After the death of my uncle, the course of my life was changed. I made the acquaintance of my own family, who now came to live on the island, in the same old house where he and I had lived. It took me a long time to adjust myself to the new life, so different from the old, and especially to meet children, and to try to talk with them. I had known that other children existed, but I thought that each one was brought up alone on an island with a grand-uncle, who taught it the history of its race.
My father and I quickly became friends, and I soon began to talk with him in the grown-up way I had talked with my uncle, much to his amusement, I could see.
One day when I was sitting in his lap, with my arms encircling his neck, I said to him:
“Father, do you feel the Turkish yoke?”
He gave a start. “What are you talking about, child?”
It was then I told him what I knew of our past, and of our obligations toward the future; how some day we must rise and throw off that yoke, and hear the holy liturgy again chanted in St Sophia.
He listened, interested, yet a flush of anger overspread his face. He patted me, and murmured to himself: “And we thought she would grow stronger living in the country.”
He bent down and kissed me. “I would not bother much, just now, about these things,” he said. “I’d play and grow strong.”
“But, father,” I protested, “uncle told me never to forget those things—not even for a day; to remember them constantly, and to bring up my sons to carry forward the flag.”
“You see,” my father replied, very seriously, “you are not eight yet, and I do not believe in early marriages; so you have twelve years before you are married and thirteen before you have a son. During those years there are a lot of nice and funny things to think about—and, above all, you must grow strong physically.”