She had nearly reached the end of the big beach, and was stooping to pick a bright crimson cyclamen growing in the shadow of a lentisk bush, when suddenly a flat pebble skimmed past her, touched the surface of the water, and then flew from ripple to ripple like a thing alive.
“It is many years since I did that,” said a boyish voice just behind her. But when she wheeled round, it was no boy who stood there laughing and following the pebble with his eyes. It was a grown man, the one whom she had seen in the distance, coming down the hill, and it was certainly not a shepherd. It was a man wearing good clothes, like the men she had seen in Athens in the fine streets; better far than those her master wore; with a gold chain across his waistcoat. It was a man whom she had never seen before; tall, with thick brown hair and a small moustache, but whose sunburnt face did not seem strange to her.
He flung another pebble, swinging his arm well back and making it go still farther than the last.
“Did you see that one, my girl?” he said without looking at her. “I thought I had forgotten,… but see there,” as he flung a third and began counting,… “eleven,—twelve,—thirteen,—fourteen! I wish some of the lads from Lexington were here to see me. They never would believe that I could make it go more than ten times.”
“Throw another,” said Mattina who was interested, picking up a good flat one.
The man held out his hand for it and, as he did so, looked at the girl for the first time.
The pebble dropped to the shore between them.
“Why!” he said slowly, “Why! From where did you come? Not from the village?”
Mattina, her empty hand stretched out as though still holding the stone, looked at him.
“No,—I come from Athens. Only just now we have arrived.”