must try to free your great church from the Mussulman profaning?"
"Tell me, how do you propose to settle the Spathary matter?" my father asked, reverting to the less dangerous topic. "If Baky shouldn't buy it, how would you keep off other Turks who might wish to buy? Your community is an old-fashioned one. The younger generation of Greeks is moving away from it; and only rich Turks will buy the big old Greek homesteads."
"I propose to buy it myself," she thundered, "and move into it, and sell my own house to the Bishop of Heraclea, who wants it."
"How much does he offer for your house?"
"Four thousand pounds."
"And what do the Spathary heirs ask?"
"Those Roumanian Greeks have no more idea of value than they have of patriotism—they are asking five thousand, and what is more I shall have to pay it."
"Then you will sell the home of your husband's forefathers, and pay a thousand pounds more for an inferior one?"
She banged her stick on the floor in exasperation. "I am not driving a money bargain: I am keeping a Turk from coming among us. Great Christian God, am I to permit an infidel to pass daily by my door, and to walk the street where Christian virgins dwell?"
