"Can't you even drink to those who are made different to yourself, if they are of a finer bake?" she said; "or is there not spirit in you for that? I should have been a mile on the way by this time," she said to Mitsos, "if it had pleased the good God to make me a man and send you with such a message to me."
"You, Maria?" said Mitsos, suddenly.
"Yes, and how many days of horse-hire does Yanko think I should have asked for my pains? Nay, I should have lit candles to the Virgin in the joy of having such work given me to do, if I had had to beg my way."
Mitsos remembered Nicholas's directions.
"Will you go?" he said. "You would do it as well as any man. It is just Father Priketes you have to ask for, and give the message."
"Nonsense, Maria," said Yanko; "a woman can't do a thing like that."
Maria's indignant speeches had a touch of the high rhetorical about them, but Yanko's remark just stamped them into earnestness.
"You'll be drawing your own wine for yourself the next few days," she said, "and I shall be over the hills doing what you were afraid of. I'm blithe to go," she said to Mitsos, "and to-morrow daybreak will see me on the way."
Yanko, on the whole, was relieved; it would have been a poor thing to send Mitsos to another house in quest of a sturdier patriot than he, and Maria's offer had obviated this without entailing the journey on himself. Poor Yanko had been born of a meek and quiet spirit, and the possession of the earth in company with like-minded men would have seemed to him a sufficiently beatified prospect. He had no desire for brave and boisterous adventure, new experiences held for him no ecstasy: even in the matter of drinking, which was the chiefest pleasure of his life, he maintained a certain formula of moderation, never passing beyond the stage of a slightly fuddled head; and a wholesome fear of Maria—not acute, but steady—as a rule, drove him home while he was still perfectly capable of getting there. The rule of his life was a certain sordid mean, which has been the subject for praise in the mouth of poets, who have even gone so far as to call it golden, and is strikingly exemplified in the lives of cows and other ruminating animals. He was possessed of certain admirable qualities, a capacity for hard work and a real affection for his eminent wife being among them, but he was surely cast in no heroic mould. He had no fine, heady virtues which carry their own reward in the constant admiration they excite, but of the more inglorious excellences he had an average share.
Mitsos arrived at Corinth next night after a very long day, and found a caique starting in an hour or two for Patras. He had just time to leave Nicholas's message to the mayor of the town, get food, and bargain for a passage to Patras for himself and his pony. The wind was but light and variable through the night, but next day brought a fine singing breeze from the east, and about the time that he landed at Patras Maria saw below her from the top of a pass the roof of the monastery ashine with the evening sun from a squall of rain which had crossed the hills that afternoon.