“Well, well, my child, you shall have it,” he usually answered, and always gave me a stick of sugar candy, with the words, “That is for you; it is good for the cough.”  It never happened that I went out of the store without receiving something from him.  In winter-time he treated me to sugar candy, and in summer-time he always had in his store great baskets full of apricots, plums, pears, and apples, or whatever was in season in his garden.  His garden at that time—­some thirty or thirty-five years ago—­was very famous.  One time my mother sent me to Sarkis’s store to procure, as I remember, saffron for the pillau.  Sarkis gave me what I desired, and then noticing, probably, how longingly I looked toward the fruit-baskets, he said: 

“Now, you shall go and have a good time in my garden.  Do you know where my house is?”

“Yes, I know.  Not far from the Church of Our Lady.”

“Right, my son, you have found it.  It has green blinds, and a fig-tree stands in front of it.  Now take this basket and carry it to Auntie, and say that I sent word that she was to let you go into the garden with my son Toros.  There you two may eat what you will.”

He handed me a neat-looking basket.  I peeped into it and saw a sheep’s liver.  I was as disgusted with this as though it were a dead dog, for at that time liver-eaters were abhorred not less than thieves and counterfeiters; they with their whole family were held in derision, and people generally refused to associate with them.  In a moment I forgot 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.

“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.