But I slipped back to the front of the veranda without making an audible sound. How could I tell on poor Yick, and bring down such an awful storm on his head as would result? He was a stranger in a strange land, and it was my duty to protect him. Was it such a very wicked thing he had done? He never killed little birds, anyway, and wore them on his head; nor trapped cunning little animals, and strung their heads and tails around his neck! I decided I would not tell on him.
But that evening at dinner I passed the plate of white, flaky biscuits without taking any. I sat at grandmother's left hand, and when she was not looking, I slipped the biscuit which she had taken away from her bread-and-butter plate, and let it slide from my hand down onto the floor. Dear, absent-minded grandmother never missed it. Aunt Gwendolin and Uncle Theodore ate three biscuits each.
"It seems to me that Yick keeps constantly improving in his biscuits," said my aunt, as she reached for her third.
"They ought to be better than other people at most everything," returned my Uncle Theodore, "they have been a long while practising. They may have been making biscuits before Moses was born. The Chinaman possesses a history which dwarfs the little day of modern nations. It is a saying of theirs that from the time heaven was spread and earth was brought into existence China can boast a continuous line of great men."
I looked pleased and smiled. My aunt seeing it said, with a toss of her head:
"A continuous line of great cooks and laundrymen."
That evening when my aunt and uncle were out, and grandmother had gone to bed, I slipped down to the kitchen and stood face to face with Yick.
He almost kotowed to me, but commanding him to stand up, I told him in plain Chinese that I had seen him mixing the biscuits, and disapproved of his plan.
His hair almost seemed to stand on end when he heard me speaking his native tongue. He started to tremble, and his knees bent under him.
"Yee Yick," I continued, in the language he thoroughly understood, "if you ever put the milk in your mouth again, and sift it out through your teeth into the flour, I shall inform the mistress of the house, and you shall be dismissed!"