He succeeded in getting four other boys to join, and they all took their oaths very solemnly. Now that they were really highbinders they must begin to kill somebody. Not ever having killed anybody, they did not know how to go about it, or on whom to begin.
Mo chun noticed the boys carrying on a great deal of private conversation, and she wondered what it could be; so that night, after Sing Lee had burned his punks before the god, and had eaten his bowl of rice with chopsticks, she said to him: “What for you allee time whisper? You no eat—you no sleep; tell me! what you think?”
Mo chun was such a dear little brown mother, and he loved her so, that when she looked at him with her slanting velvet eyes, and asked him to tell her, he just had to, that was all. He was not afraid of her, for Chinese mothers do not punish their children, and anyway—the secret was too good to keep, so why not tell her? She never laughed at him like ho chun. So he crept close up against the warmth of her silken blouse—he could feel her tender mother heart beating beneath it—and he gazed at the polished hair and the pretty mouth as he talked.
“Mo chun—I likee be like big man—like ho chun. I get boys togeddeh; we be highbinders, allee samee ho chun.
“Ho chun velly fine man; he kill heap of people; I likee do that, but, mo chun, my beautiful blossom, I no likee ho chun to kill Chong Sing; he heap good—he bling me candy.”
“What you mean, little boy? How you sabe (know) ho chun kill Chong Sing? Speak!—tell me!”
“Oh, mo chun of mine, I no sleep at night; I no can help—I hear ho chun say Chong Sing must die. I velly solly; he heap good man—I likee.”
Mo chun was sorry too, for she knew him to be a good man, but she knew there was no use to say anything. If they had decided upon his death there was nothing to be said.
The next day Sing Lee set forth with his little band of highbinders to find some one to kill. Mo chun had said: “You must not really kill them, you sabe, just pletend kill.”
Suddenly, as they marched on, a bright thought struck little Sing Lee. “Suppose I tell Chong Sing?—he live near—I know the way, and—he was kind to me.”