After which every one sat and beamed, and they kept calling for somebody.
A plump dark-eyed girl came in, the first wife's daughter. She spoke Serb, and interpreted for the wives.
They wanted to know everything, but knew so little that they could grasp nothing.
Where had Jo come from? She tried London, Paris; no use, they had never heard of them—two weeks on the sea—they didn't know what the sea was, nor ships nor boats. They had never left Ipek and only knew the little curly river.
The girl said that "devoikas" did not learn to read and write. That was for the men.
Jo finally explained that she had ridden on horseback from Plevlie. Then they gasped—
"How far you have travelled! What a wonderful life, and does your husband let you speak to other men?"
She asked them what they did.
"Nothing." "Sewing?" "A little," they owned with elegant ease.
The chief wife had recently lost one of her children, but did not seem to know of what it had died.