“Moung-Moung!” exclaimed the father in a tone of surprise blended with anger. But the child was back again in a moment, with a gay colored Madras handkerchief wound around his head; and with his bright lips parted, his eyes sparkling, and dancing with joy, and his face wreathed with smiles, he seemed the most charming thing in nature. “Tai hlah-the!” (very beautiful) said the child, touching his new turban, and looking into his father’s clouded face, with the fearlessness of an indulged favorite.
“Tai hlah-the!” repeated the father, involuntarily. He meant the child.
“You have a very fine boy there, sir,” said the missionary, in a tone intended to be conciliatory. The stranger turned with a low salaam. For a moment he seemed to hesitate, as though struggling between his native politeness and his desire to avoid an acquaintance with the proselyting foreigner. Then taking the hand of the little boy who was too proud and happy to notice his father’s confusion, he hastened away.
“I do not think that zayat a very good place to go to, Moung-Moung,” said the father, gravely, when they were well out of hearing. The boy answered only by a look of inquiry strangely serious for such a face as his.
“These white foreigners are——.” He did not say what, but shook his head with mysterious meaning. The boy’s eyes grew larger and deeper, but he only continued to look up into his father’s face in wondering silence.
“I shall leave you at home to-morrow, to keep you from his wicked sorceries.”
“Papa!”
“What, my son?”
“I think it will do no good to leave me at home.”
“Why?”