"Your grandmother must have felt ashamed when she heard how hard it had gone with you," I remarked.
"We never mentioned the matter when talking together. That was a time when every one was for himself. Death stared us all in the face."
"Where is your slave girl now? I should like to see her," I remarked.
"After the troubles were over I married her to a young man of my uncle's household. I will send for her and bring her to see you."
She did so. I found she had forgotten much of what she had learned of Christianity, but she remembered that there was but one God and that Jesus Christ was His Son to whom alone she should pray. She also remembered that as a small child she had been baptized, and that in school she had been taught that "we should love one another"; this was about the extent of her Gospel, but it had touched the heart of her charming little mistress and had saved her life.
There were sometimes amusing things happened when these Chinese ladies called. My husband among other things taught astronomy in the university. He had a small telescope with which he and the students often examined the planets, and they were especially interested in Jupiter and his moons. One evening, contrary to her custom, this same friend was calling after dark, and when the students had finished with Jupiter and his moons, my husband invited us to view them, as they were especially clear on that particular evening.
After she had looked at them for a while, and as my husband was closing up the telescope, she exclaimed: "That is the kind of an instrument that some foreigners sent as a present to my grandfather while he was viceroy, but it was larger than this one."
"And did he use it?" asked my husband.
"No, we did not know what it was for. Besides my grandfather was too busy with the affairs of the government to try to understand it."
"And where is it now?" asked Mr. Headland, thinking that the viceroy might be willing to donate it to the college.