III

And what was Pavlo not shown on that first wonderful day?

Everyone knows how one's nice things feel nicer when they are shown to

a stranger for the first time, and how even old things of which one

has tired regain something of their first charm. The Four were very

proud and very fond, each in his or her different way, of their house,

and their hill and their sea; so it seemed as though they would never

tire of showing little things to Pavlo.

First of all he was taken up to the big pine, the oldest tree on the

hill. Under this were benches and a round table where, as they told

him, they had their lessons out of doors when the governess was in

a particularly good mood. For there was a temporary summer governess

somewhere in the house, but as it was holiday time, she was not allowed

to make herself too much of a nuisance except for an hour or so every

morning. From the big pine, one could see all the hills around, and the

Monastery Road, and the open sea, and the Naval School, and the Narrow

Beach, on which as Pavlo was told, one could see the sailors drilling.

Behind the big pine was the wood of small pines, all over anemones

in the spring and cyclamen in the autumn. It was softly and greenly

dark in this little wood; the ground was strewn with pine needles,

so many of them that they made a thick carpet, and there were

shady corners where, as Chryseis told Pavlo, you could lie on the

pine needles and read, and read, and read, for ages before you were

discovered. Higher still was an open clearing and, at the end of it,

the little hill-gate through which one passed from the hill of the

Red House on to the other hills, and if one turned to the left,

one got down to the big Beach of the little Pines.

He was raced down to the bath cabin on the shore, and shown all the

extraordinary drawings which decorated the inside of it, to which

all the members of the family had contributed, but more especially

Chryseis and Iason the eldest boy. Pavlo, in fact, admired the funny

faces drawn by the latter so whole-heartedly as to make the artist

flush with pride.

"To-morrow you will bathe with us," announced Andromache. For that

day the bath was already over; besides, the grown-ups had some sort

of an idiotic notion that one must let a day pass after a journey,

before beginning sea-baths.

Then up they raced again among the pines, scrambling through the

lentisk and thyme bushes, to show Pavlo the little house which they

had built themselves of stones and branches. One could really get

into this if one took care to stoop properly; and it was a splendid

place for the hoarding of biscuits and raisins, and for amateur

cooking of all sorts. By this time, it was getting too hot even for

the Four, so that they got under the wide-spreading shadow of the

big pine and sat around on the benches and talked, while the warm

pine smell filled their nostrils, and the tettix[13] chirped loudly on

all sides. Andromache, who was of an uncanny cleverness in catching

them, swarmed up a pine tree and brought one down enclosed in her two

hands turned into an impromptu cage, through the fingers of which,

Pavlo peeped at the whirring prisoner. The black poodle, Kerberos,

threw himself panting loudly on the ground; Deko, the little dog,

sat on his haunches beside Chryseis, cocked his little pointed ears

and looked about him; while Philos, the fox terrier, dug vigorously

at the roots of the nearest lentisk bush. He scratched his face,

he stopped repeatedly to shake his head violently and to sneeze,

then he would begin again, snuffing and digging as if the work were

very important indeed, and there were no time to lose.

"Where do you live in Athens?" asked Iason, nursing a much scratched

knee.

Pavlo told them.

"Just alone with your uncle?"

"Yes."

"And your father and mother? Do you not remember them?"

"My mother, ... no, ... I was very small. My father just a little. I

remember playing with the tassel of his sword. You know that my

great-grandfather...."

"Oh, stop! Stop!" cried the two boys and Andromache in chorus;

"we know all that!"

Chryseis told them that they were very rude, but they went on

determinedly:--

"Four times yesterday, when they knew you were coming, did we hear

the story. Once father told us, once mother, once Kyria Penelope,

that is the governess, you know, and once we had it for a dictation

lesson out of the History of the Revolution; so we know all about

what your great-grandfather did, and all Botzari said about him,

and how brave you must be and everything."

Pavlo flushed a little, and felt quite grateful to Chryseis who

changed the subject.

"What do you do all alone in the house?" she asked.

"Oh, just nothing; I paint sometimes, and once I went to Kiphissia,

and once to a circus."

"Can you ride?"

Pavlo shook his head.

"Ride? Oh, no!"

"I can," said Iason, "and she can, too," nodding his head towards

Chryseis. "Father has another horse over on the mainland, besides

his own, which can be ridden; and we go with him in turns."

"Mother says," put in Andromache, "that when her ship comes in,

she will buy horses for all of us, and a real motor boat, too."

"When I am big," said Chryseis, whose stories "out of her head," were

generally in request, "I shall write a lot of stories in a book, and

sell hundreds and thousands of it, and give all the money to mother,

and then she can buy anything, and a new grand piano, too, for father!"

"You cannot write a real book, if you cannot spell properly," retorted

Andromache, whose spelling was her strong point.

"Yes, I can. The printers do all that part."

"No, you cannot!"

"Yes, I can!"

"Well, try then! But when I am big I shall marry a very rich American

and I shall go away with him to America, and I shall send a whole

ship full of money back to mother, so that she will not need your

stupid old books."

"No one will ever marry you," put in Iason, "you are too cross!"

"Yes, they will, I tell you!"

"I know!" cried the little boy, Nikias; "I know why she is so sure,

because she has taught Katerina when she finishes washing her hair

instead of wishing her as she always used to, 'And a fine bridegroom

some day,' to say 'And an American!' I know because I heard her when

I was waiting my turn for the bath in mother's room!"

There was loud laughter and Andromache flew at Nikias with tooth and

nail for telling overheard secrets, and the struggle which ensued,

and at which Pavlo looked on in secret dismay, was Homeric. Traces

of it were visible at lunch time but were attributed to "playing

soldiers." The Four of the Red House were not tell-tales; that is

one good thing I can say of them.

After lunch they were condemned to afternoon rest. The reason given

being that Pavlo had been up so early, and they trooped sadly upstairs;

but Iason, who was nothing if not inventive, comforted them.

"When they are all asleep, you girls come into our room and we will

take all the sheets off the beds and fix them up with broom handles

and pretend we are deserters in a cave and soldiers coming after them."

The sheets, with the aid of the broom handles and sundry wooden clothes

pegs, which Andromache managed to secure by a barefooted expedition to

the wash house, made a splendid cave, but the triumphant discovery of

the deserters by the soldiers was a little noisy, and the mother of

the Four coming unexpectedly on the scene, wisely chose the lesser

of two evils, and turned them all out of doors quite early in the

afternoon while the soft wind was still blowing,--the soft sweet sea

"batti"[14] that makes a swish, swish in the pine branches and shakes

down the geranium petals from the stone vases on the terrace; that

blows coolly in one's face while all the grown-ups are stupidly lying

down for afternoon sleeps.

The Four and Pavlo tore madly up the hill and, throwing themselves

down on the pine needles under the trees, graciously signified to

Chryseis that she "might tell stories."

So the long fair hair was tossed back, the eyebrows were puckered

for a moment, and then the quick little voice began:--

"There was once upon a time a dryad who lived in a great big tree...."

Good old Kerberos had allowed Nikias to make a pillow of his soft

black body, Philos lay curled up with his nose between his paws,

and Deko stretched out his forelegs as far as they would stretch,

making a prodigious curve in the middle of his back; then suddenly

righting himself he sat back on his haunches, twitched his pointed

ears backwards and forwards and prepared to listen with the rest.

Over their heads the "batti" made a soft roar as of the sea, in the

pine branches the fir cones cracked in the heat, and far away over

the Narrow Beach there were white-tipped waves on the open sea, that

made Andromache whisper to Pavlo, "It will not be too hot later on;

they will let us go to the Monastery."

It was glorious! glorious! glorious! Certainly the Four had no words

then to describe how they loved it all. Since then, Iason has turned

some of the glory of those days into verse, and those who read it,

feel the warm scent of the pine, the note of the tettix, and the

blue of that sea, but he and the other three know that only when

colour-words are invented can the real beauty of those sights and

sounds be expressed!