The four Corners in Japan

by Amy Ella Blanchard

Jack was very unwilling to give up her little brown boy, but knew that she could not keep the entire party there any longer, so after seeking out his proper guardian, who proved to be an aunt by marriage, they gave her some money and went on their way. But all the beauties of the lake and the mountains were of small interest compared to the little naked child they had tumbled over on their way.

Jack talked of little else. She had a baby bee in her bonnet as Nan expressed it and it was like her to become completely possessed with the idea of taking him home, once she had decided that she wanted to. "I am going to talk to mother about it," she declared, "and I am going to hunt up Miss Gresham and get her to come out here again with me to talk to the aunt. No doubt they would be only too glad to get rid of him, for you see they are such a poor looking set of people. We upset him and we ought to do something for him. Besides," she added after using all other arguments, "we could do some missionary work and make a Christian of him, so I am sure it would be worth while."

She was so in earnest that Nan did not laugh, but it was a habit of Jack's to make her duty wait upon her desires, and Nan knew that the missionary spirit was aroused for the occasion.

However, in some way or other Jack did get around her mother to a degree sufficient for her to give consent to a second visit to the village in Miss Gresham's company. Whether Jack had pictured the child's condition as so pitiful as to arouse her mother's commiseration or just how she had managed no one could exactly tell, but sufficient to say that Jack and Miss Gresham did go a day or two after and to the dismay of every one came back with the little lad, whose brown nakedness was covered by clothes fitted to his estate. These Jack had bought, with Miss Gresham's help, and the two had very much enjoyed their mission.

Miss Gresham had a way with children and, knowing Japanese fairly well, could manage the conversation without difficulty. She found that the child had no special claim upon any one. Both his parents were dead. His mother's sister had taken him but she, too, had died and those who now cared for him were no blood relation, but were too charitable to turn him away.

"Miss Gresham says she can keep him at the school as well as not," Jack informed her mother eagerly, "so we need not be bothered with him while we are traveling, and when we are ready to go she can find a way to send or bring him to Nagasaki when we sail for home."

"You seem to have bewitched Miss Gresham completely," said Mrs. Corner.

"She is the nicest kind of missionary lady," returned Jack heartily. "She is so different from my idea of such. Her brother is a medical missionary, and she has been out here ten years. She has been home but once in all that time. She has told me the most interesting things about her work. I shall always be interested in missions after this; I used rather to think them a bore, but after seeing the work in her school, and hearing what has been accomplished by the medical missionaries, I have changed my mind."

The small boy continued to remain under Miss Gresham's care, and was the loadstone which drew all the girls to the mission school more frequently than any one of them could have prophesied. Little Toku was quite placid during this change, the only objection he made being to clothes, which, in the state of the weather, seemed perfectly reasonable to every one. He was serene, well cared for and happy.

"At all events," Jack said to Miss Gresham, "if I can't take him home with me I shall see to it that he is provided for. Nan says she will help me, and I know you will see to it that he is brought up properly."