“Is he?” said Aleko indifferently. “Well, Solon is his dog, and he is so fond of him that he fears lest the wind should blow or the rain should drop on his body; and he often goes into the kitchen to see what he eats, and Anneza says that if all poor people fared as well as this dog does, it would be well. So that is why he is so fat, you see! And when Anneza goes out, her master says she must take the dog with her for exercise, and if she does not … bad luck to her! But he is always straying. She is a stupid woman and Solon will not stay with her. Some day she will lose him and never find him again, and then there will be trouble. Now I must take him back.”
“His master,” said the old man slowly, “is so fond of the dog because it was his wife’s dog, and she is dead.”
Aleko, with Solon contentedly tucked under his arm, stopped short.
“This house in which I live, is his, and because of that, I pay very little rent for it. He, Nico Spinotti, is my old pupil from Cephalonia, of whom I told you; he who took me to the oculists. Once, a long time ago, when I first came to Athens, when I could still see, I went to his house. His wife was alive then—a beautiful woman, of one of the first names of the island—and as she was talking to me and smiling, she had the little dog, who was but a puppy, in her arms. She died—God rest her soul—of typhoid fever. Since then I have not seen Nico often, but he never forgets his old master.”
“Of course not,” said Aleko, “why should he?”
“Many would, my boy; many would. But he is a good man; take his dog back to him that he may not be anxious.”
After Aleko had left Solon at the big house, it was already dark. He hurried down the Kiphissia Road and through the Square of the Constitution, thinking he would have more chance of selling the few papers he still held, if he went to school by that way.
It was getting cooler, and the streets were filled with people pouring out of all quarters of the city to breathe the night air after the weariness of the day spent behind closed shutters.
Crowded street cars and carriages crossed and recrossed, carrying family parties down to Phalerum and the sea.