Mrs. Lang shook her head. "Don't do it again. It wouldn't be exactly safe for you to go alone into the native part of the city in your accustomed dress and as a mock Japanese you might expect some trouble."
"But I thought they were always so gentle and polite here that I would be quite safe."
"There are circumstances when it doesn't do to trust too much to theories," Mrs. Lang replied.
"Miss Corner would like very much to hear the children sing," said Miss Gresham, Jack's first acquaintance.
Mrs. Lang turned to the little group and said something, then she started a song. Jack listened attentively and with perfect gravity, but the children, whose voices were so sweet in speech, sang execrably, with very little idea of tune, and so raucously as to make one wonder how they could do it. "Nan would curl up and die if she were to hear them," she said to herself.
The children then went through several exercises for her benefit and at last subsided in order with solemn set little faces.
"I thought them so expressionless and unresponsive when I first came," said Miss Gresham as she conducted Jack to another room, "but you have no idea how receptive they are and how attentive. We are doing good work here and I wish you would bring all your party to see us and some of the other classes which are more advanced."
Jack promised and was told the name of the street, and how to reach Miss Gresham herself and then she took her leave with a feeling of thankfulness that she had been so lucky as to come across one of her own people. "It was truly a missionary act," she said with a smile as she bade Mrs. Lang good-bye. "I begin to realize what a debt of gratitude I owe you."
"It was only what the veriest stranger might do in any place," protested Miss Gresham, though Jack felt it was more.