Read Ebook: The Spartan Twins by Perkins Lucy Fitch

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Ebook has 502 lines and 23576 words, and 11 pages

"I don't know where he is," said Daphne. "I didn't see him either, but I heard Argos howl as if some one had stepped on his tail. Maybe he took the sausage."

Lydia went to the door and looked out into the farm-yard. Away off in the farthest corner by the sheep-pen she saw two dark shadows.

"Come here at once," she called.

Dion and Argos both obeyed, but they came very slowly, and Argos had his tail between his legs. Lydia pointed to the fire.

"Where is the other sausage?" she inquired, with stern emphasis.

"Argos ate it," said Dion.

"Open your mouth," said his Mother. She looked at Dion's tongue. It was all red where it was burned.

"I suppose Argos took it off the fire and made you bite it when it was hot," said Lydia grimly. "Very well, he is a bad dog and cannot have any sausage with his supper. And a boy that hasn't any more manners than a dog can't have any either. And neither one can be trusted in the kitchen where things are cooking. Go sit on the wood-pile until I call you."

She put both Dion and Argos out of doors and turned to her cooking again.

"Supper is nearly ready," she called at last to Chloe. "You and Daphne may bring out the couch and get the table ready."

Under the arcade in the court there was a small wooden table. Chloe and Daphne lifted it and brought it near the fire. Then they brought a plain wooden bench that also stood under the thatch and placed it beside the table. They arranged cushions of lamb's wool upon the bench, and near the foot set a low stool. Daphne brought the dishes, and when everything was ready, Lydia sent Chloe to call her husband and the Stranger, while she herself went out to the farm-yard. She found Dion and Argos sitting side by side on the wood-pile in dejected silence.

"Come in and wash your hands," she said to Dion. "If you get yourself clean, wrists and all, you may have your supper with us, but remember, no sausage. You have had your fingers with your food." This is what mothers used to say to their children in those days, because there were no knives or forks, and often not even spoons, to eat with.

Lydia didn't invite Argos in, but he came anyway, and lay down beside the fire with his nose on his paws, just where people would be most likely to stumble over him.

When Melas and the Stranger came in, they sat down side by side on the couch. Chloe knelt before them, took off their sandals, and bathed their feet. Then the Stranger loosened his long, cloak-like garment, and he and Melas reclined side by side upon the couch, their left elbows resting on the lamb's-wool cushions. Chloe moved the little table within easy reach of their hands, and Lydia took her place on the stool beside the couch. It was now quite dark except for the light of the hearth-fire.

The Twins had been brought up to be seen and not heard, especially when there was company, and as Dion was not anxious to call attention to himself just then, the two children slipped quietly into their places on the floor by the hearth-fire just as Melas and the Stranger dipped their bread into their broth and began to eat.

It must be confessed that Melas seemed to enjoy the black broth much more than his guest did, but the stranger ate it nevertheless, and when the last drop was gone, the men both wiped their fingers on scraps of bread and threw them to Argos, who snapped them up as greedily as if his tongue had never been burned at all. Then Chloe brought the sausages hot from the fire, and barley-cakes from the oven. When she had served the men and had explained that these cakes were really not so good as her barley-cakes usually were, Lydia gave the Twins each one, and she gave Daphne a sausage. She just looked at Dion without a single word.

He knew perfectly well what she meant. He munched his barley-cake in mournful silence, and I suppose no sausage ever smelled quite so good to any little boy in the whole world as Daphne's did to Dion just then. However, there were plenty of barley-cakes, and his mother let him have honey to eat with them, which comforted Dion so much that when the Stranger began to talk to Melas, he forgot his troubles entirely. He forgot his manners too, and listened with his eyes and mouth both wide open until the honey ran off the barley-cake and down between his fingers. Then he licked his fingers!

No one saw him do it, not even his Mother, because she too was watching the the inhabitants of the little farm. They lived so far from the sea, and so far from highways of travel on the island, that the Twins in all their lives had seen but few persons besides their own family and the slaves who worked on the farm. The Stranger was to them a visitor from another world--the great outside world which lay beyond the shining blue waters of the bay. They had seen that distant world sometimes from a hill-top on a clear day, but they had never been farther from home than the little seaport of Ambelaca two miles away.

"How is it," the Stranger was saying to Melas, "that you, a Spartan, live here, so far from your native soil, and so near to Athens? The Spartans have but little love for the Athenians as a rule, nor for farming either, I am told."

"We love the Athenians quite as well as they love us," answered Melas; "and as for my being here, I have my father to thank for that. He was a soldier of the Persian Wars and settled here after the Battle of Salamis. I grew up on the island, and thought myself fortunate when I had a chance to become overseer on this farm."

"Who is the owner of the farm?" asked the Stranger.

"Pericles, Chief Archon of Athens," answered Melas.

"You are indeed fortunate to be in his service," said the Stranger. "He is the greatest man in Athens, and consequently the greatest man in the world, as any Athenian would tell you!"

"Do you know him?" asked Dion, quite forgetting in his interest that children should be seen and not heard.

Lydia shook her head at Dion, but the Stranger answered just as politely as if Dion were forty years old instead of ten.

"Yes," he said, "I know Pericles well. I went with him only yesterday to see the new temple he is having built upon the great hill of the Acropolis in Athens. You have seen it, of course," he said, turning to Melas.

"No," answered Melas. "I sell most of my produce in the markets of the Piraeus, and go to Athens itself only when necessary to take fruit and vegetables to the city home of Pericles. There is no occasion to go in the winter, and the season for planting is only just begun. Perhaps later in the summer I shall go."

"When you do," said the Stranger, "do not fail to see the new building on the sacred hill. It is worth a longer journey than from here to Athens, I assure you. People will come from the ends of the earth to see it some day, or I am no true prophet."

"Oh," murmured Daphne to Dion, "don't you wish we could go too?"

"You can't go. You're a girl!" Dion whispered back. "Girls can't do such things, but I'm going to get Father to take me with him the very next time he goes."

Daphne turned up her nose at Dion. "I don't care if I am a girl," she whispered back. "I'm no Athenian sissy that never puts her nose out of doors, I can do everything you can do here on the farm, and I guess I could in Athens too. Besides, no one would know I'm a girl; I look just as much like a boy as you do. I look just like you."

"You do not," said Dion resentfully. "You can't look like a boy."

"Ail right," answered Daphne, "then you must look just like a girl, for you know very well Father can't tell us apart, so there now."

Dion opened his mouth to reply, but just then his Mother shook her head at them, and at the same moment Chloe, coming in with the wine-jar, stumbled over Argos and nearly fell on the table. Argos yelped, and Dion and Daphne both laughed. Lydia was dreadfully ashamed because Chloe had been so awkward, and ashamed of the Twins for laughing. She apologized to the Stranger.

"Oh, well," said the Stranger, and he laughed a little too, even if he was a philosopher, "boys will be boys, and those seem two fine strong little fellows of yours. One of these days they'll be competing in the Olympian games, I suppose, and how proud you will be if they should bring home the wreath of victors!"

"They are as strong as the young Hercules, both of them," Melas answered, "but one is a girl, so we can hope to have but one victor in the family at best."

"Perhaps two would make you over proud," said the Stranger, smiling, "so it may be just as well that one is a girl, after all."

Dion sat up very straight at these words, but Daphne hung her head. "I do wish I were a boy too," she said, "they can do so many things a girl is not allowed to do. They get the best of everything."

"That must be as the Gods will," said the Stranger kindly. "And Spartan women have always been considered just as brave as men, even if they aren't quite as big. Anyway, some of us have to be women because we can't get along without women in the world."

Two bright spots glowed in Lydia's cheeks, and she twirled her distaff faster than ever. "I should think not, indeed," she said. "Men aren't much more fit to take care of themselves than children!"

Melas and the Stranger laughed, and the Stranger turned to Daphne.

"Don't you remember, my little maid, how glad Epimetheus was to welcome Pandora, even if she did bring trouble into the world with her?" he asked.

"No," said Daphne, "I don't know about Pandora. Please tell us about her!"

Lydia rose and glanced up at the stars. "It's getting near bed-time," she said to the Twins; and to the Stranger she added, "You must excuse the boldness of my children. They are brought up so far out of the world they scarcely understand the reverence due men like yourself. You must not permit them to impose upon your kindness."

"I will gladly tell them about Pandora if you are willing," said the Stranger. "The fine old tales of Hellas should be the birthright of every child. They will live so long as there are children in the world to hear them and old fellows like myself to tell them."

"If you will be so gracious then," said Lydia, "but first let us prepare ourselves to listen."

She signed to Chloe, who immediately brought a basin and towel to the Stranger and Melas. When they had washed their hands, she carried away the basin and swept the crumbs into the fire, while Lydia filled cups with wine and water and set them before her husband and his guest. Then wood was piled upon the fire, and Lydia seated herself beside it once more with her distaff and wool-basket, while Chloe crept into the shadow behind her mistress's chair, and the Twins drew nearer to her footstool. When everything was quiet once more, the Stranger lifted his wine-cup.

"Since we are in the country," he said, "we will make our libation to Demeter, the Goddess of the fields. May yours be fruitful, with her blessing." He poured a little wine on the earthen floor as he spoke. There was a moment of reverent silence. Then while the flames of the hearth danced upward toward the sky and the stars winked down from above, the Stranger began his story.

THE STRANGER'S STORY

"Long, long ago, when the earth was young and the Gods mingled more freely with men than they do to-day, there lived in Hellas a beautiful youth named Epimetheus. I am not quite sure that he was the very first man that ever lived, but at any rate he was one of the first, and he was very lonely. The world was then more beautiful than I can say. The sun shone every day in the year, flowers bloomed everywhere, and the earth brought forth abundantly all that he needed for food, but still Epimetheus was not happy. The Gods saw how lonely he was and they felt sorry for him.

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