might, who had read books, or who had lived with people who had read books, that it was just the beauty of everything around her that made her feel so happy, that for some moments wiped all her troubles off her mind as though by a magic sponge. She had never heard that her ancestorswere of the race which above all other had always worshipped beautiful things.However, in a few moments she stood up, wiped her arms on her frock, and walked along the shore more soberly. She must get on, she felt; she must see the child—Zacharia. How he would laugh when he saw her! “’Attina! My ’Attina!” he would cry. Kyra Sophoula would say a good word to her also; but the others, her uncle Yoryi, and her aunt Kanella, what would they say? They would ask why she had returned. They would ask so many things; and what could she say? She had come back not much richer than she went; and now what could she do? She thought for a moment of the mayor and the doctor. Each of them kept a little maid. If only one of them would take her! How good that would be! She was stronger now, and had learned much in the town. But she knew it was not likely that either of them would be requiring a new serving maid just then. People here did not change their servants like shirts as they did in Athens. In Poros, one took a little girl, one did not even call her a servant, but a “soul-child”; one taught her, one fed her, one dressedher, and in due time one prepared her dowry for her. The doctor, she knew, had got Panouria, the widow’s daughter, as a “soul-child.” No, it was not at all likely; and Mattina heaved a big sigh as she filled her hands with cyclamen for Zacharia. Poros had its troubles too.She had nearly reached the end of the big beach, and was stooping to pick a bright crimson cyclamen growing in the shadow of a lentisk bush, when suddenly a flat pebble skimmed past her, touched the surface of the water, and then flew from ripple to ripple like a thing alive.“It is many years since I did that,” said a boyish voice just behind her. But when she wheeled round, it was no boy who stood there laughing and following the pebble with his eyes. It was a grown man, the one whom she had seen in the distance, coming down the hill, and it was certainly not a shepherd. It was a man wearing good clothes, like the men she had seen in Athens in the fine streets; better far than those her master wore; with a gold chain across his waistcoat. It was a man whom she had never seen before; tall, with thick brownhair and a small moustache, but whose sunburnt face did not seem strange to her.He flung another pebble, swinging his arm well back and making it go still farther than the last.“Did you see that one, my girl?” he said without looking at her. “I thought I had forgotten,… but see there,” as he flung a third and began counting,… “eleven,—twelve,—thirteen,—fourteen! I wish some of the lads from Lexington were here to see me. They never would believe that I could make it go more than ten times.”“Throw another,” said Mattina who was interested, picking up a good flat one.The man held out his hand for it and, as he did so, looked at the girl for the first time.The pebble dropped to the shore between them.“Why!” he said slowly, “Why! From where did you come? Not from the village?”Mattina, her empty hand stretched out as though still holding the stone, looked at him.“No,—I come from Athens. Only just now we have arrived.”“Now?”“Yes, in Capetan Thanassi’s caique.”“You are from Athens?”“Oh, no; from the island. I was only serving in the town.”The man put his hand under Mattina’s chin, turned her face up, and took a long look at her.“If you are not Aristoteli’s daughter, may they never call me Petro again.”Mattina stared in wonderment. How came this well-dressed stranger to know her?“Yes; I am Aristoteli Dorri’s the sponge diver’s.”“God rest his soul,” added the man, “and your mother’s also! Little did I think to return to the island and find them both under the soil. And when I looked for you, they told me you had gone to serve in the town! How did this good thing happen that you should just have come back today? Now I need not take the steamer for Athens to go and search for you.”“For me?”“For who else? Do you think I mean to return to America all alone, and leave my brother’s daughter working for strange folk in strange houses!”Mattina was beyond speech.The young man put his arm round her shoulders.“So you do not know me? Your uncle Petro? Truly how should you? You were a babe in swaddling clothes when I left the island. But look at me! Look at me, then! Have I not the same face as your father—the blessed one? All have told me so.”A sudden enlightenment came into Mattina’s eyes. Of course he had her father’s face! The hair which came down in a point, the eyes that laughed; that was why he had not seemed strange. But her father had never worn such fine clothes, and his back had not been so straight.Timidly she crept a little closer.“My uncle,” she whispered looking up into the laughing boyish eyes, “are you my ‘family’ now?”“Is it a question? Of course I am your family; and you are mine. Your mother’s cousins here and her brother in Athens, they good people, I do not say the contrary, but they have their own families for which to provide. I have no one, and you are mine now,and I shall work for you. It is ended now that you should work for strangers. You did well to leave them!”“I did not mean to leave them; I did not know you were here on the island, my uncle, but I was afraid, and I ran away from their house.”“Afraid! Why?”Mattina flushed very red.“They said I stole their money.”“They called you a thief! My brother’s daughter! A bad year to them! But why did you run away as thieves run? You should have stayed and told them that they lied.”“I told them. But they would not believe me though I swore it on my father’s soul; and the master was going to fetch the men to take me to prison, and I was afraid.”“It is true, you are but a little one. But rest easy; no one shall make you afraid, now that I am here! We will go together to these people and if the master dares to say you stole, I will break his face for him!”And Mattina saw that her uncle’s laughing eyes could look very fierce.“Have you the money for which you served?”“No, they had not given it to me yet.”“We will get it. Rest easy! And how much did they agree to pay you for every month?”“Eight drachmæ.”“Are they not ashamed? It is not even two dollars. And doubtless they made you work hard for it, eh?”“There was always work, yes; but ….”“But what?”“She said that … that at New Year I should have a present. And now … now ….”And Mattina suddenly realizing that the present, the long dreamed of present, was lost for ever, burst into wild sobs.“Bah! Bah! And is it for their miserable present that you are spoiling your heart’s content? Am I not here to get you a far more beautiful present?”Mattina lifted streaming eyes, full of wonder.“You!”“Who else? And what shall the present be?”The heavens seemed opening in glory before Mattina’s dazzled eyes.“Can I say whatever I like?”“Surely.”“Then I want … there is a picture in a shop in Athens, with a broad golden frame; it is the sea, and a boat on it with a white sail, and you can see the sail in the water all long and wavy, and if you touch the water, you think your finger will be wet. That is what I want.”“You shall have your picture; we will hang it in our house in Lexington, where there is no sea, and it will remind us of our island.”“Shall we not live here in Poros, my uncle?”“Here? Not yet! I am young still, and strong, and I mean to earn more money in America than I have done already. Besides, I have to think of providing your dowry now, you see. In good time, when I am older, and you are a woman grown, then, if God wills it, we will return to the island. It is not good to leave one’s bones in a strange land. No; in eight days we go down to Piræus to leave for America in a great big ship, bigger than you have ever seen before, even in your sleep, and when we get there, to America, you shall see what your eyes will see!”“My uncle!”“Yes.” Then as no words came, he added, “Say what you want! You must not fear to ask for whatever your heart desires.”“My uncle, there is Zacharia too ….”“What? The little one? I saw him at Kyra Kanella’s. He is very little.” Just for a second the young man hesitated, then—“Can you care for him on the journey, my maid? A journey of many days, mind you, with a sea which may make you ill; a rough green sea with waves as high as houses; not like this blue joy here. Can you?”“Surely,” said Mattina, “I can do many things.”Her uncle looked at the sturdy little figure, and at the strong firm little chin.“I believe you can,” he said. “Come!” holding out his hand, “let us go and find the little rascal.”

XThe big white caique at Piræus was ready laden, only waiting for its captain, and an hour later, Mattina, in a little corner between two planks of wood and a big case, lay curled up on the low deck, with the cool night wind blowing salt and fresh on her face. She listened to the water flap-flapping against the wooden sides of the boat, and dimly saw the great white sails bellying out above her head. She heaved a big sigh of content and stretched out her feet under a loose piece of sack-cloth.The harbor lights of Piræus were already far behind them when, rocked by the softly swaying movement, she fell asleep.And how good it was the next morning to awake at sea, with the sun high above the horizon on a blue September day, to feel safe and free, to lean over the side of the boat, munching the hunk of bread and the piece of “touloumi”29cheese which one of the sailors hadgiven her, while she watched the swish and sparkle of the water as the tall prow of the caique divided it, and listened to Capetan Thanassi’s loud orders to his men, as they tacked round by the lighthouse.Ah! and how good it was, as soon as they turned the corner, to see in the distance the white houses of Poros!It was even better when she stepped down the plank thrown from the boat to the shore and was treading Poros soil once more. Then it was like dreams coming true! The caique had anchored far away from the village, in a little creek before one came to the Beach of the Little Pines. Someone from Athens was building a house there, a big house with balconies and terraces. Capetan Thanassi had brought a boat load of wood-work for the doors and windows, and the workmen were busy unloading it almost before the anchor had been dropped.“What will you do?” the old captain asked Mattina. “Before noon, when this unloading is over, I shall sail into the village. Will you wait?”“I thank you, Capetan Thanassi. For thegood that you have done me, may you find it from God; but I cannot wait. I will go along the shore, and reach the house and the little one long before you have finished your work.”“Go then, my girl! Go!” and Mattina ran up the slope of the hill leading to the Beach of the Little Pines, and did not stop to take breath until she reached the top.There she stood still, waist-high in a tangle of bushes. The thyme was all dried up of course, but the heather was in bloom and the lentisk bushes were laden with thick clusters of red berries.She dropped on her knees, with a little cry of joy, beside a big bush on which the bright crimson berries seemed thicker than the tiny leaves. “Fairy-cherries,” the children of the Red House on the hill, called them. Mattina had never heard this, but she loved the little tight bunches of red berries because they were so pretty and because she had never seen them but in Poros. In a moment she got up and began the descent of the hill.The glorious curve of the Beach of the Little Pines seemed almost entirely deserted. The morning sea in lines of deep golden green nearthe pines of the shore, and of deep blue beyond, blue as the sky, blue as the flag, bore not a single fisher boat on its surface. Only far away in the distance under the big round fig tree Mattina could distinguish a flock of sheep, and still farther away the figure of a man coming down the next hill, but whether it was the shepherd or not she could not tell. Down she came through the tall white spikes of the dog-onions waving all over the hill side, till she stood at last on a flat gray rock on the very edge of the sea. The perfectly smooth water showed the shining yellow and green and gray pebbles lying below, as though a sheet of glass had been placed over them. In and out between the stones swam tiny black-striped fishes, and now and then a ripple trembled over the surface and broke softly against the rock. And it was clear and beautiful, and herveryown sea, and she lifted her face to its breath, and she fell on her knees and stretched out her bare brown arms that the water might flow and ripple over them!In the water close to the shore, every tiny green branch, and every vein of the gray rocks, and every clump of red earth, was reflectedline for line, and tint for tint, and through these reflections ran long straight lines of bright, bright blue. Suddenly Mattina remembered Antigone, the serving maid of the next house, who had said to her, “You! with your trees, and your rocks, and your sea!” And she thought, “She has never seen them, the poor one! If she were only here now!”But she did not know that Antigone was of those people who would never see some things, even if she were to touch them with her hand. She would find that the rocks hurt her feet and spoiled her Sunday shoes.The morning light would never bring a light into her eyes, and certainly a little cool soft breeze blowing in her face could never have made her feel so entirely and unreasonably joyful.Mattina could never have explained, nor did she understand as other children might, who had read books, or who had lived with people who had read books, that it was just the beauty of everything around her that made her feel so happy, that for some moments wiped all her troubles off her mind as though by a magic sponge. She had never heard that her ancestorswere of the race which above all other had always worshipped beautiful things.However, in a few moments she stood up, wiped her arms on her frock, and walked along the shore more soberly. She must get on, she felt; she must see the child—Zacharia. How he would laugh when he saw her! “’Attina! My ’Attina!” he would cry. Kyra Sophoula would say a good word to her also; but the others, her uncle Yoryi, and her aunt Kanella, what would they say? They would ask why she had returned. They would ask so many things; and what could she say? She had come back not much richer than she went; and now what could she do? She thought for a moment of the mayor and the doctor. Each of them kept a little maid. If only one of them would take her! How good that would be! She was stronger now, and had learned much in the town. But she knew it was not likely that either of them would be requiring a new serving maid just then. People here did not change their servants like shirts as they did in Athens. In Poros, one took a little girl, one did not even call her a servant, but a “soul-child”; one taught her, one fed her, one dressedher, and in due time one prepared her dowry for her. The doctor, she knew, had got Panouria, the widow’s daughter, as a “soul-child.” No, it was not at all likely; and Mattina heaved a big sigh as she filled her hands with cyclamen for Zacharia. Poros had its troubles too.She had nearly reached the end of the big beach, and was stooping to pick a bright crimson cyclamen growing in the shadow of a lentisk bush, when suddenly a flat pebble skimmed past her, touched the surface of the water, and then flew from ripple to ripple like a thing alive.“It is many years since I did that,” said a boyish voice just behind her. But when she wheeled round, it was no boy who stood there laughing and following the pebble with his eyes. It was a grown man, the one whom she had seen in the distance, coming down the hill, and it was certainly not a shepherd. It was a man wearing good clothes, like the men she had seen in Athens in the fine streets; better far than those her master wore; with a gold chain across his waistcoat. It was a man whom she had never seen before; tall, with thick brownhair and a small moustache, but whose sunburnt face did not seem strange to her.He flung another pebble, swinging his arm well back and making it go still farther than the last.“Did you see that one, my girl?” he said without looking at her. “I thought I had forgotten,… but see there,” as he flung a third and began counting,… “eleven,—twelve,—thirteen,—fourteen! I wish some of the lads from Lexington were here to see me. They never would believe that I could make it go more than ten times.”“Throw another,” said Mattina who was interested, picking up a good flat one.The man held out his hand for it and, as he did so, looked at the girl for the first time.The pebble dropped to the shore between them.“Why!” he said slowly, “Why! From where did you come? Not from the village?”Mattina, her empty hand stretched out as though still holding the stone, looked at him.“No,—I come from Athens. Only just now we have arrived.”“Now?”“Yes, in Capetan Thanassi’s caique.”“You are from Athens?”“Oh, no; from the island. I was only serving in the town.”The man put his hand under Mattina’s chin, turned her face up, and took a long look at her.“If you are not Aristoteli’s daughter, may they never call me Petro again.”Mattina stared in wonderment. How came this well-dressed stranger to know her?“Yes; I am Aristoteli Dorri’s the sponge diver’s.”“God rest his soul,” added the man, “and your mother’s also! Little did I think to return to the island and find them both under the soil. And when I looked for you, they told me you had gone to serve in the town! How did this good thing happen that you should just have come back today? Now I need not take the steamer for Athens to go and search for you.”“For me?”“For who else? Do you think I mean to return to America all alone, and leave my brother’s daughter working for strange folk in strange houses!”Mattina was beyond speech.The young man put his arm round her shoulders.“So you do not know me? Your uncle Petro? Truly how should you? You were a babe in swaddling clothes when I left the island. But look at me! Look at me, then! Have I not the same face as your father—the blessed one? All have told me so.”A sudden enlightenment came into Mattina’s eyes. Of course he had her father’s face! The hair which came down in a point, the eyes that laughed; that was why he had not seemed strange. But her father had never worn such fine clothes, and his back had not been so straight.Timidly she crept a little closer.“My uncle,” she whispered looking up into the laughing boyish eyes, “are you my ‘family’ now?”“Is it a question? Of course I am your family; and you are mine. Your mother’s cousins here and her brother in Athens, they good people, I do not say the contrary, but they have their own families for which to provide. I have no one, and you are mine now,and I shall work for you. It is ended now that you should work for strangers. You did well to leave them!”“I did not mean to leave them; I did not know you were here on the island, my uncle, but I was afraid, and I ran away from their house.”“Afraid! Why?”Mattina flushed very red.“They said I stole their money.”“They called you a thief! My brother’s daughter! A bad year to them! But why did you run away as thieves run? You should have stayed and told them that they lied.”“I told them. But they would not believe me though I swore it on my father’s soul; and the master was going to fetch the men to take me to prison, and I was afraid.”“It is true, you are but a little one. But rest easy; no one shall make you afraid, now that I am here! We will go together to these people and if the master dares to say you stole, I will break his face for him!”And Mattina saw that her uncle’s laughing eyes could look very fierce.“Have you the money for which you served?”“No, they had not given it to me yet.”“We will get it. Rest easy! And how much did they agree to pay you for every month?”“Eight drachmæ.”“Are they not ashamed? It is not even two dollars. And doubtless they made you work hard for it, eh?”“There was always work, yes; but ….”“But what?”“She said that … that at New Year I should have a present. And now … now ….”And Mattina suddenly realizing that the present, the long dreamed of present, was lost for ever, burst into wild sobs.“Bah! Bah! And is it for their miserable present that you are spoiling your heart’s content? Am I not here to get you a far more beautiful present?”Mattina lifted streaming eyes, full of wonder.“You!”“Who else? And what shall the present be?”The heavens seemed opening in glory before Mattina’s dazzled eyes.“Can I say whatever I like?”“Surely.”“Then I want … there is a picture in a shop in Athens, with a broad golden frame; it is the sea, and a boat on it with a white sail, and you can see the sail in the water all long and wavy, and if you touch the water, you think your finger will be wet. That is what I want.”“You shall have your picture; we will hang it in our house in Lexington, where there is no sea, and it will remind us of our island.”“Shall we not live here in Poros, my uncle?”“Here? Not yet! I am young still, and strong, and I mean to earn more money in America than I have done already. Besides, I have to think of providing your dowry now, you see. In good time, when I am older, and you are a woman grown, then, if God wills it, we will return to the island. It is not good to leave one’s bones in a strange land. No; in eight days we go down to Piræus to leave for America in a great big ship, bigger than you have ever seen before, even in your sleep, and when we get there, to America, you shall see what your eyes will see!”“My uncle!”“Yes.” Then as no words came, he added, “Say what you want! You must not fear to ask for whatever your heart desires.”“My uncle, there is Zacharia too ….”“What? The little one? I saw him at Kyra Kanella’s. He is very little.” Just for a second the young man hesitated, then—“Can you care for him on the journey, my maid? A journey of many days, mind you, with a sea which may make you ill; a rough green sea with waves as high as houses; not like this blue joy here. Can you?”“Surely,” said Mattina, “I can do many things.”Her uncle looked at the sturdy little figure, and at the strong firm little chin.“I believe you can,” he said. “Come!” holding out his hand, “let us go and find the little rascal.”

XThe big white caique at Piræus was ready laden, only waiting for its captain, and an hour later, Mattina, in a little corner between two planks of wood and a big case, lay curled up on the low deck, with the cool night wind blowing salt and fresh on her face. She listened to the water flap-flapping against the wooden sides of the boat, and dimly saw the great white sails bellying out above her head. She heaved a big sigh of content and stretched out her feet under a loose piece of sack-cloth.The harbor lights of Piræus were already far behind them when, rocked by the softly swaying movement, she fell asleep.And how good it was the next morning to awake at sea, with the sun high above the horizon on a blue September day, to feel safe and free, to lean over the side of the boat, munching the hunk of bread and the piece of “touloumi”29cheese which one of the sailors hadgiven her, while she watched the swish and sparkle of the water as the tall prow of the caique divided it, and listened to Capetan Thanassi’s loud orders to his men, as they tacked round by the lighthouse.Ah! and how good it was, as soon as they turned the corner, to see in the distance the white houses of Poros!It was even better when she stepped down the plank thrown from the boat to the shore and was treading Poros soil once more. Then it was like dreams coming true! The caique had anchored far away from the village, in a little creek before one came to the Beach of the Little Pines. Someone from Athens was building a house there, a big house with balconies and terraces. Capetan Thanassi had brought a boat load of wood-work for the doors and windows, and the workmen were busy unloading it almost before the anchor had been dropped.“What will you do?” the old captain asked Mattina. “Before noon, when this unloading is over, I shall sail into the village. Will you wait?”“I thank you, Capetan Thanassi. For thegood that you have done me, may you find it from God; but I cannot wait. I will go along the shore, and reach the house and the little one long before you have finished your work.”“Go then, my girl! Go!” and Mattina ran up the slope of the hill leading to the Beach of the Little Pines, and did not stop to take breath until she reached the top.There she stood still, waist-high in a tangle of bushes. The thyme was all dried up of course, but the heather was in bloom and the lentisk bushes were laden with thick clusters of red berries.She dropped on her knees, with a little cry of joy, beside a big bush on which the bright crimson berries seemed thicker than the tiny leaves. “Fairy-cherries,” the children of the Red House on the hill, called them. Mattina had never heard this, but she loved the little tight bunches of red berries because they were so pretty and because she had never seen them but in Poros. In a moment she got up and began the descent of the hill.The glorious curve of the Beach of the Little Pines seemed almost entirely deserted. The morning sea in lines of deep golden green nearthe pines of the shore, and of deep blue beyond, blue as the sky, blue as the flag, bore not a single fisher boat on its surface. Only far away in the distance under the big round fig tree Mattina could distinguish a flock of sheep, and still farther away the figure of a man coming down the next hill, but whether it was the shepherd or not she could not tell. Down she came through the tall white spikes of the dog-onions waving all over the hill side, till she stood at last on a flat gray rock on the very edge of the sea. The perfectly smooth water showed the shining yellow and green and gray pebbles lying below, as though a sheet of glass had been placed over them. In and out between the stones swam tiny black-striped fishes, and now and then a ripple trembled over the surface and broke softly against the rock. And it was clear and beautiful, and herveryown sea, and she lifted her face to its breath, and she fell on her knees and stretched out her bare brown arms that the water might flow and ripple over them!In the water close to the shore, every tiny green branch, and every vein of the gray rocks, and every clump of red earth, was reflectedline for line, and tint for tint, and through these reflections ran long straight lines of bright, bright blue. Suddenly Mattina remembered Antigone, the serving maid of the next house, who had said to her, “You! with your trees, and your rocks, and your sea!” And she thought, “She has never seen them, the poor one! If she were only here now!”But she did not know that Antigone was of those people who would never see some things, even if she were to touch them with her hand. She would find that the rocks hurt her feet and spoiled her Sunday shoes.The morning light would never bring a light into her eyes, and certainly a little cool soft breeze blowing in her face could never have made her feel so entirely and unreasonably joyful.Mattina could never have explained, nor did she understand as other children might, who had read books, or who had lived with people who had read books, that it was just the beauty of everything around her that made her feel so happy, that for some moments wiped all her troubles off her mind as though by a magic sponge. She had never heard that her ancestorswere of the race which above all other had always worshipped beautiful things.However, in a few moments she stood up, wiped her arms on her frock, and walked along the shore more soberly. She must get on, she felt; she must see the child—Zacharia. How he would laugh when he saw her! “’Attina! My ’Attina!” he would cry. Kyra Sophoula would say a good word to her also; but the others, her uncle Yoryi, and her aunt Kanella, what would they say? They would ask why she had returned. They would ask so many things; and what could she say? She had come back not much richer than she went; and now what could she do? She thought for a moment of the mayor and the doctor. Each of them kept a little maid. If only one of them would take her! How good that would be! She was stronger now, and had learned much in the town. But she knew it was not likely that either of them would be requiring a new serving maid just then. People here did not change their servants like shirts as they did in Athens. In Poros, one took a little girl, one did not even call her a servant, but a “soul-child”; one taught her, one fed her, one dressedher, and in due time one prepared her dowry for her. The doctor, she knew, had got Panouria, the widow’s daughter, as a “soul-child.” No, it was not at all likely; and Mattina heaved a big sigh as she filled her hands with cyclamen for Zacharia. Poros had its troubles too.She had nearly reached the end of the big beach, and was stooping to pick a bright crimson cyclamen growing in the shadow of a lentisk bush, when suddenly a flat pebble skimmed past her, touched the surface of the water, and then flew from ripple to ripple like a thing alive.“It is many years since I did that,” said a boyish voice just behind her. But when she wheeled round, it was no boy who stood there laughing and following the pebble with his eyes. It was a grown man, the one whom she had seen in the distance, coming down the hill, and it was certainly not a shepherd. It was a man wearing good clothes, like the men she had seen in Athens in the fine streets; better far than those her master wore; with a gold chain across his waistcoat. It was a man whom she had never seen before; tall, with thick brownhair and a small moustache, but whose sunburnt face did not seem strange to her.He flung another pebble, swinging his arm well back and making it go still farther than the last.“Did you see that one, my girl?” he said without looking at her. “I thought I had forgotten,… but see there,” as he flung a third and began counting,… “eleven,—twelve,—thirteen,—fourteen! I wish some of the lads from Lexington were here to see me. They never would believe that I could make it go more than ten times.”“Throw another,” said Mattina who was interested, picking up a good flat one.The man held out his hand for it and, as he did so, looked at the girl for the first time.The pebble dropped to the shore between them.“Why!” he said slowly, “Why! From where did you come? Not from the village?”Mattina, her empty hand stretched out as though still holding the stone, looked at him.“No,—I come from Athens. Only just now we have arrived.”“Now?”“Yes, in Capetan Thanassi’s caique.”“You are from Athens?”“Oh, no; from the island. I was only serving in the town.”The man put his hand under Mattina’s chin, turned her face up, and took a long look at her.“If you are not Aristoteli’s daughter, may they never call me Petro again.”Mattina stared in wonderment. How came this well-dressed stranger to know her?“Yes; I am Aristoteli Dorri’s the sponge diver’s.”“God rest his soul,” added the man, “and your mother’s also! Little did I think to return to the island and find them both under the soil. And when I looked for you, they told me you had gone to serve in the town! How did this good thing happen that you should just have come back today? Now I need not take the steamer for Athens to go and search for you.”“For me?”“For who else? Do you think I mean to return to America all alone, and leave my brother’s daughter working for strange folk in strange houses!”Mattina was beyond speech.The young man put his arm round her shoulders.“So you do not know me? Your uncle Petro? Truly how should you? You were a babe in swaddling clothes when I left the island. But look at me! Look at me, then! Have I not the same face as your father—the blessed one? All have told me so.”A sudden enlightenment came into Mattina’s eyes. Of course he had her father’s face! The hair which came down in a point, the eyes that laughed; that was why he had not seemed strange. But her father had never worn such fine clothes, and his back had not been so straight.Timidly she crept a little closer.“My uncle,” she whispered looking up into the laughing boyish eyes, “are you my ‘family’ now?”“Is it a question? Of course I am your family; and you are mine. Your mother’s cousins here and her brother in Athens, they good people, I do not say the contrary, but they have their own families for which to provide. I have no one, and you are mine now,and I shall work for you. It is ended now that you should work for strangers. You did well to leave them!”“I did not mean to leave them; I did not know you were here on the island, my uncle, but I was afraid, and I ran away from their house.”“Afraid! Why?”Mattina flushed very red.“They said I stole their money.”“They called you a thief! My brother’s daughter! A bad year to them! But why did you run away as thieves run? You should have stayed and told them that they lied.”“I told them. But they would not believe me though I swore it on my father’s soul; and the master was going to fetch the men to take me to prison, and I was afraid.”“It is true, you are but a little one. But rest easy; no one shall make you afraid, now that I am here! We will go together to these people and if the master dares to say you stole, I will break his face for him!”And Mattina saw that her uncle’s laughing eyes could look very fierce.“Have you the money for which you served?”“No, they had not given it to me yet.”“We will get it. Rest easy! And how much did they agree to pay you for every month?”“Eight drachmæ.”“Are they not ashamed? It is not even two dollars. And doubtless they made you work hard for it, eh?”“There was always work, yes; but ….”“But what?”“She said that … that at New Year I should have a present. And now … now ….”And Mattina suddenly realizing that the present, the long dreamed of present, was lost for ever, burst into wild sobs.“Bah! Bah! And is it for their miserable present that you are spoiling your heart’s content? Am I not here to get you a far more beautiful present?”Mattina lifted streaming eyes, full of wonder.“You!”“Who else? And what shall the present be?”The heavens seemed opening in glory before Mattina’s dazzled eyes.“Can I say whatever I like?”“Surely.”“Then I want … there is a picture in a shop in Athens, with a broad golden frame; it is the sea, and a boat on it with a white sail, and you can see the sail in the water all long and wavy, and if you touch the water, you think your finger will be wet. That is what I want.”“You shall have your picture; we will hang it in our house in Lexington, where there is no sea, and it will remind us of our island.”“Shall we not live here in Poros, my uncle?”“Here? Not yet! I am young still, and strong, and I mean to earn more money in America than I have done already. Besides, I have to think of providing your dowry now, you see. In good time, when I am older, and you are a woman grown, then, if God wills it, we will return to the island. It is not good to leave one’s bones in a strange land. No; in eight days we go down to Piræus to leave for America in a great big ship, bigger than you have ever seen before, even in your sleep, and when we get there, to America, you shall see what your eyes will see!”“My uncle!”“Yes.” Then as no words came, he added, “Say what you want! You must not fear to ask for whatever your heart desires.”“My uncle, there is Zacharia too ….”“What? The little one? I saw him at Kyra Kanella’s. He is very little.” Just for a second the young man hesitated, then—“Can you care for him on the journey, my maid? A journey of many days, mind you, with a sea which may make you ill; a rough green sea with waves as high as houses; not like this blue joy here. Can you?”“Surely,” said Mattina, “I can do many things.”Her uncle looked at the sturdy little figure, and at the strong firm little chin.“I believe you can,” he said. “Come!” holding out his hand, “let us go and find the little rascal.”

XThe big white caique at Piræus was ready laden, only waiting for its captain, and an hour later, Mattina, in a little corner between two planks of wood and a big case, lay curled up on the low deck, with the cool night wind blowing salt and fresh on her face. She listened to the water flap-flapping against the wooden sides of the boat, and dimly saw the great white sails bellying out above her head. She heaved a big sigh of content and stretched out her feet under a loose piece of sack-cloth.The harbor lights of Piræus were already far behind them when, rocked by the softly swaying movement, she fell asleep.And how good it was the next morning to awake at sea, with the sun high above the horizon on a blue September day, to feel safe and free, to lean over the side of the boat, munching the hunk of bread and the piece of “touloumi”29cheese which one of the sailors hadgiven her, while she watched the swish and sparkle of the water as the tall prow of the caique divided it, and listened to Capetan Thanassi’s loud orders to his men, as they tacked round by the lighthouse.Ah! and how good it was, as soon as they turned the corner, to see in the distance the white houses of Poros!It was even better when she stepped down the plank thrown from the boat to the shore and was treading Poros soil once more. Then it was like dreams coming true! The caique had anchored far away from the village, in a little creek before one came to the Beach of the Little Pines. Someone from Athens was building a house there, a big house with balconies and terraces. Capetan Thanassi had brought a boat load of wood-work for the doors and windows, and the workmen were busy unloading it almost before the anchor had been dropped.“What will you do?” the old captain asked Mattina. “Before noon, when this unloading is over, I shall sail into the village. Will you wait?”“I thank you, Capetan Thanassi. For thegood that you have done me, may you find it from God; but I cannot wait. I will go along the shore, and reach the house and the little one long before you have finished your work.”“Go then, my girl! Go!” and Mattina ran up the slope of the hill leading to the Beach of the Little Pines, and did not stop to take breath until she reached the top.There she stood still, waist-high in a tangle of bushes. The thyme was all dried up of course, but the heather was in bloom and the lentisk bushes were laden with thick clusters of red berries.She dropped on her knees, with a little cry of joy, beside a big bush on which the bright crimson berries seemed thicker than the tiny leaves. “Fairy-cherries,” the children of the Red House on the hill, called them. Mattina had never heard this, but she loved the little tight bunches of red berries because they were so pretty and because she had never seen them but in Poros. In a moment she got up and began the descent of the hill.The glorious curve of the Beach of the Little Pines seemed almost entirely deserted. The morning sea in lines of deep golden green nearthe pines of the shore, and of deep blue beyond, blue as the sky, blue as the flag, bore not a single fisher boat on its surface. Only far away in the distance under the big round fig tree Mattina could distinguish a flock of sheep, and still farther away the figure of a man coming down the next hill, but whether it was the shepherd or not she could not tell. Down she came through the tall white spikes of the dog-onions waving all over the hill side, till she stood at last on a flat gray rock on the very edge of the sea. The perfectly smooth water showed the shining yellow and green and gray pebbles lying below, as though a sheet of glass had been placed over them. In and out between the stones swam tiny black-striped fishes, and now and then a ripple trembled over the surface and broke softly against the rock. And it was clear and beautiful, and herveryown sea, and she lifted her face to its breath, and she fell on her knees and stretched out her bare brown arms that the water might flow and ripple over them!In the water close to the shore, every tiny green branch, and every vein of the gray rocks, and every clump of red earth, was reflectedline for line, and tint for tint, and through these reflections ran long straight lines of bright, bright blue. Suddenly Mattina remembered Antigone, the serving maid of the next house, who had said to her, “You! with your trees, and your rocks, and your sea!” And she thought, “She has never seen them, the poor one! If she were only here now!”But she did not know that Antigone was of those people who would never see some things, even if she were to touch them with her hand. She would find that the rocks hurt her feet and spoiled her Sunday shoes.The morning light would never bring a light into her eyes, and certainly a little cool soft breeze blowing in her face could never have made her feel so entirely and unreasonably joyful.Mattina could never have explained, nor did she understand as other children might, who had read books, or who had lived with people who had read books, that it was just the beauty of everything around her that made her feel so happy, that for some moments wiped all her troubles off her mind as though by a magic sponge. She had never heard that her ancestorswere of the race which above all other had always worshipped beautiful things.However, in a few moments she stood up, wiped her arms on her frock, and walked along the shore more soberly. She must get on, she felt; she must see the child—Zacharia. How he would laugh when he saw her! “’Attina! My ’Attina!” he would cry. Kyra Sophoula would say a good word to her also; but the others, her uncle Yoryi, and her aunt Kanella, what would they say? They would ask why she had returned. They would ask so many things; and what could she say? She had come back not much richer than she went; and now what could she do? She thought for a moment of the mayor and the doctor. Each of them kept a little maid. If only one of them would take her! How good that would be! She was stronger now, and had learned much in the town. But she knew it was not likely that either of them would be requiring a new serving maid just then. People here did not change their servants like shirts as they did in Athens. In Poros, one took a little girl, one did not even call her a servant, but a “soul-child”; one taught her, one fed her, one dressedher, and in due time one prepared her dowry for her. The doctor, she knew, had got Panouria, the widow’s daughter, as a “soul-child.” No, it was not at all likely; and Mattina heaved a big sigh as she filled her hands with cyclamen for Zacharia. Poros had its troubles too.She had nearly reached the end of the big beach, and was stooping to pick a bright crimson cyclamen growing in the shadow of a lentisk bush, when suddenly a flat pebble skimmed past her, touched the surface of the water, and then flew from ripple to ripple like a thing alive.“It is many years since I did that,” said a boyish voice just behind her. But when she wheeled round, it was no boy who stood there laughing and following the pebble with his eyes. It was a grown man, the one whom she had seen in the distance, coming down the hill, and it was certainly not a shepherd. It was a man wearing good clothes, like the men she had seen in Athens in the fine streets; better far than those her master wore; with a gold chain across his waistcoat. It was a man whom she had never seen before; tall, with thick brownhair and a small moustache, but whose sunburnt face did not seem strange to her.He flung another pebble, swinging his arm well back and making it go still farther than the last.“Did you see that one, my girl?” he said without looking at her. “I thought I had forgotten,… but see there,” as he flung a third and began counting,… “eleven,—twelve,—thirteen,—fourteen! I wish some of the lads from Lexington were here to see me. They never would believe that I could make it go more than ten times.”“Throw another,” said Mattina who was interested, picking up a good flat one.The man held out his hand for it and, as he did so, looked at the girl for the first time.The pebble dropped to the shore between them.“Why!” he said slowly, “Why! From where did you come? Not from the village?”Mattina, her empty hand stretched out as though still holding the stone, looked at him.“No,—I come from Athens. Only just now we have arrived.”“Now?”“Yes, in Capetan Thanassi’s caique.”“You are from Athens?”“Oh, no; from the island. I was only serving in the town.”The man put his hand under Mattina’s chin, turned her face up, and took a long look at her.“If you are not Aristoteli’s daughter, may they never call me Petro again.”Mattina stared in wonderment. How came this well-dressed stranger to know her?“Yes; I am Aristoteli Dorri’s the sponge diver’s.”“God rest his soul,” added the man, “and your mother’s also! Little did I think to return to the island and find them both under the soil. And when I looked for you, they told me you had gone to serve in the town! How did this good thing happen that you should just have come back today? Now I need not take the steamer for Athens to go and search for you.”“For me?”“For who else? Do you think I mean to return to America all alone, and leave my brother’s daughter working for strange folk in strange houses!”Mattina was beyond speech.The young man put his arm round her shoulders.“So you do not know me? Your uncle Petro? Truly how should you? You were a babe in swaddling clothes when I left the island. But look at me! Look at me, then! Have I not the same face as your father—the blessed one? All have told me so.”A sudden enlightenment came into Mattina’s eyes. Of course he had her father’s face! The hair which came down in a point, the eyes that laughed; that was why he had not seemed strange. But her father had never worn such fine clothes, and his back had not been so straight.Timidly she crept a little closer.“My uncle,” she whispered looking up into the laughing boyish eyes, “are you my ‘family’ now?”“Is it a question? Of course I am your family; and you are mine. Your mother’s cousins here and her brother in Athens, they good people, I do not say the contrary, but they have their own families for which to provide. I have no one, and you are mine now,and I shall work for you. It is ended now that you should work for strangers. You did well to leave them!”“I did not mean to leave them; I did not know you were here on the island, my uncle, but I was afraid, and I ran away from their house.”“Afraid! Why?”Mattina flushed very red.“They said I stole their money.”“They called you a thief! My brother’s daughter! A bad year to them! But why did you run away as thieves run? You should have stayed and told them that they lied.”“I told them. But they would not believe me though I swore it on my father’s soul; and the master was going to fetch the men to take me to prison, and I was afraid.”“It is true, you are but a little one. But rest easy; no one shall make you afraid, now that I am here! We will go together to these people and if the master dares to say you stole, I will break his face for him!”And Mattina saw that her uncle’s laughing eyes could look very fierce.“Have you the money for which you served?”“No, they had not given it to me yet.”“We will get it. Rest easy! And how much did they agree to pay you for every month?”“Eight drachmæ.”“Are they not ashamed? It is not even two dollars. And doubtless they made you work hard for it, eh?”“There was always work, yes; but ….”“But what?”“She said that … that at New Year I should have a present. And now … now ….”And Mattina suddenly realizing that the present, the long dreamed of present, was lost for ever, burst into wild sobs.“Bah! Bah! And is it for their miserable present that you are spoiling your heart’s content? Am I not here to get you a far more beautiful present?”Mattina lifted streaming eyes, full of wonder.“You!”“Who else? And what shall the present be?”The heavens seemed opening in glory before Mattina’s dazzled eyes.“Can I say whatever I like?”“Surely.”“Then I want … there is a picture in a shop in Athens, with a broad golden frame; it is the sea, and a boat on it with a white sail, and you can see the sail in the water all long and wavy, and if you touch the water, you think your finger will be wet. That is what I want.”“You shall have your picture; we will hang it in our house in Lexington, where there is no sea, and it will remind us of our island.”“Shall we not live here in Poros, my uncle?”“Here? Not yet! I am young still, and strong, and I mean to earn more money in America than I have done already. Besides, I have to think of providing your dowry now, you see. In good time, when I am older, and you are a woman grown, then, if God wills it, we will return to the island. It is not good to leave one’s bones in a strange land. No; in eight days we go down to Piræus to leave for America in a great big ship, bigger than you have ever seen before, even in your sleep, and when we get there, to America, you shall see what your eyes will see!”“My uncle!”“Yes.” Then as no words came, he added, “Say what you want! You must not fear to ask for whatever your heart desires.”“My uncle, there is Zacharia too ….”“What? The little one? I saw him at Kyra Kanella’s. He is very little.” Just for a second the young man hesitated, then—“Can you care for him on the journey, my maid? A journey of many days, mind you, with a sea which may make you ill; a rough green sea with waves as high as houses; not like this blue joy here. Can you?”“Surely,” said Mattina, “I can do many things.”Her uncle looked at the sturdy little figure, and at the strong firm little chin.“I believe you can,” he said. “Come!” holding out his hand, “let us go and find the little rascal.”

X

The big white caique at Piræus was ready laden, only waiting for its captain, and an hour later, Mattina, in a little corner between two planks of wood and a big case, lay curled up on the low deck, with the cool night wind blowing salt and fresh on her face. She listened to the water flap-flapping against the wooden sides of the boat, and dimly saw the great white sails bellying out above her head. She heaved a big sigh of content and stretched out her feet under a loose piece of sack-cloth.The harbor lights of Piræus were already far behind them when, rocked by the softly swaying movement, she fell asleep.And how good it was the next morning to awake at sea, with the sun high above the horizon on a blue September day, to feel safe and free, to lean over the side of the boat, munching the hunk of bread and the piece of “touloumi”29cheese which one of the sailors hadgiven her, while she watched the swish and sparkle of the water as the tall prow of the caique divided it, and listened to Capetan Thanassi’s loud orders to his men, as they tacked round by the lighthouse.Ah! and how good it was, as soon as they turned the corner, to see in the distance the white houses of Poros!It was even better when she stepped down the plank thrown from the boat to the shore and was treading Poros soil once more. Then it was like dreams coming true! The caique had anchored far away from the village, in a little creek before one came to the Beach of the Little Pines. Someone from Athens was building a house there, a big house with balconies and terraces. Capetan Thanassi had brought a boat load of wood-work for the doors and windows, and the workmen were busy unloading it almost before the anchor had been dropped.“What will you do?” the old captain asked Mattina. “Before noon, when this unloading is over, I shall sail into the village. Will you wait?”“I thank you, Capetan Thanassi. For thegood that you have done me, may you find it from God; but I cannot wait. I will go along the shore, and reach the house and the little one long before you have finished your work.”“Go then, my girl! Go!” and Mattina ran up the slope of the hill leading to the Beach of the Little Pines, and did not stop to take breath until she reached the top.There she stood still, waist-high in a tangle of bushes. The thyme was all dried up of course, but the heather was in bloom and the lentisk bushes were laden with thick clusters of red berries.She dropped on her knees, with a little cry of joy, beside a big bush on which the bright crimson berries seemed thicker than the tiny leaves. “Fairy-cherries,” the children of the Red House on the hill, called them. Mattina had never heard this, but she loved the little tight bunches of red berries because they were so pretty and because she had never seen them but in Poros. In a moment she got up and began the descent of the hill.The glorious curve of the Beach of the Little Pines seemed almost entirely deserted. The morning sea in lines of deep golden green nearthe pines of the shore, and of deep blue beyond, blue as the sky, blue as the flag, bore not a single fisher boat on its surface. Only far away in the distance under the big round fig tree Mattina could distinguish a flock of sheep, and still farther away the figure of a man coming down the next hill, but whether it was the shepherd or not she could not tell. Down she came through the tall white spikes of the dog-onions waving all over the hill side, till she stood at last on a flat gray rock on the very edge of the sea. The perfectly smooth water showed the shining yellow and green and gray pebbles lying below, as though a sheet of glass had been placed over them. In and out between the stones swam tiny black-striped fishes, and now and then a ripple trembled over the surface and broke softly against the rock. And it was clear and beautiful, and herveryown sea, and she lifted her face to its breath, and she fell on her knees and stretched out her bare brown arms that the water might flow and ripple over them!In the water close to the shore, every tiny green branch, and every vein of the gray rocks, and every clump of red earth, was reflectedline for line, and tint for tint, and through these reflections ran long straight lines of bright, bright blue. Suddenly Mattina remembered Antigone, the serving maid of the next house, who had said to her, “You! with your trees, and your rocks, and your sea!” And she thought, “She has never seen them, the poor one! If she were only here now!”But she did not know that Antigone was of those people who would never see some things, even if she were to touch them with her hand. She would find that the rocks hurt her feet and spoiled her Sunday shoes.The morning light would never bring a light into her eyes, and certainly a little cool soft breeze blowing in her face could never have made her feel so entirely and unreasonably joyful.Mattina could never have explained, nor did she understand as other children might, who had read books, or who had lived with people who had read books, that it was just the beauty of everything around her that made her feel so happy, that for some moments wiped all her troubles off her mind as though by a magic sponge. She had never heard that her ancestorswere of the race which above all other had always worshipped beautiful things.However, in a few moments she stood up, wiped her arms on her frock, and walked along the shore more soberly. She must get on, she felt; she must see the child—Zacharia. How he would laugh when he saw her! “’Attina! My ’Attina!” he would cry. Kyra Sophoula would say a good word to her also; but the others, her uncle Yoryi, and her aunt Kanella, what would they say? They would ask why she had returned. They would ask so many things; and what could she say? She had come back not much richer than she went; and now what could she do? She thought for a moment of the mayor and the doctor. Each of them kept a little maid. If only one of them would take her! How good that would be! She was stronger now, and had learned much in the town. But she knew it was not likely that either of them would be requiring a new serving maid just then. People here did not change their servants like shirts as they did in Athens. In Poros, one took a little girl, one did not even call her a servant, but a “soul-child”; one taught her, one fed her, one dressedher, and in due time one prepared her dowry for her. The doctor, she knew, had got Panouria, the widow’s daughter, as a “soul-child.” No, it was not at all likely; and Mattina heaved a big sigh as she filled her hands with cyclamen for Zacharia. Poros had its troubles too.She had nearly reached the end of the big beach, and was stooping to pick a bright crimson cyclamen growing in the shadow of a lentisk bush, when suddenly a flat pebble skimmed past her, touched the surface of the water, and then flew from ripple to ripple like a thing alive.“It is many years since I did that,” said a boyish voice just behind her. But when she wheeled round, it was no boy who stood there laughing and following the pebble with his eyes. It was a grown man, the one whom she had seen in the distance, coming down the hill, and it was certainly not a shepherd. It was a man wearing good clothes, like the men she had seen in Athens in the fine streets; better far than those her master wore; with a gold chain across his waistcoat. It was a man whom she had never seen before; tall, with thick brownhair and a small moustache, but whose sunburnt face did not seem strange to her.He flung another pebble, swinging his arm well back and making it go still farther than the last.“Did you see that one, my girl?” he said without looking at her. “I thought I had forgotten,… but see there,” as he flung a third and began counting,… “eleven,—twelve,—thirteen,—fourteen! I wish some of the lads from Lexington were here to see me. They never would believe that I could make it go more than ten times.”“Throw another,” said Mattina who was interested, picking up a good flat one.The man held out his hand for it and, as he did so, looked at the girl for the first time.The pebble dropped to the shore between them.“Why!” he said slowly, “Why! From where did you come? Not from the village?”Mattina, her empty hand stretched out as though still holding the stone, looked at him.“No,—I come from Athens. Only just now we have arrived.”“Now?”“Yes, in Capetan Thanassi’s caique.”“You are from Athens?”“Oh, no; from the island. I was only serving in the town.”The man put his hand under Mattina’s chin, turned her face up, and took a long look at her.“If you are not Aristoteli’s daughter, may they never call me Petro again.”Mattina stared in wonderment. How came this well-dressed stranger to know her?“Yes; I am Aristoteli Dorri’s the sponge diver’s.”“God rest his soul,” added the man, “and your mother’s also! Little did I think to return to the island and find them both under the soil. And when I looked for you, they told me you had gone to serve in the town! How did this good thing happen that you should just have come back today? Now I need not take the steamer for Athens to go and search for you.”“For me?”“For who else? Do you think I mean to return to America all alone, and leave my brother’s daughter working for strange folk in strange houses!”Mattina was beyond speech.The young man put his arm round her shoulders.“So you do not know me? Your uncle Petro? Truly how should you? You were a babe in swaddling clothes when I left the island. But look at me! Look at me, then! Have I not the same face as your father—the blessed one? All have told me so.”A sudden enlightenment came into Mattina’s eyes. Of course he had her father’s face! The hair which came down in a point, the eyes that laughed; that was why he had not seemed strange. But her father had never worn such fine clothes, and his back had not been so straight.Timidly she crept a little closer.“My uncle,” she whispered looking up into the laughing boyish eyes, “are you my ‘family’ now?”“Is it a question? Of course I am your family; and you are mine. Your mother’s cousins here and her brother in Athens, they good people, I do not say the contrary, but they have their own families for which to provide. I have no one, and you are mine now,and I shall work for you. It is ended now that you should work for strangers. You did well to leave them!”“I did not mean to leave them; I did not know you were here on the island, my uncle, but I was afraid, and I ran away from their house.”“Afraid! Why?”Mattina flushed very red.“They said I stole their money.”“They called you a thief! My brother’s daughter! A bad year to them! But why did you run away as thieves run? You should have stayed and told them that they lied.”“I told them. But they would not believe me though I swore it on my father’s soul; and the master was going to fetch the men to take me to prison, and I was afraid.”“It is true, you are but a little one. But rest easy; no one shall make you afraid, now that I am here! We will go together to these people and if the master dares to say you stole, I will break his face for him!”And Mattina saw that her uncle’s laughing eyes could look very fierce.“Have you the money for which you served?”“No, they had not given it to me yet.”“We will get it. Rest easy! And how much did they agree to pay you for every month?”“Eight drachmæ.”“Are they not ashamed? It is not even two dollars. And doubtless they made you work hard for it, eh?”“There was always work, yes; but ….”“But what?”“She said that … that at New Year I should have a present. And now … now ….”And Mattina suddenly realizing that the present, the long dreamed of present, was lost for ever, burst into wild sobs.“Bah! Bah! And is it for their miserable present that you are spoiling your heart’s content? Am I not here to get you a far more beautiful present?”Mattina lifted streaming eyes, full of wonder.“You!”“Who else? And what shall the present be?”The heavens seemed opening in glory before Mattina’s dazzled eyes.“Can I say whatever I like?”“Surely.”“Then I want … there is a picture in a shop in Athens, with a broad golden frame; it is the sea, and a boat on it with a white sail, and you can see the sail in the water all long and wavy, and if you touch the water, you think your finger will be wet. That is what I want.”“You shall have your picture; we will hang it in our house in Lexington, where there is no sea, and it will remind us of our island.”“Shall we not live here in Poros, my uncle?”“Here? Not yet! I am young still, and strong, and I mean to earn more money in America than I have done already. Besides, I have to think of providing your dowry now, you see. In good time, when I am older, and you are a woman grown, then, if God wills it, we will return to the island. It is not good to leave one’s bones in a strange land. No; in eight days we go down to Piræus to leave for America in a great big ship, bigger than you have ever seen before, even in your sleep, and when we get there, to America, you shall see what your eyes will see!”“My uncle!”“Yes.” Then as no words came, he added, “Say what you want! You must not fear to ask for whatever your heart desires.”“My uncle, there is Zacharia too ….”“What? The little one? I saw him at Kyra Kanella’s. He is very little.” Just for a second the young man hesitated, then—“Can you care for him on the journey, my maid? A journey of many days, mind you, with a sea which may make you ill; a rough green sea with waves as high as houses; not like this blue joy here. Can you?”“Surely,” said Mattina, “I can do many things.”Her uncle looked at the sturdy little figure, and at the strong firm little chin.“I believe you can,” he said. “Come!” holding out his hand, “let us go and find the little rascal.”

The big white caique at Piræus was ready laden, only waiting for its captain, and an hour later, Mattina, in a little corner between two planks of wood and a big case, lay curled up on the low deck, with the cool night wind blowing salt and fresh on her face. She listened to the water flap-flapping against the wooden sides of the boat, and dimly saw the great white sails bellying out above her head. She heaved a big sigh of content and stretched out her feet under a loose piece of sack-cloth.

The harbor lights of Piræus were already far behind them when, rocked by the softly swaying movement, she fell asleep.

And how good it was the next morning to awake at sea, with the sun high above the horizon on a blue September day, to feel safe and free, to lean over the side of the boat, munching the hunk of bread and the piece of “touloumi”29cheese which one of the sailors hadgiven her, while she watched the swish and sparkle of the water as the tall prow of the caique divided it, and listened to Capetan Thanassi’s loud orders to his men, as they tacked round by the lighthouse.

Ah! and how good it was, as soon as they turned the corner, to see in the distance the white houses of Poros!

It was even better when she stepped down the plank thrown from the boat to the shore and was treading Poros soil once more. Then it was like dreams coming true! The caique had anchored far away from the village, in a little creek before one came to the Beach of the Little Pines. Someone from Athens was building a house there, a big house with balconies and terraces. Capetan Thanassi had brought a boat load of wood-work for the doors and windows, and the workmen were busy unloading it almost before the anchor had been dropped.

“What will you do?” the old captain asked Mattina. “Before noon, when this unloading is over, I shall sail into the village. Will you wait?”

“I thank you, Capetan Thanassi. For thegood that you have done me, may you find it from God; but I cannot wait. I will go along the shore, and reach the house and the little one long before you have finished your work.”

“Go then, my girl! Go!” and Mattina ran up the slope of the hill leading to the Beach of the Little Pines, and did not stop to take breath until she reached the top.

There she stood still, waist-high in a tangle of bushes. The thyme was all dried up of course, but the heather was in bloom and the lentisk bushes were laden with thick clusters of red berries.

She dropped on her knees, with a little cry of joy, beside a big bush on which the bright crimson berries seemed thicker than the tiny leaves. “Fairy-cherries,” the children of the Red House on the hill, called them. Mattina had never heard this, but she loved the little tight bunches of red berries because they were so pretty and because she had never seen them but in Poros. In a moment she got up and began the descent of the hill.

The glorious curve of the Beach of the Little Pines seemed almost entirely deserted. The morning sea in lines of deep golden green nearthe pines of the shore, and of deep blue beyond, blue as the sky, blue as the flag, bore not a single fisher boat on its surface. Only far away in the distance under the big round fig tree Mattina could distinguish a flock of sheep, and still farther away the figure of a man coming down the next hill, but whether it was the shepherd or not she could not tell. Down she came through the tall white spikes of the dog-onions waving all over the hill side, till she stood at last on a flat gray rock on the very edge of the sea. The perfectly smooth water showed the shining yellow and green and gray pebbles lying below, as though a sheet of glass had been placed over them. In and out between the stones swam tiny black-striped fishes, and now and then a ripple trembled over the surface and broke softly against the rock. And it was clear and beautiful, and herveryown sea, and she lifted her face to its breath, and she fell on her knees and stretched out her bare brown arms that the water might flow and ripple over them!

In the water close to the shore, every tiny green branch, and every vein of the gray rocks, and every clump of red earth, was reflectedline for line, and tint for tint, and through these reflections ran long straight lines of bright, bright blue. Suddenly Mattina remembered Antigone, the serving maid of the next house, who had said to her, “You! with your trees, and your rocks, and your sea!” And she thought, “She has never seen them, the poor one! If she were only here now!”

But she did not know that Antigone was of those people who would never see some things, even if she were to touch them with her hand. She would find that the rocks hurt her feet and spoiled her Sunday shoes.

The morning light would never bring a light into her eyes, and certainly a little cool soft breeze blowing in her face could never have made her feel so entirely and unreasonably joyful.

Mattina could never have explained, nor did she understand as other children might, who had read books, or who had lived with people who had read books, that it was just the beauty of everything around her that made her feel so happy, that for some moments wiped all her troubles off her mind as though by a magic sponge. She had never heard that her ancestorswere of the race which above all other had always worshipped beautiful things.

However, in a few moments she stood up, wiped her arms on her frock, and walked along the shore more soberly. She must get on, she felt; she must see the child—Zacharia. How he would laugh when he saw her! “’Attina! My ’Attina!” he would cry. Kyra Sophoula would say a good word to her also; but the others, her uncle Yoryi, and her aunt Kanella, what would they say? They would ask why she had returned. They would ask so many things; and what could she say? She had come back not much richer than she went; and now what could she do? She thought for a moment of the mayor and the doctor. Each of them kept a little maid. If only one of them would take her! How good that would be! She was stronger now, and had learned much in the town. But she knew it was not likely that either of them would be requiring a new serving maid just then. People here did not change their servants like shirts as they did in Athens. In Poros, one took a little girl, one did not even call her a servant, but a “soul-child”; one taught her, one fed her, one dressedher, and in due time one prepared her dowry for her. The doctor, she knew, had got Panouria, the widow’s daughter, as a “soul-child.” No, it was not at all likely; and Mattina heaved a big sigh as she filled her hands with cyclamen for Zacharia. Poros had its troubles too.

She had nearly reached the end of the big beach, and was stooping to pick a bright crimson cyclamen growing in the shadow of a lentisk bush, when suddenly a flat pebble skimmed past her, touched the surface of the water, and then flew from ripple to ripple like a thing alive.

“It is many years since I did that,” said a boyish voice just behind her. But when she wheeled round, it was no boy who stood there laughing and following the pebble with his eyes. It was a grown man, the one whom she had seen in the distance, coming down the hill, and it was certainly not a shepherd. It was a man wearing good clothes, like the men she had seen in Athens in the fine streets; better far than those her master wore; with a gold chain across his waistcoat. It was a man whom she had never seen before; tall, with thick brownhair and a small moustache, but whose sunburnt face did not seem strange to her.

He flung another pebble, swinging his arm well back and making it go still farther than the last.

“Did you see that one, my girl?” he said without looking at her. “I thought I had forgotten,… but see there,” as he flung a third and began counting,… “eleven,—twelve,—thirteen,—fourteen! I wish some of the lads from Lexington were here to see me. They never would believe that I could make it go more than ten times.”

“Throw another,” said Mattina who was interested, picking up a good flat one.

The man held out his hand for it and, as he did so, looked at the girl for the first time.

The pebble dropped to the shore between them.

“Why!” he said slowly, “Why! From where did you come? Not from the village?”

Mattina, her empty hand stretched out as though still holding the stone, looked at him.

“No,—I come from Athens. Only just now we have arrived.”

“Now?”

“Yes, in Capetan Thanassi’s caique.”

“You are from Athens?”

“Oh, no; from the island. I was only serving in the town.”

The man put his hand under Mattina’s chin, turned her face up, and took a long look at her.

“If you are not Aristoteli’s daughter, may they never call me Petro again.”

Mattina stared in wonderment. How came this well-dressed stranger to know her?

“Yes; I am Aristoteli Dorri’s the sponge diver’s.”

“God rest his soul,” added the man, “and your mother’s also! Little did I think to return to the island and find them both under the soil. And when I looked for you, they told me you had gone to serve in the town! How did this good thing happen that you should just have come back today? Now I need not take the steamer for Athens to go and search for you.”

“For me?”

“For who else? Do you think I mean to return to America all alone, and leave my brother’s daughter working for strange folk in strange houses!”

Mattina was beyond speech.

The young man put his arm round her shoulders.

“So you do not know me? Your uncle Petro? Truly how should you? You were a babe in swaddling clothes when I left the island. But look at me! Look at me, then! Have I not the same face as your father—the blessed one? All have told me so.”

A sudden enlightenment came into Mattina’s eyes. Of course he had her father’s face! The hair which came down in a point, the eyes that laughed; that was why he had not seemed strange. But her father had never worn such fine clothes, and his back had not been so straight.

Timidly she crept a little closer.

“My uncle,” she whispered looking up into the laughing boyish eyes, “are you my ‘family’ now?”

“Is it a question? Of course I am your family; and you are mine. Your mother’s cousins here and her brother in Athens, they good people, I do not say the contrary, but they have their own families for which to provide. I have no one, and you are mine now,and I shall work for you. It is ended now that you should work for strangers. You did well to leave them!”

“I did not mean to leave them; I did not know you were here on the island, my uncle, but I was afraid, and I ran away from their house.”

“Afraid! Why?”

Mattina flushed very red.

“They said I stole their money.”

“They called you a thief! My brother’s daughter! A bad year to them! But why did you run away as thieves run? You should have stayed and told them that they lied.”

“I told them. But they would not believe me though I swore it on my father’s soul; and the master was going to fetch the men to take me to prison, and I was afraid.”

“It is true, you are but a little one. But rest easy; no one shall make you afraid, now that I am here! We will go together to these people and if the master dares to say you stole, I will break his face for him!”

And Mattina saw that her uncle’s laughing eyes could look very fierce.

“Have you the money for which you served?”

“No, they had not given it to me yet.”

“We will get it. Rest easy! And how much did they agree to pay you for every month?”

“Eight drachmæ.”

“Are they not ashamed? It is not even two dollars. And doubtless they made you work hard for it, eh?”

“There was always work, yes; but ….”

“But what?”

“She said that … that at New Year I should have a present. And now … now ….”

And Mattina suddenly realizing that the present, the long dreamed of present, was lost for ever, burst into wild sobs.

“Bah! Bah! And is it for their miserable present that you are spoiling your heart’s content? Am I not here to get you a far more beautiful present?”

Mattina lifted streaming eyes, full of wonder.

“You!”

“Who else? And what shall the present be?”

The heavens seemed opening in glory before Mattina’s dazzled eyes.

“Can I say whatever I like?”

“Surely.”

“Then I want … there is a picture in a shop in Athens, with a broad golden frame; it is the sea, and a boat on it with a white sail, and you can see the sail in the water all long and wavy, and if you touch the water, you think your finger will be wet. That is what I want.”

“You shall have your picture; we will hang it in our house in Lexington, where there is no sea, and it will remind us of our island.”

“Shall we not live here in Poros, my uncle?”

“Here? Not yet! I am young still, and strong, and I mean to earn more money in America than I have done already. Besides, I have to think of providing your dowry now, you see. In good time, when I am older, and you are a woman grown, then, if God wills it, we will return to the island. It is not good to leave one’s bones in a strange land. No; in eight days we go down to Piræus to leave for America in a great big ship, bigger than you have ever seen before, even in your sleep, and when we get there, to America, you shall see what your eyes will see!”

“My uncle!”

“Yes.” Then as no words came, he added, “Say what you want! You must not fear to ask for whatever your heart desires.”

“My uncle, there is Zacharia too ….”

“What? The little one? I saw him at Kyra Kanella’s. He is very little.” Just for a second the young man hesitated, then—

“Can you care for him on the journey, my maid? A journey of many days, mind you, with a sea which may make you ill; a rough green sea with waves as high as houses; not like this blue joy here. Can you?”

“Surely,” said Mattina, “I can do many things.”

Her uncle looked at the sturdy little figure, and at the strong firm little chin.

“I believe you can,” he said. “Come!” holding out his hand, “let us go and find the little rascal.”

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