The Spartan Twins | Page 5

Mother, because she too was
watching the the inhabitants of the little farm. They lived so far from
the sea, and so far from highways of travel on the island, that the Twins
in all their lives had seen but few persons besides their own family and
the slaves who worked on the farm. The Stranger was to them a visitor
from another world--the great outside world which lay beyond the
shining blue waters of the bay. They had seen that distant world
sometimes from a hill-top on a clear day, but they had never been
farther from home than the little seaport of Ambelaca two miles away.
"How is it," the Stranger was saying to Melas, "that you, a Spartan, live
here, so far from your native soil, and so near to Athens? The Spartans
have but little love for the Athenians as a rule, nor for farming either, I
am told."
"We love the Athenians quite as well as they love us," answered Melas;
"and as for my being here, I have my father to thank for that. He was a

soldier of the Persian Wars and settled here after the Battle of Salamis.
I grew up on the island, and thought myself fortunate when I had a
chance to become overseer on this farm."
"Who is the owner of the farm?" asked the Stranger.
"Pericles, Chief Archon of Athens," answered Melas.
"You are indeed fortunate to be in his service," said the Stranger. "He is
the greatest man in Athens, and consequently the greatest man in the
world, as any Athenian would tell you!"
"Do you know him?" asked Dion, quite forgetting in his interest that
children should be seen and not heard.
Lydia shook her head at Dion, but the Stranger answered just as
politely as if Dion were forty years old instead of ten.
"Yes," he said, "I know Pericles well. I went with him only yesterday to
see the new temple he is having built upon the great hill of the
Acropolis in Athens. You have seen it, of course," he said, turning to
Melas.
"No," answered Melas. "I sell most of my produce in the markets of the
Piraeus, and go to Athens itself only when necessary to take fruit and
vegetables to the city home of Pericles. There is no occasion to go in
the winter, and the season for planting is only just begun. Perhaps later
in the summer I shall go."
"When you do," said the Stranger, "do not fail to see the new building
on the sacred hill. It is worth a longer journey than from here to Athens,
I assure you. People will come from the ends of the earth to see it some
day, or I am no true prophet."
"Oh," murmured Daphne to Dion, "don't you wish we could go too?"
"You can't go. You're a girl!" Dion whispered back. "Girls can't do
such things, but I'm going to get Father to take me with him the very

next time he goes."
Daphne turned up her nose at Dion. "I don't care if I am a girl," she
whispered back. "I'm no Athenian sissy that never puts her nose out of
doors, I can do everything you can do here on the farm, and I guess I
could in Athens too. Besides, no one would know I'm a girl; I look just
as much like a boy as you do. I look just like you."
"You do not," said Dion resentfully. "You can't look like a boy."
"Ail right," answered Daphne, "then you must look just like a girl, for
you know very well Father can't tell us apart, so there now."
Dion opened his mouth to reply, but just then his Mother shook her
head at them, and at the same moment Chloe, coming in with the
wine-jar, stumbled over Argos and nearly fell on the table. Argos
yelped, and Dion and Daphne both laughed. Lydia was dreadfully
ashamed because Chloe had been so awkward, and ashamed of the
Twins for laughing. She apologized to the Stranger.
"Oh, well," said the Stranger, and he laughed a little too, even if he was
a philosopher, "boys will be boys, and those seem two fine strong little
fellows of yours. One of these days they'll be competing in the
Olympian games, I suppose, and how proud you will be if they should
bring home the wreath of victors!"
"They are as strong as the young Hercules, both of them," Melas
answered, "but one is a girl, so we can hope to have but one victor in
the family at best."
"Perhaps two would make you over proud," said the Stranger, smiling,
"so it may be just as well that one is a girl, after all."
Dion sat up very