e 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.

"Here, little son, take that," Sarkis said, and handed him the basket
which I had set down.

Toros peeped in, and when he spied the liver he said, "We will have a
pie for dinner." Then he put on his cap and turned to go.

"Toros," called his father to him, "take Melkon with you to our house
and play with him as a brother."

I was exceedingly pleased with the invitation, and went out with Toros.
When we arrived at Sarkis's house and entered the garden it seemed as
though I were in an entirely new world. The yard was very pretty, no
disorder was to be seen anywhere. Here and there pretty chickens,
geese, and turkeys ran about with their chicks. On the roof sat doves of
the best kinds. The yard was shaded in places by pretty green trees, the
house had a pretty balcony, and under the eaves stood green-painted tubs
for catching rain-water. In the windows different flowers were growing,
and from the balcony hung cages of goldfinches, nightingales, and canary
birds; in a word, everything I saw was pretty, homelike, and pleasant.

In the kitchen cooking was going on, for thick smoke rose from the
chimney. At the kitchen-door stood Sarkis's wife, a healthy,
red-cheeked, and vigorous woman, apparently about thirty years old. From
the fire that burned on the hearth her cheeks were still more reddened,
so that it seemed, as they say, the redness sprang right out of her. On
a little stool on the balcony sat a little girl, who wore, according to
the prevailing fashion, a red satin fez on her head. This was Toros's
sister. I have seen many beautiful girls in my time, but never a
p