CHAPTER IV
ELEUTHERIA LOOKS OUT OF A WINDOW
Nikander was a tall slender man, a remarkable uniting of sensitiveness and force. Twelve generations of his forbears had been priests of Delphi, statesmen of wide outlook and ministers to the souls of men. Nikander was a resultant type.
He sat down on a stone bench lifting Dryas to his knee, but Theria crept into the hollow of his arm. Her fears took flight like scattered birds. No harm could come to Dryas now that her father was there.
“And what day, think you, is this?” he asked. Birthdays were not so important in those days and the children did not know.
“It is Dryas’s birthday,” he told them.
“Then my birthday, too,” exclaimed Theria, for though she was taller and seemed older than her brother, she was his twin.
“Yes, yours, too.” Quite unconscious of his act, Nikander bent and kissed the little girl. So bending, his face was the mature model for her own.
“And because it is the seventh birthday it is to be the first day of school. Medon will take you, Dryas. He will be pedagogue. And here is your little lyre. Father bought it to-day of the old lyre maker. See what a pretty picture is here beneath the strings. And for you, my daughter, what you have wanted so long.”
He drew from behind the bench the ropes and seat of a swing. “But I wanted a lyre, too,” said Theria with wide, blank eyes.
“A lyre for a little girl! Oh, no, kitten. Besides, did you not ask for a swing?”