IV
All the next day Mattina thought of the old captain, and in the afternoon she told Antigone how she had met a compatriot, and what he had said to her. This was when they sat side by side on the steps of their “houses” to take the cool of the evening, after their mistresses had gone out.
Antigone was the serving maid of the next house, which was kept by a widow who let the rooms out to different lodgers. This maid was much older than Mattina and puffed out her hair at the sides, besides wearing a hat with pink flowers on it when she went out on Sundays.
“Your heart seems to hold very much to that island of yours!” she was saying. “What is there different in it to other places?”
Mattina tried to tell her; but talking about Poros was like relating a dream which has seemed so long and which one still feels so full and varied, but which somehow can only be told in the fewest and barest of words.
“Is that all?” exclaimed Antigone, “just trees, and rocks, and sea, and fisher folk, and boatmen? It would say nothing to me! But each one to his taste. Why do you not go back to it and work there?”
“I cannot; each one works for himself on the island; there are no houses in which to serve, there is no money to earn.”
Antigone shrugged her shoulders.
“Truly it is much money you are earning here! Eight drachmæ a month, and your shoes,” with a contemptuous glance at Mattina’s feet, “all worn out!”
“There are only three holes,” said Mattina gravely, “and she,” with a backward jerk of her thumb, “said I should have new ones next week.”