Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/171

 *fectly well that there are a great many things you never did, or will ever bring yourself to do, which I have already done. Besides," I pleaded, "my father is dead now; my brother is away; you took me from my home and brought me to this horrid town, and you don't even let me go to school on account of my weak lungs—and what is there left for me to do?"

"Well, well," my mother compromised, "you had better let me think it over, child."

The result of her thinking culminated in my being accompanied to the former capital of the great Byzantine Empire by an uninterested and unsympathetic female elder.

It was an utter failure, this my first attempt at archæological research. The elder, besides being unsympathetic, had a supercilious way of talking, and prided herself on her ignorance. Before the afternoon was at an end she became tired and cross, and then coaxed me, saying: "Why don't we go and see the lovely jewels and silks in the market, and there I shall treat you to a plate of taouk-okshu."

I agreed at once, not because I was willing to sell my Byzantine interests for a plate of sweets, but because her presence spoiled my pleasure.

That evening my mother and I had a conversation of an animated nature, a conversation which was continued the next day and yet the next,