Smiling back at her, the sisters stood close together, feeling a little shy but full of admiration. “I was afraid you were going to be late,” said the stranger girl, coming swiftly toward them. “I’ve been waiting here a long while, blowing on my pipes, hoping that perhaps I could win some dryad out to play with me. But now you are here it doesn’t matter. Did you come very far?” “We came so fast I don’t know ... is this place near Wyoming?” answered Rose, doubtfully. “Wyoming? You must be barbarians! I never heard any one speak of that country, not even the sailors who have been to the end of the earth.” “Who are you?” asked Ruth, who wasn’t quite sure just what a barbarian was, and so didn’t care to commit herself by either admitting or denying that she or her sister might be such a creature. “I am Sappho.” “Oh, yes, the fairy said you would come to play with us. How lovely! And do you live there in the town by the sea? For that is the sea, isn’t it? We never saw it, but our mother came from England when she was a little girl, and she has told us about it.” “Surely it is the sea. Sometimes I long to go away on it, far beyond those cloudy mountains there in Asia; but in your land is there no sea? How strange a place! How can one live away from the sea—not I at least, I should die of loneliness.” [Illustration: SAPPHO PASSED HER WITHOUT A GLANCE ] “We are lonely sometimes,” said Rose, “but not for the sea. We want other girls, for where we live there are only boys, and they live a long way off, on the next ranch. What is the name of your town?” “That city is called Mitylene, and this is the island of Lesbos, the loveliest of all the Grecian islands.” “Ruth, do you hear, this is Greece! Where Hector and Achilles lived, and Jason, and Ulysses ... Oh, Sappho, how wonderful! Shall we see them?” Sappho laughed. “Why, they died long ago,” she answered. “They belonged to ancient times. To-day there are no heroes like them; yet the men of Greece are strong and brave still—there are none in the world like unto them. But come, the games will soon begin, and we must be there. Are you to run in the torch race?” “What’s that?” “That’s the race the girls run. I shall be in—I mean to win it, and to hear the people cheer me, and to wear a crown of flowers....” And laughing again, the girl set the double pipes to her lips and blew a sweet refrain that had a merry lilt to it, so merry that Rose and Ruth and Sappho too all began dancing in time to it, while their light, soft garments floated about them like wreaths of parti-coloured mist. Then without more ado they set off down the long slope toward the road that should lead them to Mitylene, chattering as they went, and asking each other a hundred questions in as many seconds.