Behind the big pine was the wood of small pines, all over anemones in the spring and cyclamen in the autumn. It was softly and greenly dark in this little wood; the ground was strewn with pine needles, so many of them that they made a thick carpet, and there were shady corners where, as Chryseis told Pavlo, you could lie on the pine needles and read, and read, and read, for ages before you were discovered. Higher still was an open clearing and, at the end of it, the little hill-gate through which one passed from the hill of the Red House on to the other hills, and if one turned to the left, one got down to the big Beach of the little Pines. He was raced down to the bath cabin on the shore, and shown all the extraordinary drawings which decorated the inside of it, to which all the members of the family had contributed, but more especially Chryseis and Iason the eldest boy. Pavlo, in fact, admired the funny faces drawn by the latter so whole-heartedly as to make the artist flush with pride. "To-morrow you will bathe with us," announced Andromache. For that day the bath was already over; besides, the grown-ups had some sort of an idiotic notion that one must let a day pass after a journey, before beginning sea-baths. Then up they raced again among the pines, scrambling through the lentisk and thyme bushes, to show Pavlo the little house which they had built themselves of stones and branches. One could really get into this if one took care to stoop properly; and it was a splendid place for the hoarding of biscuits and raisins, and for amateur cooking of all sorts. By this time, it was getting too hot even for the Four, so that they got under the wide-spreading shadow of the big pine and sat around on the benches and talked, while the warm pine smell filled their nostrils, and the tettix[13] chirped loudly on all sides. Andromache, who was of an uncanny cleverness in catching them, swarmed up a pine tree and brought one down enclosed in her two hands turned into an impromptu cage, through the fingers of which, Pavlo peeped at the whirring prisoner. The black poodle, Kerberos, threw himself panting loudly on the ground; Deko, the little dog, sat on his haunches beside Chryseis, cocked his little pointed ears and looked about him; while Philos, the fox terrier, dug vigorously at the roots of the nearest lentisk bush. He scratched his face, he stopped repeatedly to shake his head violently and to sneeze, then he would begin again, snuffing and digging as if the work were very important indeed, and there were no time to lose. "Where do you live in Athens?" asked Iason, nursing a much scratched knee. Pavlo told them. "Just alone with your uncle?" "Yes." "And your father and mother? Do you not remember them?" "My mother, ... no, ... I was very small. My father just a little. I remember playing with the tassel of his sword. You know that my great-grandfather...." "Oh, stop! Stop!" cried the two boys and Andromache in chorus; "we know all that!"