It is the first page of the book of life, a green page on whose margins danced splendid hopes and sweet, laughing dreams.

Two small children, Ayda and Sameh; she is ten and he is eight, and both gaze smiling upon life and come to it merry and hopeful.

On the page follow sweet pictures from the memories of their childhood — a playful, merry childhood, enjoying an abundance of the father's tenderness without the affection of the mother, who had died.

A picture of her on a swing, the two little heads drawn close together as they went swinging along, and the father's heart swinging with them.

And a picture of the two of them awaiting the train's return, as was their custom at every sunset, until, when they heard its whistle rending the silence of the sky, the two little hearts leapt with delight at the coming of their father — the stationmaster — in his navy-blue suit with its shining yellow buttons.

And a third picture, perhaps stamped more deeply on Ayda's mind than any other:

The two little ones bent over their desk, their father before them directing, watching, and teaching, until, when they had finished with it all and each went stuffing his copybooks into his small leather satchel in readiness for the morrow, the father gazed at her a long while and then asked his customary question:

— What will Ayda be when she grows up?

Ayda has no need to think long about the matter, no need to strike the flint of thought — what could she wish to be more than a teacher? A teacher who commands and forbids and tyrannizes over the copybooks with her red pen?

The father listens, laughing, and asks:

— And Sameh — what does he say?

Sameh toys with the locks of his glossy black hair, and there leaps into his imagination the picture of their neighbor 'the doctor'... his leather bag in his right hand, gold-rimmed spectacles on his eyes... How he wishes he had a wondrous stethoscope like the one the doctor carries in his bag, and those dignified spectacles... Sameh parts his lips and says in his anxious, quavering voice:

— I shall be a doctor...

The father rubs his hands with satisfaction and says: Well and good, children... a teacher and a doctor — and who on the face of the wide earth is like me!...

Then a tear of joy springs from his eye, and he looks tenderly at his two children, secretly praying God to lengthen his days so that he might see how the days would make of Ayda a schoolmistress and of Sameh a doctor.

On the page there is a fourth picture, and a fifth, and a sixth, in which a new face has its share: Mukhtar, the aunt's son, training the two little ones to climb the oak tree, to chase the colored but-