'It is our custom in China, when we find children, to keep them until we can hand them over to their parents,' said the woman whom they had thought so nice, but whom they now considered very cruel.
She was a tidy-looking woman, wearing black trousers bound tight round the ankles, and the usual blue cotton smock. Her feet were not very small, and she could walk about fairly quickly. The old woman was very ugly and untidy, but the girl evidently gave a good deal of attention to her toilet. She had silk trousers and a handsomely embroidered smock over them. Her feet were very small, and just like a claw. Her hair, which was a beautiful jet black, was dressed most elaborately with a sort of comb behind, and flowers stuck in. Her lips were stained red and her face was powdered. She wore long silver nail-protectors on the third and fourth fingers of each hand, and had very large round jewelled earrings. The boy had a greasy black cotton coat and a thick long tail of hair.
Nelly tried her best to persuade the family to allow Little Yi and her to go, but they would not listen to her. Then Little Yi began.
'You don't know what bad luck you will have if you keep a foreign child all night,' she said. 'The foreigners are wonderful people. They can do all sorts of things—take out their teeth and put them back again, their eyes too, some of them.'
There was once at Peking a gentleman with a glass eye, and Little Yi had heard that he was able to remove it. As for teeth, she knew quite well that the British Minister slept with his on his wash-stand every night.
When Little Yi found that the women were not at all afraid, she said:
'If you keep us here, she (pointing to Nelly) will die, and then she will always haunt you. Everything you eat will taste bitter and make you ill.'
But Nelly never would allow Little Yi to romance and tell untruths. She was crying bitterly now, but she stopped and told the woman that she was a Christian, and that Christians do not die on purpose to haunt people out of spite, as heathen do.
But the children found that it was useless to try to persuade or frighten the Chinese. Nelly gave it up and asked for something to eat.