“It is full, Kyrie. I have put three soft shirts at the bottom and the little black box which you gave me last night; the rest of your things are in the middle, and there are two starched shirts under the covering, and your traveling cap at the very top.”
“Is it quite full?” he repeated.
“If there is any other small thing you have forgotten, I can slip it in between the clothes.”
“No, …” and his eyes wandered round the room and rested on Pavlo who was looking out of the window with great interest at two newspaper boys having a fight. “No, … I meant if you could perhaps get a few things of the child’s in with mine. I think that this time I shall take him with me.”
The street fight was forgotten, and a flushed, bewildered Pavlo with wide open eyes caught hold of his uncle’s hand.
“Me! Take me with you!”
“Yes. How does the idea seem to you? This time I am going to visit a sick man in Poros, the deputy of the island; and in that same island I have an old school friend who lives there all summer through with his family, and who has asked me again and again to go to see him; so, how would you like to come with me to Poros, and all day long, while I am busy, to play on the hill and in the woods behind the house with the children? There are three or four of them, I believe.”
“No,” laughed his uncle, “early to-morrow morning.”
Even Aphrodite was quite nice about it, and turned all the doctor’s things into a larger valise where there would be room for Pavlo’s clothes also, without any grumbling or bringing together of her thick black eyebrows as she did when she was cross; and Marina sat up quite late mixing some “kourabiedes”—cookies—for him to eat on the way. She gave them to him herself wrapped up in two papers so that his clothes should not get “all over fine sugar” when he was starting for the station in the open carriage with his uncle, at six o’clock the next morning.