"Was there ever anything like it?" cried Lydia. "Fresh water first of
all! Run at once to the spring, Chloe. I '11 get the oven myself. Daphne,
you take the small water-jar and go with Chloe."

As Chloe and Daphne, with their water-jars on their shoulders, started
out of the back door for the spring, the door at the front of the court
opened, and Melas entered with a tall, bearded man wearing a long cloak.

The moment she heard the door move on its hinges, Lydia stood up straight
and tall beside her hearth-fire, and, at a sign from her husband, came
forward to greet the Stranger.

"You are welcome," she said, "to such entertainment as our plain house
affords. I could wish it were better for your sake."

"I shall be honored by your hospitality," said the Stranger politely,
"and what is good enough for a farmer is surely good enough for a
philosopher, if I may call myself one."

"Though you are a philosopher, you are also, no doubt, an Athenian,"
replied Lydia, "and it is known to all the world that the feast of the
Spartan is but common fare for those who live delicately as the Athenians
do."

"I bring an appetite that would make a feast of bread alone," answered
the Stranger.

Melas, a tall brown-faced man with a brown beard, now spoke for the first
time.