At the gentle touch the child's loud whining ceased. She lifted one of the swollen lids. The boy did not flinch.
"Filth caused this," she explained. "The Chinese are the dirtiest race on earth, anyway," she added, dipping a clump of cotton into an antiseptic wash and rinsing the patient's eyes. "Where there is too much dirt, there is blindness. One-fourth of the population in this section of China are blind. They go to 'fortune tellers,' and they remain blind. In nine cases out of ten the simplest of operations followed by care will cure this type of blindness."
"Good enough; but will they be careful afterward?" Peter was curious to know.
"Once their sight is given back to them, they follow directions to a T. I'm leaving behind me a trail of the cleanest Chinamen you ever laid eyes on!"
She became silent, and so did Peter, who watched, hardly daring to breathe, the swift, sure dartings of the tiny knife in her white fingers. It was done in a jiffy; and there seemed to be on pain.
"Shouldn't you have an operating-room?" inquired Peter, as she bound up the child's eyes in gauze.
She gave him a bright, professional smile. "Peter, I've learned to operate with a thousand hooting infidels crowding closer than this. In Nanking I was nearly mobbed."
Peter looked concerned. "Did they harm you?"
"Oh, no! They wanted their children, their wives, and their virtuous mothers to see the light of day again."
"Eileen, you're an angel!"