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Yaxis watched the car as it flashed and floated in the sun and was gone down the roadway around the distant corner out of sight, with its faint triumphant "honk-honk-honk!" trailing behind. With a deep smile on his face Yaxis wheeled his cart into the roadway and pushed briskly toward home, his mind filled with the vision of his father and the flying car.
Already, half an hour ago Alcibiades and Yaxis had departed with their pushcarts, one to the north and one to the south, calling antiphonally as they went, in clear, high voices that came fainter and fainter to Achilles among his fruit. They would not return until night, and then they would come with empty carts, and jingling in their pockets coppers and nickels and dimes.
The great machine swerved and balked and ran a little way and stopped Yaxis laughed softly. The chauffeur bent over with a word, and the thing shot off, Achilles with intent back, holding fast by both hands his face set and shining ahead. Up and down the roadway, the thing zigzagged back and forth spitting a little and fizzing behind.
A red-clotted blur ran along the forehead, and the face, streaked with mud, was drawn in a look of pain. As Achilles bent over him, the boy cried out and threw up a hand; then he turned his head, muttering, and dozed again. Achilles withdrew lightly, beckoning to the boy beside him. Yaxis followed, his eyes on the figure on the bed. "All day," he said, "he lie sick."
Yaxis nodded and produced a pot of forget-me-nots. He had been tending them for three weeks for Alcie. They bent over the pot, blue with blossoms, talking eager words and little gestures and quick laughs. And Achilles, coming out, smiled at the two heads bending above the plant. Yaxis had been lonely but now the little laughs seemed to stir softly in the close rooms and wake something happy there.
When Achilles spoke again, he was telling her of Alcibiades and Yaxis and of the long days of waiting and the happiness their coming would bring and of her father and mother, asleep at Idlewood and the great house on the lake, ready always, night and day, for her coming "Do they know ?" she asked quickly, "that we are coming?" "Nobody knows," said Achilles, "except you and me."
Achilles and the boy returned to the shop. "I want to go home," the boy had said, as the car turned away, "I go home with you, father." So they had drawn up at the little fruit shop; and Yaxis in the door, his teeth gleaming, had darted out to meet them, hovering about them and helping his brother up the stairs and out to the verandah that ran across the windows at the rear.
He sped to the corner and looked down the long road no one only two rows of poplars with their silvery, stirring leaves, and not a soul in sight and respectable houses on either side watching, as if nothing had happened, or ever would. Yaxis returned to his cart, wiping the fine moisture from his forehead.
With the early light, Yaxis was off, to the south, pushing his tip-cart before him and calling aloud bananas and fruit and the joy of Alcibiades's return, in his clear, high voice.... In the shop, Achilles arranged the fruit great piles of oranges, and grape fruit and figs and swung the heavy bunches of bananas to their hooks outside, and opened crates and boxes and made ready for the day.
At home, in the dusky interior, Achilles moved with sedate step, his hair combed, his slim hands busy with the smooth fruit. Yaxis, in the doorway, looked at him with curious, wistful eyes. Achilles glanced up and nodded, and the little smile on his dark face grew. He came forward. "You had good day?" he said.
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