“What do you do all alone in the house?” she asked.

“Oh, just nothing; I paint sometimes, and once I went to Kiphissia, and once to a circus.”

“Can you ride?”

Pavlo shook his head.

“Ride? Oh, no!”

I can,” said Iason, “and she can, too,” nodding his head towards Chryseis. “Father has another horse over on the mainland, besides his own, which can be ridden; and we go with him in turns.”

“Mother says,” put in Andromache, “that when her ship comes in, she will buy horses for all of us, and a real motor boat, too.”

“When I am big,” said Chryseis, whose stories “out of her head,” were generally in request, “I shall write a lot of stories in a book, and sell hundreds and thousands of it, and give all the money to mother, and then she can buy anything, and a new grand piano, too, for father!”

“You cannot write a real book, if you cannot spell properly,” retorted Andromache, whose spelling was her strong point.

“Yes, I can. The printers do all that part.”