"When I am dead, you must go to Athens, and your uncle Anastasi there, and his wife, who is a good woman, will find a house in which you may serve and earn money. Afterwards when you can, you will come back to Poros and take care of Zacharia; he is not a strong child; how should he be, the unfortunate one! But you are a strong girl and you must be a good sister and look after him." She had said this the night before she died, when for a moment they were alone in the house, and when her eyes looked so big. There was a tiny bit of land which had belonged to the children's father, and which was theirs now, but it had given nothing that year; the crop of olives had been very poor indeed, the rains had come out of season, and the wind had blown every single almond off the trees; so that even the poor bits of clothes that Mattina was to take with her to town in her bundle had been cut down from some old things of her mother's, and Kyra Sophoula who was a neighbour, had taken them to her house to stitch them. By this time to-morrow, thought Mattina, who had got down to the Narrow Beach and was passing before the open gates of the Naval School,[4] it would be nearly time for the steamer to leave; her uncle would take her in his boat and she would climb up the little ladder at the side of the steamer up to the deck. She herself, she, Mattina, would be one of those people whom she had so often watched from the shore, one of those who were going away to strange parts, who were leaving the island. She stopped to shift her load of branches higher on her back, and a sailor who was standing by the gates took a step forward and held it up for her while she took a firmer grasp of the thin rope which kept it together. "God give you many years," she said to him, looking down. She did not like speaking to strangers, but she remembered what her mother always used to say to anyone who helped her, and since she was alone now it was for her to say it. The man laughed. "The load is bigger than the maid who bears it," he said; then looking down at her curiously, "Whose are you?" "I am Aristoteli Dorri's." "What does he do?" "He was a sponge-diver, but he died last year." "Bah! The unfortunate one! And you carry wood for your mother's oven, eh?" "My mother died also on the Thursday of the Great Week."[5] "Bah! The poor child! Here!" he cried, as Mattina was starting off again, "stop a moment!" and from the bottom of his pocket, he pulled out a little twist of pink muslin into which were tied five or six sugared almonds. "Take these! They are from a christening, ... you can eat them on the way." Mattina had no pocket, but after she had thanked the sailor, she tied the almonds into one corner of her kerchief, and trudged on.