each time at the slowness of the hands; they seemed hardly to move at
all. He sat down, then jumped up again and looked out of the window,--no
Liakos! He tried to read, but could not keep his thoughts from straying,
and shut the book petulantly. He was in a perfect fever.

Meanwhile the time came for his daily constitutional, and Mr. Plateas
was on thorns. He could not stay indoors waiting for his friend any
longer; but in order to be near at hand, he resolved to take his old
walk and go no farther than the Vaporia. So he called Florou and told
her that he would not be gone long, but that if Mr. Liakos should come,
she must send him to the Vaporia. He explained with great care the route
he would take in going and in coming back, so that Florou might tell his
friend exactly. All this was quite unnecessary, for the road to the
Vaporia was so direct that the two friends could hardly help meeting
unless they went out of their way to avoid each other; but he insisted
upon his topographical directions, and repeated them so often that
Florou at last lost her patience, and exclaimed:

"Very well, very well!"

It was most unusual for the old woman to say the same word twice.

Not a living soul was to be seen on the Vaporia, and Mr. Plateas was
able to follow the course of his thoughts undisturbed. To tell the
truth, his ideas rather lacked sequence, and were much the same thing
over and over; but they were so engrossing that he had not quoted a line
of Homer all day. If this worry had lasted much longer, it would have
effected what all his exercise and sea-bathing had failed to accomplish;
the poor man would certainly have been reduced to a shadow.