Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/77

This page needs to be proofread.

like you to repeat this piece again; for, although it may be right for the actors to say all the things they did, it is better for little girls not to repeat them."

"But, father," I protested, frightfully disappointed, "Djimlah and I acted it all before her grandmother and the ladies of her household, and they made us repeat it several times."

"That is because they are Turks. We are Greeks, and that makes a very big difference."

It was at this Punch and Judy Show that we met the little girl who was to become our constant companion. During an intermission her father came up to salute the old pasha, and brought little Chakendé with him. Immediately Djimlah's grandfather ordered an extra chair for the little girl, and told her to sit down beside us. She was very sweet looking, about the age of Djimlah. We liked her so much that we asked her where she lived, and on hearing that it was not far from us, we invited her to come the next day to Djimlah's house.

This she did, and we liked her even better; for she submitted to us very gracefully. She never wavered in this attitude, but it was far from being a cowardly submission.

She was then engaged to be married to a boy in Anatolia, whose father had been a lifelong friend of her father's. The engagement had taken place when Chakendé was an hour old, and