And laughing again, the girl set the double pipes to her lips and blew a sweet refrain that had a merry lilt to it, so merry that Rose and Ruth and Sappho too all began dancing in time to it, while their light, soft garments floated about them like wreaths of parti-coloured mist.
Then without more ado they set off down the long slope toward the road that should lead them to Mitylene, chattering as they went, and asking each other a hundred questions in as many seconds.
For never had Rose and Ruth imagined such scenes as they saw about them. As they left the trees they came out on a smooth meadow, where a shepherd lad clad in a goatskin all spotted brown and white sat on a rock, a short, stout crook in his hands, and sang cheerily to himself and the white flock that grazed nearby. His shock of dark hair surrounded his head in a tangle of curls, his eyes shown brightly at the girls, his legs and arms were as brown as they were bare.
“Greetings,” he cried.
“Greeting,” replied Sappho. “Are you coming to see the games?”
“Can I leave my sheep for the wolves to get?”
“They would not run faster than you should a wolf come,” Sappho called back over her shoulder.
The boy returned to his singing, scorning to reply, but she laughed.
“Now he will sulk when I next meet him,” she said to Rose. “Boys are amusing. I love to tease them, they who pretend to laugh at us girls because we are not so strong as they—some day I will show them what Sappho can do.”
Passing through a vineyard the girls reached the road, down which a procession was winding its slow way. At the head were men dressed in long flowing robes, white or dull blue or soft brown. They carried branches in their hands. Then came six pipers, dressed much like the girls, in what Sappho called a chito. All wore sandals, and most had a band of colour or of silver or gold round their heads. Behind the pipers, who were playing a slow marching air, came a snow-white heifer, with flowery garlands wreathed about her horns and over her smooth flanks. Boys in scarlet tunics led her by long ropes decorated with flowers. Behind these again came many lovely young women, wearing the chito and also the cloak-like outer robe that fell in many soft folds, one end being flung over the shoulder. These garments were bewilderingly varied in colour, some striped, some embroidered, some in strange patterns, but all were harmonious and beautiful. The people moved gaily and freely, and occasionally broke out into a chant.