“Ah, you do not see flags there, do you?”
“At Easter, and on the twenty-fifth of March,[2] there was always a flag put up at the Town Hall but no one took his hat off.”
“Well, in Athens you will learn many things,” said the old man walking away. Aleko looked after him.
“I do not think,” he muttered, “that he knew why. How many people do not know things when you ask them.” Then he ran up the steps of the Hotel Grande Bretagne where one of the head servants, standing on the verandah, had beckoned to him to clean his boots.
“Make them shine well,” said the man, putting his foot on the little inclined rest of the box.
“Be easy,” answered Aleko, “you will see your face in them.”
He scraped, and rubbed, and polished vigorously; then when one foot was changed for the other, he suddenly asked without looking up:—
“What does ‘Know thyself’ mean?”
“Where did you pick up that fine phrase?”
“One man who was passing said it to another, and he said it was a very difficult thing. What does it mean?”