The second day was devoted to picking the remainder of the ordinary grapes, which Mitsos and Maria trod, as on the day before, and Mitsos feeling a desire--to which he had hitherto been a stranger--to look well in a girl's eyes, told her stories about the shooting, and his own prowess therein--for all the world like a young cock-bird in spring and the mating-time strutting before his lady. The girls were not required for the third day's picking, and in the evening Constantine paid them their two days' wage. Mitsos walked back with Maria through the garden, and together they washed their feet of the must at the spring. A little further on they came to the cherry-tree, and here he told her to hold out her apron while he picked a little supper for her, again taking pride to swing himself with an unnecessary display of gymnastics from one bough to another, while Maria looked on from below with up-turned eyes bidding him be careful, and saying, as was indeed true, that there were plenty of cherries on the lower boughs, and his exertions were needless. Something in his conduct seemed to amuse her, for as they said good-night at the gate she broke out into a laugh, and, with the air of a great, fine lady to a pretty boy, "Good-night, little Mitsos," she said; "and will you come to my wedding?" Mitsos, in spite of his determination of the night before, felt a perceptible shock. "Your wedding? Whom are you going to marry?" "Yanko. At least, so I think. He has asked me, and I have not said no." "Yanko Vlachos? That ugly brute?" Maria laughed again. "I don't find him ugly--at least, not to matter." Mitsos recollected his manners. "I beg your pardon," he said. "I like Yanko very much. He knocked a Turkish soldier down last week--such a bang on the back of his head!" "Oh, he's a very good man," said Maria, walking off with a great, important air. Mitsos went slowly back to the house, his strutting over. The third day was devoted to the gathering of the finer grapes, which were fermented by themselves in a separate cask. These the two boys and Constantine picked together, until all the trees but one were stripped, but instead of throwing them in stalk and all, they picked each grape separately off the bunches and shed them into the cask, until there was a layer some fifteen inches deep. Mitsos trod these as before, while his father and Spero went on picking, and when they were sufficiently pulped he poured on to them about a quart of brandy. More grapes were then put in, trodden, and more brandy added. When the cask was three-quarters full they moved it away with the others, but covered it more closely with two layers of thick woollen blanket. The remainder of the fine grapes were sufficient to fill another half-cask.