“For who else? Do you think I mean to return to America all alone, and leave my brother’s daughter working for strange folk in strange houses!”
Mattina was beyond speech.
The young man put his arm round her shoulders.
“So you do not know me? Your uncle Petro? Truly how should you? You were a babe in swaddling clothes when I left the island. But look at me! Look at me, then! Have I not the same face as your father—the blessed one? All have told me so.”
A sudden enlightenment came into Mattina’s eyes. Of course he had her father’s face! The hair which came down in a point, the eyes that laughed; that was why he had not seemed strange. But her father had never worn such fine clothes, and his back had not been so straight.
Timidly she crept a little closer.
“My uncle,” she whispered looking up into the laughing boyish eyes, “are you my ‘family’ now?”
“Is it a question? Of course I am your family; and you are mine. Your mother’s cousins here and her brother in Athens, they good people, I do not say the contrary, but they have their own families for which to provide. I have no one, and you are mine now, and I shall work for you. It is ended now that you should work for strangers. You did well to leave them!”
“I did not mean to leave them; I did not know you were here on the island, my uncle, but I was afraid, and I ran away from their house.”
“Afraid! Why?”