"Because I saw him now at the corner where the flower boys stand. Yoryi, the one who squints, had just polished his boots for him, and the gentleman was paying him." Aleko wasted no words. He seized his box, and ran round the corner of the square with such speed that his feet raised a cloud of dust all around him. A group of shoeblacks and flower boys were standing about the end of the Kiphissia Road, but there was no sign of a client of any sort. Aleko rushed up to a boy much bigger than himself, with squinting eyes, and caught hold of his arm:-- "Did you clean the boots of the man with the black beard?" he asked. "Do you not know he is my client?" The elder boy shook him off roughly. "You, with your clients!" he muttered. The other boys sniggered. "You are late, you see, to-day, Aleko; another got before you." The lad's face reddened. "He always asks for me, and I was waiting for him just there." "Oh," said one of the flower boys, tying up a big bunch of scarlet carnations as he spoke, "your client asked for you all right, but Yoryi here, told him that you had been sent on a message and that he was your partner." Yoryi laughed noisily. "That is how I do business." But his laugh broke off in the middle. Aleko had come close to him, and with one well-directed kick had sent the big shoeblack's box flying into the middle of the road. Brushes flew here and there, bottles of yellow and black polish were broken and their contents spilt in the dust, and round metal boxes rolled in all directions. Yoryi seized hold of Aleko by the neck and struck him savagely on the head. "A bad year to you!" he shouted, as blow followed blow. "Did you not know that you would eat stick if you played those tricks on me? Did you not know it? Take that then! And that! And that! Did you think you could touch me and go free?" and the blows came down like rain. At last he flung the smaller boy away from him and began sullenly collecting the scattered contents of his box. Aleko picked himself up, staggering a little as he stood. "Oh, I knew!" he shouted, staunching a bleeding nose on the sleeve of his tunic. "Of course I knew. Do I not eat stick every day? Am I not the smallest? But it was you who did not know! You who thought you could cheat me and be safe! You did not know that your box would be all over the road, that your bottles would be broken, that all your things would be so spoiled that you could not steal other lads' clients this morning again! Pick them up then! Stoop! Yes, stoop in the dust and pick them up!" The other boys were laughing at Yoryi now. "He has played you a good trick, the little one!" "Did you think," shouted Aleko, "that you could touch me and go free?" and before Yoryi, furious now with rage, could catch him a second time, he doubled, and ran round the corner of the University Road.