Some explanation is here necessary. At Sikinos, as in other remote corners of Greece, they still keep up a custom called προξενία. The man does not propose in person, but sends an old female relative to seek the girl’s hand from her parents; this old woman must have on one stocking white and the other red or brown. “Your stockings of two colors make me think that we shall have an offer,” sings an island poem. Nikola’s mother went thus garbed, but returned with a sorrowful face. “I was made to eat gruel,” said he, using the common expression in these parts for a refusal, “and nobody ate more than I did. Next day Papa Manoulas called at our house. My heart stood still as he came in, and then bubbled over like a seething wine vat when he asked to speak to me alone. ‘You are a good fellow, Kola,’ he began. ‘Kallirhoe loves you, and I wish to see you happy;’ and I had fallen on his neck and kissed him on both cheeks before he could say, ‘Wait a bit, young man; before you marry her you must get together just a little money; I will be content with 1,000 drachmas (£40). When you have that to offer in return for Kallirhoe’s dower you shall be married,’ ‘A thousand drachmas!’ muttered I. ‘May the God of the ravens help me!’” (an expression denoting impossibility), “and I burst into tears.” The men of modern Greece when violently agitated cry as readily as cunning Ulysses, and are not ashamed of the fact. “I remember well that evening,” continued Nikola. “I left the house as it was getting dusk, and climbed down the steep path to the sea. I wandered for hours amongst the wild mastic and the brushwood. My feet refused to carry me home that night, so I lay down on the floor in the little white church, dedicated to my patron saint, down by the harbor, where we go for our annual festival when the priest blesses the waters and our boats. Many’s the time, as a lad, I’ve jumped into the water to fetch out the cross, which the priest throws into the sea with a stone tied to it on this occasion, and many’s the time I’ve been the lucky one to bring it up and get a few coppers for my wetting. That night I thought of tying a stone round my own neck and jumping into the sea, so that all traces of me might disappear. “I could not make up my mind to face any one all next day, so I wandered amongst the rocks, scarcely remembering to feed myself on the few olives I had in my pocket. I could do nothing but sing ‘The Little Caique,’ which made me sob and feel better.” The song of “The Little Caique” is a great favorite amongst the seafaring men of the Greek islands. It is a melancholy love ditty, of which the following words are a fairly close translation:— In a tiny little caique Forth in my folly one night To the sea of love I wandered, Where the land was nowhere in sight. O my star! O my brilliant star! Have pity on my youth, Desert me not, oh! leave me not Alone in the sea of love!