One day Mr. Wang's boatman brother returned from the coast. He told them of a man who had come up on their boat who was looking for a teacher for a missionary living in an adjoining province, and he urged Mr. Wang to take this position. The women-folk, however, bitterly opposed saying, "If he once gets under the spell of the foreigner we shall never hear of him again." But they could not starve, and when it was learned the salary would be considerably more than what he had been getting even the women yielded.
Mr. Wang was himself only half inclined to go, for he could not get out of his mind the remembrance of stories he had heard of wholesale poisoning carried on by the missionaries.
Shortly after his departure a little girl came to comfort Mrs. Wang in her loneliness. Now that she was her own mistress, she chose a pretty name for the child, little dreaming what a beautiful herald it was of the brighter day so soon to dawn, she called it Spring!
One morning when little Spring was just three weeks old, the Wang family received a great surprise. They were all seated at their own doorsteps or squatting around the court, each with a bowl of millet poised in one hand and a pair of chop sticks in the other, when the front gate opened and who should appear but Mr. Wang. It was as if a bomb had fallen! In a few moments the court was crowded with curious neighbors, all eager to hear the reason for his return.
The truth in brief was that he had reached the Mission Compound safely, had been well received by the other Chinese teachers, had been in the missionary's home and had taught him and his wife for one day, but that night had been seized with sudden panic lest he get under the spell of the missionaries, and had gathered up his belongings and when all were asleep had quietly slipped away. This, however, was not just how Mr. Wang told it to the waiting crowd. He found it necessary to add a good many embellishments to make it a less humiliating story than it would otherwise have been, and these additions were not always favorable to the foreigners.
The family had to face the fact that there were three "mouths to fill" and some work must be got, but weeks of searching resulted as before in failure. Our friends would certainly have starved had not other members of the family given, sometimes almost thrown, food to them. At last in sheer despair Mr. Wang accepted a position in the Yamen (City Hall) for just his food. Thus Mrs. Wang was left to battle with her little babe alone. The cold pitiless winter faced her and bitter indeed did she find the struggle for existence. To earn even three and a half cents a day, she was obliged to sit at her spinning wheel far into the night, with her babe inside her wadded garment to keep it warm.
* * *
During those long winter months Mr. Wang sat at his desk in the Yamen the face of the missionary seemed to come before him vividly—so kind, so true, so different from any face he had ever seen before.
Gradually he came to the point of resolving that had he another chance he would return to the missionary. The opportunity was nearer than he imagined.
While at his work one morning he heard an unusual commotion outside. Stepping to the front gate he found a great crowd hurrying towards the river. A man shouted to him, "Two foreign demons are coming up the river. Come and see the fun."