Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/175

 "How can that be?" he asked incredulously.

Then I amplified, and told him of Constantine the Great, of how he left Rome to build a new city, hundreds and hundreds of years before the Turks had even thought of leaving Asia and invading Europe.

His attention to my words delighted me. I had not been so happy for ever so long; for next to reading books I loved to impart them, since in the telling I tasted them better. They became clearer to me. Besides, sharing things from books is a joy to which there is nothing comparable.

"You can read all this?" he exclaimed admiringly, "you, who are no bigger than my thumb! But then your people could always read, though they were no kind of fighters and we beat them."

He did not mean to be rude, I knew. It was his direct, oriental way of stating a fact, and I did not resent it. But I did explain to him that in the past we had been very great fighters—though I kindly abstained from telling him how we had fought them in the Revolution, and how we beat them.

That he was genuinely interested he proved to me when we landed.

"Benim kuchouk, hanoum (my little lady) I should love to be your caïque-tchi, both ways, and I shall charge you only two paras for each crossing, if you will only tell me what you are