“Well, this young man, as I said, was with her, and when we entered the room, I assure you she all but ordered us out again.”
“And why did you not go away?” demanded the Captain, hotly. “You are always getting yourself insulted for want of proper spirit.”
“You are just like your father, ever ready to fly into a rage for nothing,” protested Kyria Karapolos, sulkily. “If one followed your advice, there would be nothing but quarrelling in the world. By acting civilly I have been able to beat down the Natzelhuber’s terms very much below my expectations. When I asked her what she charged a lesson, I nearly fainted at her answer. Thirty francs! However, when I expressed our position, and how absolutely impossible it would be for us to pay more than ten, she consented to receive Andromache as a pupil on those terms. But whenever I spoke she snubbed me in the most violent manner,—called me an old fool.”
“Perhaps you gave her cause,” sneered Themistocles, who felt bitter towards his mother, regarding her as his natural enemy since she had warned the mother of the young lady in the next street of his pennilessness, a warning which served to close the doors of that paradise forever to him.
“How dare you, sir, speak in such a way to your mother?” thundered the irate Captain, always ready to pounce on the small bank-clerk, whom he despised very cordially. “I told you to-day that it would not take much to make me kick you into the street. Another offensive word, and see!”
This ebullition quenched all further family expansion round the breakfast-table. The girls hurried through the meal in silence, keeping their eyes resolutely fixed on their plate. One man glowered, and the other sulked in offended dignity, rising hurriedly the instant Theodore appeared with two small cups of Turkish coffee for Kyria Karapolos and the Captain. In another instant the street door was heard to bang behind Themistocles, who, with his slim cane, his yellow gloves, and minute waist, had gone down to indulge in a clerkly saunter as far as Constitution Place, and unbosom his harassed and manly soul to two other minute confidants previous to turning into the Corinthian Bank.
After his coffee, the Captain went back to his barracks beyond the Palace, and Andromache sat down to practice her scales on a cracked piano in the little salon, with a view of the rugged steepness of Lycabettus and the trellised gardens of the French School through the long window. It was a pretty little room, with some excellent specimens of Greek art and Byzantine embroidery, foolish Byzantine saints, in gilt frames, with an artificial vacuity of gaze, the artistic achievements of the rival Athenian photographers, Romaïdes and Moraïtes, views of the Parthenon and the Temple of Jupiter, a bomb that had exploded at the very feet of Captain Miltiades in the late outbreak at Larissa, upon which memorable occasion he had gallantly mangled the bodies of five thousand Turks and scattered their armies in shame. This valuable piece of historic information I insert for the special benefit of those who may presume to question the direct succession of this mighty Captain from the much admired warriors of Homer. In olden days Captain Miltiades’ glory would have quite outshone that of his puny namesake; as a complete hero, upon his own description, he would have occupied the niche of fame with Hercules and Theseus.
Necessarily there was the sofa, the Greek seat of honour, upon which all distinguished visitors are at once installed, this law, like that of the Medes and Persians, knowing no change. Also sundry tables decorated with albums and the school prizes of the young ladies, the bank-clerk, and the Captain of the Artillery. All the chairs were covered with white dimity, and the floor was polished with bees’ wax, which gave the room an aspect of chill neatness.
Andromache was interrupted in a conscientious study of scales by the entrance of her mother and Julia, and the former’s irrelevant question:
“Don’t you think that young man was English, Andromache?”