"That's my sister," said Cleon to me in a whisper. "She's the Lightning Calculator."
In the next stanza, which was quite unintelligible to me, I noticed an allusion to Demeter, at which the women looked shocked and the men delighted. I was wondering at the significance of this when Lydia discovered me, and, delighted to divert attention from herself by directing it toward me, she said to the tormentors who were holding her: "There he is!"—and she nodded in my direction.
Immediately all eyes were turned toward me and I became painfully conscious of my bare white legs. The young man with the guitar stepped down from his chair and came to me.
"Welcome to Tyringham," said he. "We don't know how you got here or where you come from, but we are ready to answer questions and willing to ask none."
I stammered something in answer and was led to a table where two places had been left for us. Cleon and I sat down and food was brought. Lydia asked me a few conventional questions to put me at my ease; but hardly succeeded, for seemingly some hundreds were engaged in staring at me. At last some one pushed the soloist by the arm. "One more verse, Ariston," said he, and Ariston jumped on the chair again, and, twanging his guitar, resumed:
"Of swarthy skins she tires soon
To her new things must cater,
So now she's found a pantaloon—
The Lightning Calculator."
My legs were well under the table so I could join in the laugh, secretly satisfied to be associated with her even in the jingling nonsense of a comic song.
"Boobies!" exclaimed Lydia, "and Babies!" she added. "Boobies and Babies!" She ran to the door and they all followed her, boisterously laughing, and leaving me alone with Cleon.
"I didn't understand much of it," said I. "Who is Chairo?"
"Chairo is a great man; one of our great men; the youngest of them; he may become anything; but he is not popular because he is so dictatorial."