“He is playing outside; I go get him,” she said; and with a smile on her lips she opened the door and called him.
“Sing Ho! Sing Ho!”
No reply.
“Why, that is strange,” she thought. “Maybe he come in the house and go to sleep.”
She hurried into the small bedroom and looked eagerly at the couch. No, there was no samen jai there. She was trembling now, with a nameless fear. Her pretty face grew pale, and the little brown nervous fingers were like ice.
Her boy—her baby—the honored one of the house of Sing, whose birth had crowned her with glory. Why, he must be there; he could not be gone from her—and yet—where was he? Her little tender baby boy who had never been from her side; the little brown face, naughty, sometimes, it is true, but always, to the mother, the dearest of things in all the big world.
Without stopping to change her house-robes she rushed down the street, and to the store of her husband, Sing Kee. He was just going down into the cellar after some tubs of preserved ginger, when he was startled by seeing his wife appear before him. The cat, that had always been loved and petted by little Sing Ho, lay sunning itself at the entrance, and Sing Kee looked up with a very serious face, for he knew that no little matter would bring his wife thus unexpectedly to his place of business. She surely would not be going on the street the day before the New Year.
“What’s the matter?” he asked in Chinese. She could hardly reply for the wild throbbing of her tender heart.
“My baby—my precious pearl—he lost! I no can find him; he gone—I no know where.”
And then she hid her face in her trembling brown hands and wept in the wildest grief. The poor father was terrified, for he knew what a big place Chinatown was, and how easily a little child could be lost or stolen, or hidden away, and no one would ever see it again. He knew the underground passages and dark opium dens which were thick around them, and his heart almost broke as he listened to her story. She had little to tell. It was only that he had wanted to take a walk, and she had told him he must not go, believing that he would obey her, as he always had.