“Wait here, please,” said the mission woman, placing Lae Choo in a chair. “The very youngest ones are having their breakfast.”
She withdrew for a moment—it seemed like an hour to the mother—then she reappeared leading by the hand a little boy dressed in blue cotton overalls and white-soled shoes. The little boy’s face was round and dimpled and his eyes were very bright.
“Little One, ah, my Little One!” cried Lae Choo.
She fell on her knees and stretched her hungry arms toward her son.
But the Little One shrunk from her and tried to hide himself in the folds of the white woman’s skirt.
“Go’way, go’way!” he bade his mother.
THE CHINESE LILY
Mermei lived in an upstairs room of a Chinatown dwelling-house. There were other little Chinese women living on the same floor, but Mermei never went amongst them. She was not as they were. She was a cripple. A fall had twisted her legs so that she moved around with difficulty and scarred her face so terribly that none save Lin John cared to look upon it. Lin John, her brother, was a laundryman, working for another of his countrymen. Lin John and Mermei had come to San Francisco with their parents when they were small children. Their mother had died the day she entered the foreign city, and the father the week following, both having contracted a fever on the steamer. Mermei and Lin John were then taken in charge by their father’s brother, and although he was a poor man he did his best for them until called away by death.
Long before her Uncle died Mermei had met with the accident that had made her not as other girls; but that had only strengthened her brother’s affection, and old Lin Wan died happy in the knowledge that Lin John would ever put Mermei before himself.