“I was perfectly certain that boy had committed suicide,” she began.
“Why, what made you think that?” I asked.
“Well, he wrote that, and I found it!” And she thrust into my hand a piece of paper on which was scrawled in printed characters:
Just as I am, without one plea,
Save that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
She explained that Joseph had had a great deal of trouble; was away from his people; that Chinamen didn’t care anything about their lives anyhow; and that she had been afraid for some time that he would grow despondent and do something desperate.
But there stood Joseph, broadly smiling and looking for all the world like an oriental cherub who would have liked very much to know what all the commotion was about. Poor chap, he didn’t understand a word of English and had been merely trying to learn the words of an English hymn by copying them, in carefully imitated letters, on bits of paper.
In the meantime my husband had arrived in Manila and had already sent me several letters through which I came gradually to know something of the situation he was facing.