entirely what a good man Sarkis was; I forgot his fruit-garden and his
pretty daughter, of whom the good old lady had told me so many beautiful
things. The liver had spoiled everything in a trice. Sarkis noticed
this, and asked me smiling:

"What is the matter?"

"Have you a dog in your yard?" I asked, without heeding his words.

"No," he said.

"For whom, then, is the liver?"

"For none other than ourselves. We will eat it."

I looked at Sarkis to see if he were jesting with me, but no sign of
jesting was to be seen in his face.

"You will really eat the liver yourselves?" I asked.

"What astonishes you, my boy? Is not liver to be eaten, then?"

"Dogs eat liver," I said, deeply wounded, and turned away, for Sarkis
appeared to me at that moment like a ghoul.

Just then there came into the store a pretty, pleasing boy. "Mamma sent
me to get what you have bought at the Bazaar, and the hearth-fire has
been lit a long time." I concluded that this was Sarkis's son, Toros. I
perceived immediately from his face that he was a good boy, and I was
very much taken with him.