She smiled at Rachel.
“The very image of her father, isn’t she, sir?” she remarked.
“Oh! Did you know Dad?” enquired Rachel, joyfully.
“Martha has known all my young friends,” said Mr. Sheston.
“Many’s the time your father has sat where you’re sitting now, my dear,” the old woman continued. “He was no older than you then, and had just your look.”
She went out of the room quietly, leaving Rachel much interested, and glad to be in a place that Dad had once known well.
She would like to have asked all sorts of questions about her father when he was a little boy, but, remembering his letter, she felt in some curious way that it would be better not to do so.
Tea was a most cosy and delicious meal, but it was only after old Martha had cleared the table and swept up the hearth that Rachel said rather disappointedly—“Then we’re not going to the British Museum?” Mr. Sheston smiled. “Not to-day. I’m going to tell you a story instead. But first you’ll have to listen to a little lecture.” He took an atlas from one of the book-shelves, and opened it on the table before her. “The story I am going to tell you has something to do with Greece, and in order that you may understand it better, I want you first to look at this. It is a map of Europe as it was three thousand years ago, showing the countries round the Mediterranean Sea. All the parts of the countries that belonged to Greece in those days are coloured pink.”
Rachel looked, and saw many pink islands in the Mediterranean Sea, as well as pink strips along the coast of Asia Minor, and even a pink tip to the heel of Italy.
“The Greek people had a lot of land—only all scattered about,” she remarked.