pleased my touch. Its heavenly blue colour fascinated my eyes, while the white cross, emblem of my religion as well as of my country, filled my childish heart with a noble thrill.
My grand-uncle bent over nearer to me.
"In your veins flows the blood of a wonderful race; yet you live, as I have lived, under an alien yoke—a yoke Asiatic and uncivilized. The people who rule here to-day in the place of your people are barbarous and cruel, and worship a false god. Remember all this—and hate them! You cannot carry this flag, because you are a girl; but you can bring up your sons to do the work that remains for the Greeks to do."
He left his chair, and paced up and down the room; then came again and stood beside my bed.
"Sixty-one years ago we rose. For nine consecutive years we fought, and to-day two million Greeks are free—and Athens, with its Acropolis, is protected by this flag. But the greater part of the Greek land is still under the Mussulman yoke, and St Sophia is profaned by the Mohammedan creed. Grow up remembering that all that once was Greece must again belong to Greece; for the Greek civilization cannot and must not die."
He went away, leaving me with thoughts too vast for a child of five years, too big for a child who was not even strong. Yet even at that age
