Pavlo saw, and his cup of happiness was full, for he saw no trimly
set-out garden with elaborate flower-beds such as he had once seen
at Kiphissia, with "Do not touch" plainly written all over it, but
hollows and crags where lentisk and thyme bushes grew strong and
thick, and open hillside, and trees and trees and trees around and
behind the house, from the top of the hill right down to the seashore,
promising endless possibilities for climbing and hiding.
The steamer stopped quite close up to the village, and Pavlo and his
uncle shook hands with the fat kind-faced captain and thanked him
and climbed down into a little swaying boat which in three or four
oar-strokes brought them to the side of the sea-wall. Doctor Zamana
got out.
"Stay there, Pavlo," he said, "while I go up and keep a room at the
hotel, and then we shall go on at once to the Red House; and after
I leave you there, I can return and see my patient."
So Pavlo stayed, dipping his hands over the side of the boat into
the sea, and watching the boy not much bigger than himself, and the
brown-faced, blind, old boatman, at their oars, but feeling too shy
to speak to them.
In a few minutes his uncle came out of the hotel door, crossed the
sea-road and stepped down into the boat. Then the oars were dipped
into the water, the shining drops ran off the long blades, and they
were off again.
Pavlo, who was more accustomed to carriages than to boats, pulled
timidly at his uncle's sleeve.
"Will you not tell them, my uncle, to go to the Red House?"
His uncle looked at him and laughed.
"Is not the helm in my own hand, little stupid one?"
And the old blind boatman and the boy rowed right across the shining
bay, getting nearer and nearer to the Red House.
Pavlo's eyes opened wider at each plash of the oars, and he quite
forgot to be shy at the thought that he was going to meet new people.
He had never seen such a pretty house before in all his life!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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