"Am I so stupid this morning, then?" asked Mitsos.
"There is no mellowness in tobacco," said she, sententiously, quoting a Greek proverb. "No, you are not stupid, but I have other business in which you have no share."
"And what is that?"
"And who will have made the little Mitsos my confessor?" said she, drolling with him. "Well, father, I am going to see the baby."
"The blessing of the saints be on your work, my daughter," said Mitsos, with prelatical solemnity. "But you are never away from the baby, Capsina. Am I to be superseded?"
She flushed a little.
"Not from my affection," she said, with secret truth; "only in the matter of advice, I claim a right to consult another." And she turned and walked briskly away from the quay.
The mayor, Elias Melissinos, was a little withered man, with a face the color of a ripe crab-apple. His eyes, bright and black like a bird's, peeped out from a great fringe of eyebrow, and seemed the very hearth and home of an infernal shrewdness. He was the first cousin of the Capsina's mother, but thought nothing of his connection with the clan, remarking with much truth that the same God made also the vermin, and the tortoises upon the mountain. But as he had grave theological doubts as to whether it was God or the devil who had made the Turks, he was a suitable ally. He ate his dinner peeking and peering at his food, and swallowing it gulpingly like pills, with a backward toss of his head, occasionally glancing at Mitsos, who fed Christos and himself alternately, and asking sharp little questions. When they had finished they went on deck, and Elias sucked at his pipe like a grave little baby, while the Capsina made exposition.
"See, cousin," she said, "Mitsos and I have examined the quay, and we both think that it is easily defensible and hard to take. There is already a big shed on there; you will have to build another one on the promontory, opposite; between them they will command the harbor like a two-edged sword."
"You will be putting guns on the sheds, maybe?" asked Elias, briskly.