Under Greek Skies. Ioulia D. Dragoume
the following year—were already hanging withered and yellow from the house doors and balconies. After many wrong turnings, and many inquiries at neighbouring grocers’ and bakers’ shops, the aunt and the niece stopped before the wide open door of a house in a street behind the Piræus Road. The narrow entry certainly looked as if it were a long time since the last serving maid had scrubbed it. A woman with a long face and a fat body was standing just inside with a packet of macaroni in her hands.
“What do you want?” she called out sharply.
Kyra Demetroula advanced a step.
“Good day to you, Kyria,” and as she said it she pushed Mattina a little forward. “They told us that you wanted a girl to serve you, and because we have heard much good of your house, I have brought you my niece.”
“Your niece! What? That child! Much work she can do! Who sent you?”
“It was the butcher in the big road here, who told us that. …”
“Come inside! Let me see her better! I should never think of such a small maid but that it is a bad season for servants, and that I have been three days without one.” Then turning to Mattina, “How old are you?”
Now no one had ever thought of telling Mattina her age; she was a big girl, since her mother had often trusted her of late to make the bread, and that was all she knew about it. She looked up at the woman and noticed that she had little black eyes like currants, a nose that went in before it came out, and a mouth that had no lips; then she quietly answered her question by another one.
“How should I know my years?”
Her aunt interposed hurriedly:—
“She must be fourteen, Kyria.”
“Fourteen! Vegetable marrows! She is not even twelve! From where is she?”
“From Poros.”
“Poros! I have had many serving-maids from Andros, and some from Tenos, and one came from Crete, but from Poros … h’m. …”
“It is a beautiful island!” returned Mattina, flushing angrily that anyone should “H’m” at her island. “It has hills and trees down to the sea, and lemon woods, and big fig trees, and the Sleeper, such a high mountain as you never saw, and the sea all round everywhere.”
“How should the sea not be round everywhere on an island? Is the girl an idiot?” and the woman looked at Kyra Demetroula.
“She has but just come from there,” ventured the latter. “Have sympathy with her; she has not yet learned town speech.”
The woman sniffed.
“Well, what can you do?”
“I can do much.”
“What?”
“I can scrub boards till they are quite white, I can wash clothes, I can knead three okes13 of dough at a time, I can weave yarn at the loom and I can row in a big boat with both oars together.”
The woman laughed.
“Truly, that will be very useful here! You can row the master to the shop, every morning.”
Mattina looked at her pityingly; she had never before heard people say things that meant something else.
“That is foolish talk, …” she began, but her aunt pushed her aside hurriedly:—
“She is very strong, Kyria; when her poor mother, God rest her soul, lay for three months on her mattress, Mattina here kept all the house clean and looked after her little brother as well. Take her, and you will never repent it.”
Just at that moment a hand organ stopped outside in the street, and began to play the valse from the Dollar Princess. Mattina, with never a look at the two women, who went on talking, ran out of the passage to the open street door. All the music she had ever heard in her life had been the harsh tuneless tunes which men sang sometimes in Poros at the tavern after they had been drinking, or at best the little folk songs which the officers of the Naval School sang to the accompaniment of a guitar on moonlight nights. This beautiful swinging tune coming out of the tall box when the man turned a handle, was quite new, and she stood there listening with wide open eyes, her arms hanging loosely on either side of her, and her lips apart. So intent was she that at first she did not hear her aunt calling her.
“Mattina! Mattina! Where has the child gone? Mattina! Mattina, I tell you! Do you not hear?”
“I hear,” she answered at last, retracing her steps reluctantly.
“Come, my child; all is arranged. This good Kyria says she will take you and teach you many things. She gives only eight drachmæ a month now, because she wanted a bigger girl. I do not know, that is to say, whether your uncle will like you to come for so little, but. …”
“Of course,” put in the fat woman, “she will have her shoes, a woolen dress in the winter, two print ones in summer, and her present at New Year.”
As she walked back to the baker’s shop with her aunt, Mattina was busy thinking. The dresses did not interest her very much, though she hoped that one of them might be a pink one, but the present at New Year, that was another thing! She knew all about presents, though she had never received one herself. When Panouria, old Lenio’s Panouria, had been married to Theophani the shoemaker, did not her father make her a present of a big mirror with a broad gold frame all round it? This mirror had been brought from Piræus, and Mattina had seen the men taking it carefully out of its wooden case, and had heard the neighbours who were standing around, saying that it was a present to Panouria from her father. Did not Stavro, the son of Pappa Thanassi, send a present to his mother from America, a big rocking chair all covered with red velvet? Did not the little ladies from the Red House on the hill once give a present to Antigone, who lived in the small house near their gate, when she was so ill, a wonderful doll with yellow hair, that opened and shut its eyes like a real Christian? Yes, she knew all about presents! They were beautiful things which were not really necessary to every-day life, but which people who had much money gave you to make your heart joyful. Later on, when her aunt related to her uncle all that the new Kyria had said, adding:—
“I could not get more from her than eight drachmæ for the child; she looks of the kind that counts every lepton,”14 Mattina had said:—
“But there will also be a present at New Year!”
And her aunt had replied in a funny voice—“Oh, yes! And a fine present that will be I am sure!”
Then Mattina’s joy was complete. Not only was she to have a present, but her aunt had said she was sure it would be a fine one; and surely she knew all about town ways, and the kind of presents that are given there. Mattina, you see, was not used to people who said one thing, in fun, and meant another. She often thought of that present, and of what she would like it to be, if she might choose. And certainly the poor maid required the comfort of this thought in the long dreary days which followed the one when she had been left with her bundle at the house where she was to serve.
It was not the hard work she minded. She had had plenty of that in Poros; scrubbing, weaving, bread-making which makes the arms so tired, carrying heavy burdens till one’s back feels as if it would break in two; all this she knew, but it had been at home in her own island in Poros, surrounded by people who knew her and had known her father and mother, and who had a good word for her now and then. And when work was over, she had been free to run wild among the pines and on the sea-shore. But work in town never seemed to be over.
Her mother and Kyra Sophoula had often called her a good little worker, and strong and quick, but in Athens her mistress was always telling her she had never seen such a clumsy child in her life. Perhaps she may have been awkward at first, and did break a plate or two, when it came to washing up basins full of greasy pans, and platters, and plates, and knives, and forks all muddled up together. But necessity compelling—and the difficulty of dodging a blow on the head, when one’s arms are dipped in soap-suds, and one is standing on a shaky