The Twins had been brought up to be seen and not heard, especially when
there was company, and as Dion was not anxious to call attention to
himself just then, the two children slipped quietly into their places on
the floor by the hearth-fire just as Melas and the Stranger dipped their
bread into their broth and began to eat.

It must be confessed that Melas seemed to enjoy the black broth much
more than his guest did, but the stranger ate it nevertheless, and when
the last drop was gone, the men both wiped their fingers on scraps of
bread and threw them to Argos, who snapped them up as greedily as if his
tongue had never been burned at all. Then Chloe brought the sausages hot
from the fire, and barley-cakes from the oven. When she had served the
men and had explained that these cakes were really not so good as her
barley-cakes usually were, Lydia gave the Twins each one, and she gave
Daphne a sausage. She just looked at Dion without a single word.

He knew perfectly well what she meant. He munched his barley-cake in
mournful silence, and I suppose no sausage ever smelled quite so good to
any little boy in the whole world as Daphne's did to Dion just then.
However, there were plenty of barley-cakes, and his mother let him have
honey to eat with them, which comforted Dion so much that when the
Stranger began to talk to Melas, he forgot his troubles entirely. He
forgot his manners too, and listened with his eyes and mouth both wide
open until the honey ran off the barley-cake and down between his
fingers. Then he licked his fingers!

No one saw him do it, not even his 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