Again, as it had so often happened before, though the language spoken by the boy was not her own, Rachel understood him perfectly.
“I suppose it’s Greek he’s talking,” she thought hurriedly before she began to ask questions.
“That’s the Parthenon, isn’t it?” she asked, pointing to the gleaming temple. “We’ve seen those statues up there before. At least, we’ve seen——” She was going to say “bits of them,” but Diana pulled her sleeve, and she stopped just in time to remember that it was no use trying to explain to a boy who lived thousands of years ago, all about the British Museum!
“Will you tell us what god is worshipped here?” put in Diana, politely.
“No god, but a goddess, the great Pallas Athene,” returned the boy, glancing at her with his bright eyes.
“She’s the same as Minerva, you know,” whispered Diana quickly, having learnt this from her father.
“Within,” the boy went on, “stands the statue of the goddess made by Phidias, the wondrous sculptor.”
“Is he alive now?” enquired Rachel.
Agis laughed. “Nay. He has been dead two hundred years and more. You must have come from a very far country, O maidens, to be so ignorant!”
“We have,” said Rachel, smiling in her turn. If only the boy could have known. It was only two hundred years for him since the sculptor Phidias died, while for her and for Diana it was considerably more than two thousand years. “We don’t know anything about your country,” she continued, “so will you please explain everything.”