'It's not something girls of a good family do very often,' Sostratos said diplomatically. 'I'm not exactly a girl of good family any more,' Erinna answered. 'The rules are a little looser for a widow.' 'I suppose so,' Sostratos said. 'Father tells me you almost had a match this summer.' 'Almost,' Erinna agreed bitterly. 'But then they decided to wed their son to a maiden instead. Look at me, Sostratos!' His sister seized his hands and held them. 'Is my back bent? Is my hair gray? Are my teeth turning black and falling out?' 'Of course not.' Sostratos answer was automatic. 'By Zeus, you're still my little sister, and I'm a long way from an old man.' 'Well, that other family treated me like an old woman,' Erinna said. 'When the other match came along, they dropped me as if they thought I'd be a shade in the house of Hades day after tomorrow. How am I supposed to have a family if no one wants to marry me any more?' 'You're always part of our family,' Sostratos said. His sister impatiently tossed her head. 'I know that, but it's not what I meant, and you know it isn't. I meant a family of my own.' 'Don't worry,' Sostratos said. 'You'll have one.' If we have to make your dowry bigger, then we do, that's all. We can afford it better than we could have before this voyage. The silver we made in Syracuse will come in handy, no matter how much I wish Menedemos hadn't taken such a chance to get it. 'I hope so,' Erinna said. 'Childlessness is a terrible thing.' Her smile seemed to Sostratos a deliberate effort of will, one that sprang from purposely turning her back on her troubles. She made her voice bright and cheerful, too: 'Tell me about the voyage. Even if I am a widow, I'm a respectable woman, so I hardly get out of the house except to festivals and such, but you - you get to go across the sea. You know I'm jealous.' 'You have less to be jealous of than you think,' Sostratos said. 'If you feel crowded and closed in here, imagine spending a night at sea aboard an akatos, where most of the men don't even have room to lie down to sleep.' 'But you see something new every day, every hour!' Erinna sighed. 'I know every bump and scratch on the walls of the women's rooms upstairs, every knot in the planks of the roof beams. Even coming out here to the courtyard feels like a journey to me.' He wanted to laugh, but he didn't. Men and women lived different lives, and that was all there was to it. So he spoke of meeting Ptolemaios' five in the Aegean, of the little earthquake while they were at Cape Tainaron, of Herennius Egnatius' toga in Taras, of seeing Mount Aitne and Mount Ouesouion, of his muleback excursion from Pompaia toward Ouesouion, and of the eclipse of the sun at Syracuse. He couldn't have had a more attentive audience; his sister hung on his every word. Erinna sighed again when he finished. 'When you tell me about these things, I can almost see them in my mind. How marvelous it must be to see them in truth.'
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