"I knocked one of them down," said Mitsos, genially, "and thus there was no more laughter."
"The horse will be all right here," said Petrobey, smiling. "Give Yanni the bridle, lad."
Mitsos obeyed, and they went into the house, where dinner was being got ready. Dinner was a daily crisis in the house of Petrobey, and, leaving the two boys in the veranda, he went round to the kitchen for fear that the cook, who, he said, was a man to whom God had not granted a palate, should be too harsh on the sucking-pig which they were to eat.
"Can you conceive," he said, on his return, spreading out his hands with a gesture of eloquent despair, "the fool stuffed the last one I ate with garlic! Sucking-pig stuffed with garlic! A man without a palate, little Mitsos!"
Yanni burst out laughing at this, and Petrobey turned to him with good humor shining in his great rosy face, which he tried most unsuccessfully to school into severity.
"Yanni, too," he went on, "that lumpy son of mine, does not know quail from woodcock, and lights his pipe before he has finished his wine. Come, boys, dinner first; we will talk afterwards. Bring the mastic, son of a locust," he bawled into the kitchen.
During dinner Petrobey hardly spoke, because speech spoils food. He ate sparingly and slowly, dwelling on each mouthful as on a mathematical problem. His face grew anxious as the time for sucking-pig approached, and his deep-gray eyes bore an expression of profound thought as he laid down his knife and fork, after putting the first piece of crackling into his mouth. Then his face cleared again, and he drank a little water briskly, for, except rarely, he did not touch wine.
"Hardly crisp enough," he said, curling his long gray mustache up from his lips. "Hardly crisp enough, but creditable. What say you, Mitsos?"
The latter exhibited a phenomenal appetite after his journey from Marathonisi, and Yanni looked on in admiration, which eventually expressed itself Homerically:
"You are a good man," he said, "because you eat well."