"It is not my head, it is my stomach which is giddy."
It went on getting so much giddier that when at last they arrived
at Piræus[8] Yanni had to carry her down the side of the steamer to
the little boat and when she was lifted out on the quay she could
scarcely stand. However, the fresh air and the walk to the railway
station revived her.
The railway carriage in which they traveled up to Athens was very
crowded, and the fat woman sitting next to Mattina seemed very cross.
"Why do they not put more carriages?" she enquired of no one in
particular. "We are jammed as flat here as squashed mosquitoes." But
to Mattina who had never even ridden in a cart in her life, it was
wonderful. The swift rushing, the bump, bump of the carriages, the
man with a gold band on his cap who looked at the tickets and gave
them back again, and who said to Yanni while he was searching for
theirs, "Come, now; hurry! The new day will dawn by the time you find
it!" ... the stopping at Phalerum[9] and at the Theseum[10] before
they got out at the Monastiraki[11] Station.
Then there was the street-car; the rush through narrow streets at
first, and then through wider and wider ones, till they stopped
at a wonderful big square full of people. In all her eleven years,
Mattina had never imagined so many men and women and children and
horses and carriages together. The square seemed to her surrounded
by palaces, till Yanni showed her the one in which the King lived,
and over which the flag was flying.
Then the car went on again, and the streets got narrower again, and
at last Yanni got off the little platform at the back of the car and
Mattina scrambled after him.
"Come!" he said, "your uncle's oven is quite close by here and I have
work to do after I leave you."
Up one narrow steep street, a turn to the left, along a still
narrower street almost like a Poros one but far, far dustier, and
they came to a stop before a small baker's shop. On the open slab
of the window were quantities of ring-shaped loaves, and heaped up
piles of oven-cakes covered with squares of pink muslin. A man was
counting some smaller loaves in the dimness of the back of the shop,
and a tidy stout woman in a big blue apron was standing at the door.
"Good day to you," said Yanni, "I bring you your niece from Poros."
"Bah!" exclaimed the woman, "has she come to-day? I thought they said
on Saturday."
Yanni shrugged his shoulders.
"Do I know what they said? Yoryi gave her to me this morning, to
bring straight to you. What I am told, I do."
"It does not matter," said the woman quickly, "it does not matter at
all. Welcome, my girl! Come in! Come in!" Then turning towards the
back of the shop, "Anastasi, your niece has arrived!"
Her husband started, left his loaves and came forward. He was a thin
man with stooping shoulders, and a look in his eyes which reminded
Mattina of her mother and made a lump come into her throat so that
she could scarcely answer when he spoke to her.
"Welcome, my maid, for your mother's sake," he said. "When I saw you
in Poros you were so high only; now you have grown a big maid! And
Kanella, and Yoryi, and their children, and the little one, are they
well? How did you leave them?"
"They are well," stammered Mattina, "they salute you."