“Well, I can’t say very much for your island girls,” she observed, eying the newcomer. “I expected a fine strapping lass who would be some good at work. But it’s not your fault, child,” she added more kindly, “and I daresay you won’t look so bad when you have some decent clothes on. Come and have something to eat before you go before the Lady.”
“Couldn’t I see the Lady first?” asked Danaë meekly, anxious to get the first interview over.
“Certainly not,” was the decisive reply. “Come this way, and do as you’re told.” Danaë was whirled along a path between the bushes, and into a large disorderly kitchen, where another old woman was arranging afternoon tea on a tray with the utmost nicety, in the midst of onions, wine-jars, oil-flasks, raw meat and other unusual accompaniments. “This young person thinks she can give orders here, Despina,” remarked the guide.
Despina looked up from her tray. “Then the sooner she learns to the contrary the better,” she observed succinctly, carrying it off.
“Yes, indeed,” said the other old woman, setting food before Danaë. “Everyone that comes inside these walls may as well know that whatever the Lady says, that has to be done, whether it’s having English tea in the middle of the afternoon, or dressing the blessed child like a grown-up person, without any swathings. They may call her Princess outside or not, as they like, but she is Princess here.”
“But why should she be called Princess?” ventured Danaë, looking up from her bread and cheese.
“What else should the Prince’s wife be called, girl?”
“Petros—my uncle—always calls her the Lady.”
“And so she is the Lady, but she’s the Princess too. Didn’t I myself see her married to him at Bashi Konak, with the Princesses of Dardania looking on?”
“But I thought she was a Latin?” said Danaë, aghast.