"You don't know my name, yet ask me to be your friend. Speak lower, and look down while you talk, or the overseer will send some one else with me to-morrow."
"What is your name?"
"A-tae."
After casting his eyes about in order to ascertain if any of the pickers were watching, he bent over the girl, who was very deeply engaged in removing some fine shoots from the lower part of a plant, and when she rose, as her cheek came quite close to his, he kissed it gently, and said,
"A-tae, I love you."
The girl gave a nervous little laugh, then asked him what he meant.
"I want to marry you."
"Where do you come from, Yung-Yung-Sho, that you speak thus? Would I could be given to one like you; but I shall be, like other girls, sent off to slave for some man of my own class, or sold to a mandarin." (It will be perceived that A-tae was, although a Chinese, an advocate for woman's rights). "Oh, Yung-Yung-Sho do you think Buddha knows how badly they treat us poor girls?"
"Can't you run away with me?" observed the now thoroughly "gone" sailor; "slip off in the night, and go away to a country where the women are thought as much of as the men."
"That's where Buddha is, Yung-Yung-Sho. There we shall be men. I know all about that, and have my Tieh papers at home. I'm not as stupid as most girls. You are a benevolent man thus to listen to the nonsense of little me. But why do those Yuen-chae (police runners) point this way? Are you wanted? If so, flee. That way, that way; up among the rocks, and hide in the caves."