“Take them and sell them,” said he. “They will pay your fare to Washington and bring you back with the paper.”
For one moment James Clancy hesitated. He was not a sentimental man; but something within him arose against accepting such payment for his services.
“They are good, good,” pleadingly asserted Lae Choo, seeing his hesitation.
Whereupon he seized the jewels, thrust them into his coat pocket, and walked rapidly away from the store.
IV
Lae Choo followed after the missionary woman through the mission nursery school. Her heart was beating so high with happiness that she could scarcely breathe. The paper had come at last—the precious paper which gave Hom Hing and his wife the right to the possession of their own child. It was ten months now since he had been taken from them—ten months since the sun had ceased to shine for Lae Choo.
The room was filled with children—most of them wee tots, but none so wee as her own. The mission woman talked as she walked. She told Lae Choo that little Kim, as he had been named by the school, was the pet of the place, and that his little tricks and ways amused and delighted every one. He had been rather difficult to manage at first and had cried much for his mother; “but children so soon forget, and after a month he seemed quite at home and played around as bright and happy as a bird.”
“Yes,” responded Lae Choo. “Oh, yes, yes!”
But she did not hear what was said to her. She was walking in a maze of anticipatory joy.