Kyra Sophoula was a funny old woman, as brown and as wrinkled as a quince that has been hung up too long, but children never ran away from her, even the tiny ones. Zacharia successfully rescued the last remnant of the koulouri from the puppy’s teeth, and came, looking up at her with round black baby eyes.
“If a good little boy who does not cry … a golden little boy, comes with me to my house to-morrow, I shall have … two sugar comfits, and a whole dried fig to give him! And if this golden little child never cries at all, there will be some more comfits the next day! I wonder if I shall find a good little boy, like that?”
Zacharia rubbed his black curls confidingly against the old woman’s skirts, and murmured:—
“Me!”
“Ah, we shall see fine things, that golden boy and I!” then turning to Mattina:—
“Tell me; your uncle Anastasi and his wife, have they found a good house in which you may serve?”
“Not yet; my uncle sent a letter to say that it would be better if I did not go till September, because there are more people who change servants at that time, but my uncle Yoryi here, he says that I must go to my uncle Anastasi’s now at once, and let them find a house for me to serve, when they can. He says he will keep the little one, but that I am a big girl, and that he has fed me long enough. It is true,” she added gravely, “that my hunger is great.”
Kyra Sophoula nodded her head.
“Yoryi is a poor man,” she said, “also, he has daughters to marry.”
“Is it far to Athens?” asked Mattina.