The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of IndependenceBenson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
History
The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence
Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
Greece -- History -- War of Independence, 1821-1829 -- Fiction
They all rested for an hour at mid-day, and ate their dinner in the
shade of the poplar by the spring. The others had brought their food
with them, with the exception of Maria, who said she was not hungry and
did not care to eat. But Mitsos, pausing for a moment in his own meal,
saw her sitting close to him looking rather tired and fagged from the
morning's work, and fetched her some bread and some fresh cheese, cool
and sweet from the cellar, and Maria's want of appetite vanished before
these things. After dinner they all lay down and dozed for that hour of
fiercest heat, when, as the poet of the South says, "even the cicala is
still," some in the veranda, some in the shade of the poplars. Mitsos
was the first to wake, and he, under a stern sense of duty, aroused
himself and the others. Maria had disposed herself under a farther
tree, where she lay with her hands clasped behind her head, and her
mouth half open and set with the rim of her white teeth. She had drawn
up one leg, and her short skirt showed it bare to above the knee.
Mitsos stood looking at her a moment, thinking how pretty were her long
eyelashes and slightly parted mouth, and wondering why it had never
occurred to him before that she was pretty, when she woke and saw him
standing in front of her. She sat up quickly and drew her skirt down
over her leg, and a faint tinge of red showed under her skin.
"Is it time to go on?" she said; "and I am nothing but a bag of sleep."
"I will help you up," said Mitsos, putting out his hand.
But she stretched herself, smiling, and got up without his assistance.
Then the work went on till nearly sunset; a second cask and a third
were filled, which were taken away to the veranda, where they were put
on trestles and covered like the first; and, as there would not be time
to fill a fourth before sunset, they stopped work for the day.
Mitsos and Constantine ate their supper together, but afterwards Mitsos
said he would not go to the café to-night, he was sleepy, and to-morrow
would be as to-day. The two sat there in silence for the most part, the
father smoking and playing with his beads, and Mitsos lying full length
on the floor of the veranda intermittently eating a cherry from the
remains of their supper.
About nine he got up and stretched himself.
"I am for bed," he said. "How pretty Maria is. I wonder why I never
noticed before that girls were pretty."
Constantine smiled.
"We all notice it sooner or later," he said. "I noticed it when I was
about as old as you."
"Did you? What did you do then?"
"God granted me to marry the one I thought the prettiest."
"My mother? It is little I remember of her. But I am not going to marry
Maria. Yet she is even very pretty."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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