"You got a new berth?" said Mr. Spokesly.
"Yeh. Over here," said Mr. Dainopoulos. "It's the best we can get just now. No room inside. Now," he went on, "You got to go on board, see, and have a look round. There's two hundred ton to be loaded quick, but I think her winches, they ain't very good. You let me know. The captain, he talk plenty about new winches. Where do I get new winches, eh? I ask you, where do I get 'em, out here?"
This time, when called, Mr. Spokesly was ready.
"We'll get her loaded," he said. "If it's all light general we can do it, winches or no winches. Is the other mate finished?"
"Just about. He don't get any more pay, anyhow."
Evanthia suddenly came out of the shadow of the room and looked at them in a theatrical way, as though she were about to begin a big scene and was waiting for her cue from the rear.
"Breakfast," said Mr. Dainopoulos, upon whom this sort of histrionics was lost, and they went down to a room on the ground floor, a room that was full of moving green shadows and pale green beams as the dense foliage of the garden swayed in the breeze. It was like sitting in a recess at the bottom of the sea. The slim girl with the contemptuously taciturn expression was laying the table.
"My wife, she don't come down," said Mr. Dainopoulos, devouring lamb stew. They might have been in the breakfast room of a home in Haverstock Hill. Only the figure of Evanthia hissing incomprehensible commands into the ears of the sullen young girl, who stared at Mr. Spokesly and moved unwillingly into the kitchen, recalled the adventure behind this little scene. On the walls were enlarged photographs of the father and mother of Mr. Dainopoulos, life-size coloured prints in gold frames that were enclosed in an outer glass case on account of flies. The furniture had come, at his wife's order, from Tottenham Court Road, and was a glossy walnut with dark green plush. A giant dresser of black Anatolian oak which stood against one wall bore on its broad shelves a couple of blue and green and yellow Armenian vases and a great shining copper tray like an ancient shield. Across this shield the green sunlight wavered and shook so that even Mr. Dainopoulos allowed his eye to rest on it. He wanted to get rid of that dresser and buy one of those white kitchen cabinets he saw in advertisements. He did not know furniture, strange to say, or he would have asked an extremely high price for his dresser. He sat looking at the light playing on the copper shield, which sent it flying back in a fairy flicker athwart the ceiling, which was dark brown and riven with huge cracks, and doing a little posing on his account.
"My wife she don't come down," he said. It reminded him of something he had been going to tell Mr. Spokesly that first night and his wife had stopped him. Why did she always do that? Always there was something about the English he couldn't follow. He went on with his lamb stew, noisily enjoying it, and pretending he did not see Evanthia's rehearsal of one of her favourite poses, a great madama dispensing hospitality to her guests in the morning room of her château.
"I met a major yesterday," said Mr. Spokesly, "in the Olympos. He said he wanted me to go and see him about the cargo."