The woman laughed.
“Truly, that will be very useful here! You can row the master to the shop, every morning.”
Mattina looked at her pityingly; she had never before heard people say things that meant something else.
“That is foolish talk, …” she began, but her aunt pushed her aside hurriedly:—
“She is very strong, Kyria; when her poor mother, God rest her soul, lay for three months on her mattress, Mattina here kept all the house clean and looked after her little brother as well. Take her, and you will never repent it.”
Just at that moment a hand organ stopped outside in the street, and began to play the valse from the Dollar Princess. Mattina, with never a look at the two women, who went on talking, ran out of the passage to the open street door. All the music she had ever heard in her life had been the harsh tuneless tunes which men sang sometimes in Poros at the tavern after they had been drinking, or at best the little folk songs which the officers of the Naval School sang to the accompaniment of a guitar on moonlight nights. This beautiful swinging tune coming out of the tall box when the man turned a handle, was quite new, and she stood there listening with wide open eyes, her arms hanging loosely on either side of her, and her lips apart. So intent was she that at first she did not hear her aunt calling her.
“Mattina! Mattina! Where has the child gone? Mattina! Mattina, I tell you! Do you not hear?”
“I hear,” she answered at last, retracing her steps reluctantly.
“Come, my child; all is arranged. This good Kyria says she will take you and teach you many things. She gives only eight drachmæ a month now, because she wanted a bigger girl. I do not know, that is to say, whether your uncle will like you to come for so little, but ….”
“Of course,” put in the fat woman, “she will have her shoes, a woolen dress in the winter, two print ones in summer, and her present at New Year.”