"A married sister, I suppose?" Jack said, rather wondering he had not heard of her before.
"No," said Kevork, lowering his voice mysteriously. "My grandfather had to send her away to our cousins, because the Kamaikan who was here before this one wanted to marry her; and we never talk of her, not even before Gabriel and Hagop, lest any word might slip out about where she is, and the Turks might overhear. But I had rather go to Aintab than even to Urfa, to learn English and Greek and Latin, and grammar and geography, and all kinds of science."
"And what then?" Jack asked with a smile.
"Then I would go, if I could, to America or to England, learn still more, and become at last a famous professor in some grand college in a Christian land."
Kevork had already learned from a friendly priest, Der Garabed, to read and write Armenian, and to read Turkish in the Arabic character. For the Turks, and it is a significant fact, have never reduced their own language to writing; their books are printed either in the Arabic or in the Armenian character. He was in raptures when Jack offered to teach him English, which he promptly began to do, using as a text-book his father's Bible, the only book he had, with the exception of a Tauchnitz "Westward Ho," which happened to be in his pocket when he came to Biridjik. In return, Kevork taught him to read and write Armenian, and these lessons were shared by Gabriel and Hagop. Gabriel was a remarkably quick, intelligent boy, all life and fire; Hagop was quiet and rather dull, more at home at his father's loom than at his brother's book. Both used to listen delightedly to Jack, when, chiefly as an exercise for himself, he would translate some simple Bible story aloud in Armenian.
Not that such were the only uses Jack made of his father's Bible. Outwardly his character still continued unformed, boyish, passive; inwardly it had begun silently to grow and to deepen. He did not act, but he thought a great deal. His mind was like a stream flowing underground, gathering volume as it flowed, and sure to emerge again to the light of the upper world. Its sources were fed by observation, memory, faith, and hope, and most of all by that matchless fount, not only of spiritual but of intellectual inspiration, the English Bible.