However, in a few moments she stood up, wiped her arms on her frock, and walked along the shore more soberly. She must get on, she felt; she must see the child--Zacharia. How he would laugh when he saw her! "'Attina! My 'Attina!" he would cry. Kyra Sophoula would say a good word to her also; but the others, her uncle Yoryi, and her aunt Kanella, what would they say? They would ask why she had returned. They would ask so many things; and what could she say? She had come back not much richer than she went; and now what could she do? She thought for a moment of the mayor and the doctor. Each of them kept a little maid. If only one of them would take her! How good that would be! She was stronger now, and had learned much in the town. But she knew it was not likely that either of them would be requiring a new serving maid just then. People here did not change their servants like shirts as they did in Athens. In Poros, one took a little girl, one did not even call her a servant, but a "soul-child"; one taught her, one fed her, one dressed her, and in due time one prepared her dowry for her. The doctor, she knew, had got Panouria, the widow's daughter, as a "soul-child." No, it was not at all likely; and Mattina heaved a big sigh as she filled her hands with cyclamen for Zacharia. Poros had its troubles too. She had nearly reached the end of the big beach, and was stooping to pick a bright crimson cyclamen growing in the shadow of a lentisk bush, when suddenly a flat pebble skimmed past her, touched the surface of the water, and then flew from ripple to ripple like a thing alive. "It is many years since I did that," said a boyish voice just behind her. But when she wheeled round, it was no boy who stood there laughing and following the pebble with his eyes. It was a grown man, the one whom she had seen in the distance, coming down the hill, and it was certainly not a shepherd. It was a man wearing good clothes, like the men she had seen in Athens in the fine streets; better far than those her master wore; with a gold chain across his waistcoat. It was a man whom she had never seen before; tall, with thick brown hair and a small moustache, but whose sunburnt face did not seem strange to her. He flung another pebble, swinging his arm well back and making it go still farther than the last. "Did you see that one, my girl?" he said without looking at her. "I thought I had forgotten,... but see there," as he flung a third and began counting,... "eleven,--twelve,--thirteen,--fourteen! I wish some of the lads from Lexington were here to see me. They never would believe that I could make it go more than ten times." "Throw another," said Mattina who was interested, picking up a good flat one. The man held out his hand for it and, as he did so, looked at the girl for the first time. The pebble dropped to the shore between them. "Why!" he said slowly, "Why! From where did you come? Not from the village?"