“From Poros.”
“Poros! I have had many serving-maids from Andros, and some from Tenos, and one came from Crete, but from Poros … h’m ….”
“It is a beautiful island!” returned Mattina, flushing angrily that anyone should “H’m” at her island. “It has hills and trees down to the sea, and lemon woods, and big fig trees, and the Sleeper, such a high mountain as you never saw, and the sea all round everywhere.”
“How should the sea not be round everywhere on an island? Is the girl an idiot?” and the woman looked at Kyra Demetroula.
“She has but just come from there,” ventured the latter. “Have sympathy with her; she has not yet learned town speech.”
The woman sniffed.
“Well, what can you do?”
“I can do much.”
“What?”
“I can scrub boards till they are quite white, I can wash clothes, I can knead three okes[13] of dough at a time, I can weave yarn at the loom and I can row in a big boat with both oars together.”