Mattina looked about her, at the women who sat chatting before the narrow doorways behind which were occasional glimpses of crowded courtyards and linen spread out to dry, at the dirty little trickle of water along the sidewalk with its accustomed burden of rotting lettuce leaves, at the children scrambling and shouting in the thick dust of the road, and sighed. She could not have told why she sighed, nor have put into words what she found so ugly about her, so she only said:-- "Perhaps it is better there than here." That Athens has beauties of its own, which people travel from distant lands to see, she knew not. Its charms were not for her. When she walked out with Taki and Bebeko, the pavements hurt her badly shod feet, and the glare of the tall white houses hurt her eyes. As for the beautiful Royal Gardens with their old trees and their shady paths, their pergolas, their palms, their orange trees and their sheets of violets, as for the Zappion[17] from whose raised terrace one can see the columns of the old Temple of Jupiter, the Acropolis,[18] the marble Stadium,[19] and Phalerum and the sea, all of which together make what is perhaps the most beautiful view in all Europe, ... she had never been there! Those were walks for the rich and well-born children whom she sometimes saw wheeled about in little carriages by foreign nurses who were dressed all in white with little black bonnets tied with white strings. How could she lug two heavy children so far? No, Athens for her was made up of hot narrow streets, of much noise and hard pavements. The very next morning while she was sweeping out the passage, she saw Antigone in her best dress and her hat with the pink flowers, beckoning to her from outside the house. "What is it?" exclaimed Mattina, "how is it you are dressed in your fine things in the morning? What is happening?" "It is happening that I am going! That old screaming mistress of mine has sent me off!" "But what did you do?" "I only told her I was not a dog to be spoken to as she speaks to me, and she told me to go now at once! Well, it matters little to me; there is no lack of houses, and better than hers a thousand times! I am a poor girl without learning, but I should be ashamed to scream as she does when anger takes her. Why, you can hear her as far off as the square! Well, if she thinks I shall regret her and her screams, she deceives herself! See, I leave you the key of my trunk. I will send my brother for it this evening, if he can come so far; he lives at the Plaka[20] you know. And I will tell him to ask you for the key: I will have no pryings in my things. And Mattina...." "Yes?" "Do me a favor and may you enjoy your life!" "What shall I do?"