The Greek Treasure [antikvár]

BOOK ONE "YOU MUST HAVE FAITH!" She was helping the other girls of the village decorate the icon of St. Meletios, putting daisies, end-of-August chrysanthemums and skyllakia around the shrine in the middle of the small church for the coming holiday. Her younger sister Marigo rushed in breathless, and cried: "Sophia! The American has arrived. Your suitor, Mr. Schliemann!" Startled, her slender arms still in the air where she had been festooning one of the walls, she could only murmur: "Already? But he was not expected until Saturday." "Maybe so, but he's sitting big as life in our garden, drinking a glass of lemonade. Uncle Vimpos brought him. Mother says to hurry." "I'll be right there. Tell Mother I'm going to bathe first, and change . i, my dress." ' ! Marigo ran out the double wooden doors, already adorned with 'i! branches of myrtle and araceae. Sophia put the flowers down and stood j on the small hand-woven carpets the girls had brought from home, new and beautiful, with many-colored geometrical designs, to replace for the day the used and poorer ones of the church. The other girls had also stopped work and were gazing at her with unabashed interest. Up to a year ago they had been her summer friends, the ones with whom she had associated when her family came out to Colonos, a mile from Athens, where the Engastromenos family owned a vacation house in the cool tree-shaded suburb. But that had been before her father suffered a financial blow. Now this summer house was their refuge. Sophia had been able to complete her last year at the expensive Arsakeion school for girls, the best in Greece, only through the most rigorous family self-sacrifice and the help of her already debt-ridden Uncle Vimpos. "Herete," she murmured to her friends as she started for the door. Outside, the dry beneficent heat of the late summer day still sat in St. Meletios Square as corporeally as the men who had drifted out to i their favorite café under the palms and acacia trees for their cup of ' thick Turkish coffee. The accompanying glasses of water, small spoons laid across the top, sparkled in the clear air. Sophia's house was cater- , !: li ; corner from St. Meletíos's church but instead of cutting diagonally ,, . t.