As she spoke, Lydia drew her skirt shorter through her girdle and started for the hearth-fire in the room beyond. "Shoo," she cried to the hens, which had followed the children into the house and were searching hopefully for something to eat among the ashes, "you'll burn your toes as like as not! Begone, unless you want to be put at once into the pot! Go for them, Argos! Dion, you feed them. They'll be under foot until they've had their supper, and it's time they were on the roost this minute! Daphne, your face is dirty; go wash it, while I get the fire started and see if I can't find something to eat more fitting to set before a guest." While the children ran to carry out their Mother's orders, Lydia herself seized the bellows and blew upon the embers of the fire. "By all the Gods!" she cried, "there's not a stick of wood in the house." She dropped the bellows and ran into the court. From the room above still came the _clack clack_ of the loom. Lydia looked up at the gallery of the second story and clapped her hands. "Chloe, Chloe," she called. The clacking suddenly stopped, and a young girl with black hair and eyes and red cheeks came out of the upper room and leaned over the balcony rail. "Did you want me?" she asked. "Indeed I want you!" answered her mistress. "Company is coming to supper and there is nothing in the house fit to set before him! Hurry and bring some wood. There's not even a fire!" There was a sound of hasty footsteps on the stair, and Chloe disappeared into the farm-yard. In a moment she was back again with a basket of wood, which she placed beside the hearth. Lydia knelt on the floor and laid the wood upon the coals. Then she blew upon them energetically with the bellows. Chloe knelt beside her and blew too, but not with bellows. The ashes flew in every direction. "Mercy!" cried Lydia, "you've a breath like the blasts of winter! You will blow the sparks clear across the court and set fire to the thatch if you keep on! Come! Get out the oven and start a charcoal fire! We can bake barley-cakes, at least, and there are sausages in the store-room. See if there is fresh water in the water-jar." "There isn't a drop, I know," said Daphne. "I took the last to wash my face." "Was there ever anything like it?" cried Lydia. "Fresh water first of all! Run at once to the spring, Chloe. I '11 get the oven myself. Daphne, you take the small water-jar and go with Chloe." As Chloe and Daphne, with their water-jars on their shoulders, started out of the back door for the spring, the door at the front of the court opened, and Melas entered with a tall, bearded man wearing a long cloak. The moment she heard the door move on its hinges, Lydia stood up straight and tall beside her hearth-fire, and, at a sign from her husband, came forward to greet the Stranger. "You are welcome," she said, "to such entertainment as our plain house affords. I could wish it were better for your sake."