THE RED RUGS OF TARSUS
nally he brought us a whole basket of eggs, saying that he ought not to sell them, because he was supposed to send them all to the town to Pasha Somebody or Other. As we were leaving, we put a coin into his hand. He would not take it! Socrates gave it to a lit- tle girl who was apparently the child of the tenant. Some superstition made the father hesitate to take the money directly from us. Farther along, a lone dead tree twisted itself above the masonry of a typical oriental well of ancient origin. As we stopped our carriage a moment, we saw a solitary owl sitting mo- tionless on a loosened stone. When we drove on, the owl turned his head slowly following us, like a spirit of a forgotten century resent- ing with superb unconcern the investigating energy of modern times. A flock, no, I ought to call it a whole nation, of wild geese was quietly standing, undisturbed by our approach and arranged in little groups as if according to tribes, although all were facing the same [65]
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