"It's like this," Yanko was saying. "What with this and that I've a lot of farm work on my hands, and, to tell the truth, but little wish to mix myself up in the affair; and as for four days' horse-hire, it will pay my way, but where's my profit?"
"You won't go?" he said, half rising; "then I mustn't wait, but find some one else."
"Shame, Yanko!" she said. "I have a mule-man for a husband. It is that you think of nothing but piastres, and are afraid of taking on yourself for two days such work as Mitsos spends his months in. Am I to sit here and see you drinking and eating and sleeping, and never lift a hand for the sake of any but yourself? Ah, if I was a man I would not have chosen a wife with as little spirit as my husband has."
Maria banged the wine-jug down on the table, and cast a scornful look at Yanko. Then she crossed over to Mitsos and took his glass to fill it, filling her own at the same time.
"This to you," she said, clinking her glass at his, "and to the health of all brave men."
"Can't you even drink to those who are made different to yourself, if they are of a finer bake?" she said; "or is there not spirit in you for that? I should have been a mile on the way by this time," she said to Mitsos, "if it had pleased the good God to make me a man and send you with such a message to me."
"Yes, and how many days of horse-hire does Yanko think I should have asked for my pains? Nay, I should have lit candles to the Virgin in the joy of having such work given me to do, if I had had to beg my way."
"Will you go?" he said. "You would do it as well as any man. It is just Father Priketes you have to ask for, and give the message."
"Nonsense, Maria," said Yanko; "a woman can't do a thing like that."
Maria's indignant speeches had a touch of the high rhetorical about them, but Yanko's remark just stamped them into earnestness.
"You'll be drawing your own wine for yourself the next few days," she said, "and I shall be over the hills doing what you were afraid of. I'm blithe to go," she said to Mitsos, "and to-morrow daybreak will see me on the way."
Yanko, on the whole, was relieved; it would have been a poor thing to send Mitsos to another house in quest of a sturdier patriot than he, and Maria's offer had obviated this without entailing the journey on himself. Poor Yanko had been born of a meek and quiet spirit, and the possession of the earth in company with like-minded men would have seemed to him a sufficiently beatified prospect. He had no desire for brave and boisterous adventure, new experiences held for him no ecstasy: even in the matter of drinking, which was the chiefest pleasure of his life, he maintained a certain formula of moderation, never passing beyond the stage of a slightly fuddled head; and a wholesome fear of Maria--not acute, but steady--as a rule, drove him home while he was still perfectly capable of getting there. The rule of his life was a certain sordid mean, which has been the subject for praise in the mouth of poets, who have even gone so far as to call it golden, and is strikingly exemplified in the lives of cows and other ruminating animals. He was possessed of certain admirable qualities, a capacity for hard work and a real affection for his eminent wife being among them, but he was surely cast in no heroic mould. He had no fine, heady virtues which carry their own reward in the constant admiration they excite, but of the more inglorious excellences he had an average share.