The minister beamed upon them. The boys looked stoically back at him. This day those in the church forgot to look about at the various objects of interest, forgot to drowse, for all eyes were intent upon that little row behind the priest. When the sermon was ended and the minister turned to the red hymn book, the boys arose to their feet, and as his baritone voice was raised, five piping and discordant minor voices joined with him.
The result of the minister’s effort for a choir was immediate. It broke up the apathy of the congregation.
Groups lingered about the mission house after the service—groups of curious child-women for the most part. The question discussed from every standpoint was the seeming elevation of these most unsavory and godless of town waifs. How could these good people guess that the young minister, restless at the seeming fruitlessness of his labors, had given of his own meagre salary to induce the hungriest of the town, for so many sen, to be respectable for one day in the week? What would not a Japanese vagabond do for a sen or a sweet potato? Submit to a bath, a robe too clean to touch and the pleasure—sometimes pain—of mimicking the voice of the white man.
The mellow tinkling of temple bells disturbed the gossips. It was the hour of noon, when the gods were good and for a little prayer would give them sweet food and excellent appetites. So straight from the temple of the white priest they dispersed, through the valley to the opposite hill, where the Shinto Temple, golden-tipped, beckoned them to the prayers they mechanically understood; a moment only in the temple, nodding heads and prostrating bodies, and after that, home and the noon-day meal. Thus every day. Only on the Sunday, since the coming of the foreign priest, they had added to the routine this weekly pilgrimage of curiosity to the white man’s temple. Strange indeed were the ways of the foreign devils!
“Let us wait a little while,” said a round-faced, merry-eyed maid of fifteen, grasping the sleeves of girl friends.
Azalea was departing slowly when recalled by the raised voice of her friend. At a short distance from the other girls she paused and looked back inquiringly.
“Wait till they come out,” continued the speaker, Ume-san by name, “those beggars, and we will have some fun.”
“Oh, good!” agreed Koto, snapping her fan upon her hand; “we will find out what the white beast says to them.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Fuji, stretching herself—she was fat and indolent and the church seat was hard—“he pays them.”
Azalea looked interested.