recollect as if to-day that there was a spring of sweet water on the
very spot where I am standing. What can have happened to it! I know that
everything can be lost--but a spring, how can that be lost?" Hripsime
stooped and began to scratch about with her stick. "Look here," she said
suddenly, "bad boys have filled up the beautiful spring with earth and
stones. Plague take it! Well, if one's head is cut off, he weeps not for
his beard. For the spring I care not, but for poor Sarkis and his family
I am very sorry."

"Are you certain that the house of Sarkis, the grocer, stood here? I had
wholly forgotten it. Now tell me, I pray, what has become of him? Does
he still live, or is he dead? Where is his family? I remember now that
he had a pretty daughter and also a son."

Nurse Hripsime gave no heed to my questions, but stood silently, poking
about with her stick near the choked-up spring.

The picture of Grocer Sarkis, as we called him, took form vividly in my
memory, and with it awoke many experiences of my childhood. I remembered
that when I was a child a dear old lady often visited us, who was
continually telling us about Grocer Sarkis, and used to hold up his
children as models. In summer, when the early fruit was ripe, she used
to visit his house, gather fruit in his garden, and would always come to
us with full pockets, bringing us egg-plums, saffron apples, fig-pears,
and many other fruits. From that time we knew Sarkis, and when my mother
wanted any little thing for the house I got it for her at his store. I
loved him well, this Sarkis; he was a quiet, mild man, around whose
mouth a smile hovered. "What do you want, my child?" he always asked
when I entered his store.