“Aha! say you so, Shway-bay?”
“I say nothing, Tsayah.”
“What of the child?”
“A wonderful boy, Tsayah. He seems usually as you have seen him; but he has another look—so strange! He must have caught something from his mother’s face just before she went up to the golden country.”
The missionary seemed lost in thought; and the assistant, after waiting a moment to be questioned further, slung his satchel over his shoulder, and proceeded up the street.
The next day the missionary remarked that the Sah-ya went by on the other side of the way, and without the little boy; and the next day, and the next the same. In the meantime, the wrinkled old water-bearer had become a sincere inquirer.[inquirer.] “The one shall be taken and the other left,” sighed the missionary, as he tried to discern the possible fate of his bright-eyed little friend.
The fourth day came. The old water-bearer was in an agitated state of joy and doubt—a timid but true believer. The self-confident philosopher had almost ceased to cavil. Fresh inquirers had appeared, and the missionary’s heart was strengthened. “It is dull work,” he said to himself, though without any expression of dullness in his face; “but it is the Saviour’s own appointed way, and the way the Holy Spirit will bless.” Then his thoughts turned to the stern Sah-ya and his little boy; and he again murmured, with more of dejection in his manner than when he had spoken of the dullness of the work, “And the other left—the other left!”
The desponding words had scarcely passed his lips when, with a light laugh, the very child who was in his thoughts, and who somehow clung so tenaciously to his heart, sprang up the steps of the zayat, followed by his grave, dignified father. The boy wore his new Madras turban, arranged with a pretty sort of jauntiness, and above its showy folds he carried a red lacquered tray with a cluster of golden plantains on it. Placing the gift at the missionary’s feet, he drew back with a pleased smile of boyish shyness, while the man, bowing courteously, took his seat upon the mat.
“Sit down, Moung-Moung, sit down,” said the father, in the low tone that American parents use when reminding careless little boys of their hats; for, though Burmans and Americans differ somewhat in their peculiar notions of etiquette, the children of both races seem equally averse to becoming learners.
“You are the foreign priest,” he remarked civilly, and more by way of introduction than inquiry.