Her mistress stared at her.
“Another house, indeed! And what house will take a lazy one like you? Do you think there are many mistresses who have as good a heart as I have, and will keep you only because they are sorry for you being an orphan? Besides, who says I keep you closed up? Do you not go for a walk nearly every day with the children? Also I was just going to tell you that as I have my sisters here this afternoon, who will help me with the children, you could go out. Of course I mean after you have washed up your plates, and put all in their places. And you are not to be late, mind!” she added as an afterthought. “Do you hear?”
“I hear,” said Mattina.
After the street door had banged to, she finished cutting up the aubergines, lined the baking dish thickly with the slices, added a layer of mince-meat, another of aubergines, broke two eggs over them, bread-crumbed them and carried them off to the oven in the next street, so quickly and so deftly that even her mistress, had she been there to watch her, could not have called her “lazy one.” After that she carved Bebeko’s promised boat from a large aubergine which she had kept back, and sharpened a bit of firewood for the mast.
VI
It was nearly four that afternoon before she got up to the baker’s shop, and her uncle had already gone round to the coffee-house. Her aunt was in the courtyard, sorting out wood for the night’s baking, from a load which had been brought down from the hills the day before. Mattina set to work to help her, and her aunt told her that her uncle had said he was to be sent for as soon as she arrived, because he meant to take them both out to see something, … “something,” she added mysteriously, “that your eyes have never seen!” And then she went off to send the boy to call her husband.
When Kyra Demetroula returned after a few minutes’ absence, it was to find Mattina, who had come across a little sprig of thyme among the firewood, holding it tightly between her hands, close to her face, and smelling it with long indrawn breaths, the tears trickling down her cheeks.
Her aunt stared at her dumfounded. She had always been of the town.
“Are you mad, my child?” she exclaimed, throwing up her arms. “To be spoiling your heart over a bit of old herb! Give it to me! Let me throw it into the oven! What will your uncle say when he comes? He will think I have been giving you stick! Look at your eyes!”