‘This is my little girl, Titina,’ Kyria Stavridi said. ‘Will you be kind to her?’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

Looking at the unknown child.

Titina Stavridi was standing at her mother’s elbow. All in frills. All in white. Wherever she was not stuck with pink satin bows. Now she smiled, out of her oblong face. Some of the teeth appeared to be missing from Titina’s smile. She had that banana-coloured skin, those rather pale, large freckles, the paler skin round the edges of the hair, which suggested to me, I don’t know why, that Titina Stavridi might be a child who had long continued to wet the bed.

Just then my Aunt Ourania came into the room, to which our maid Aphrodite had called her. She put on her man’s voice, and said:

‘Well, Kyria Stavridi, who would have expected to see you in Alexandria!’

Holding out her hand from a distance.

Kyria Stavridi, who had got to her feet, began to steam more than ever. She was exceptionally broad in her behind. Kyria Stavridi was bent almost double as she touched my aunt’s fingers.

‘Ah, Mademoiselle Ourania, such a pleasure!’ Kyria Stavridi was bringing it out by the yard. ‘To renew acquaintance! And Mademoiselle Thalia? So distinguished!’ Kyria Stavridi said.

Aunt Ourania, I could see, did not know how to reply.

‘My sister,’ she said, finally, ‘cannot come down. She is suffering from a headache.’

And Kyria Stavridi could not sympathize enough. Her breath came out in short, agonized rushes.

After that, they spoke about people, which was always boring.

‘Dionysi,’ my aunt said, during a pause, ‘why don’t you take Titina into the garden? Here there is really nothing for children.’

But I did not move. And my aunt did not bother again.

As for Titina Stavridi, she might have been a statue, but an ugly one. Her legs seemed so very thick and lifeless. All those bows. And frilly pants. By moving closer I could see she had a kind of little pock-mark on the side of her lumpy, freckled nose, and her eyes were a shamefully stupid blue.

‘My husband,’ Kyria Stavridi was saying, ‘my husband, too,’ she murmured, ‘does not enjoy the best of health.’

‘Yes,’ said my Aunt Ourania, ‘I remember.’

Which somehow made her visitor sad.

Then all the others were pushing and rushing, even Phrosso and Aleko, the two eldest, all entering to see this Kyria Stavridi from Smyrna, and her ugly child. Everybody was introduced.

‘Then I hope we shall be friends,’ Kyria Stavridi suggested, more to us children, because it was obvious even to me that her hopes of our aunts were not very high. ‘Dionysios,’ said Kyria Stavridi, ‘will be, I feel, Titina’s little friend. He has promised me, in fact. They must be the same age, besides.’

This made my sister Agni laugh, and Aleko gave me a pinch from behind. But my little brother Paul, who was never in two minds about anything, went straight up to Titina, and undid one of her satin bows. For a moment I thought Titina Stavridi would begin to cry. But she did not. She smiled and smiled. And was still smiling when her mother, who had said all the necessary things, presently led her out.