But though Fin Fan prized her child so highly, Jessamine Flower’s father would rather she had not been born, and considered the babe a nuisance because she took up so much of her mother’s time. He would rather that Fin Fan spent the hours in winding tobacco leaves than in nursing baby. However, Fin Fan managed to do both, and by dint of getting up very early in the morning and retiring very late at night, made as much money for her husband after baby was born as she ever did before. And it was well for her that that was so, as the baby would otherwise have been taken from her and given to some other more fortunate woman. Not that Fin Fan considered herself unfortunate. Oh, no! She had been a hard-working little slave all her life, and after her mistress sold her to be wife to Chung Kee, she never dreamt of complaining, because, though a wife, she was still a slave.
When Jessamine flower was about six months old one of the ladies of the Mission, in making her round of Chinatown, ran in to see Fin Fan and her baby.
“What a beautiful child!” exclaimed the lady. “And, oh, how cunning,” she continued, noting the amulets on the little ankles and wrists, the tiny, quilted vest and gay little trousers in which Fin Fan had arrayed her treasure.
Fin Fan sat still and shyly smiled, rubbing her chin slowly against the baby’s round cheek. Fin Fan was scarcely more than a child herself in years.
“Oh, I want to ask you, dear little mother,” said the lady, “if you will not send your little one to the Chinese baby show which we are going to have on Christmas Eve in the Presbyterian Mission schoolroom.”
Fin Fan’s eyes brightened.
“What you think? That my baby get a prize?” she asked hesitatingly.
“I think so, indeed,” answered the lady, feeling the tiny, perfectly shaped limbs and peeping into the brightest of black eyes.
From that day until Christmas Eve, Fin Fan thought of nothing but the baby show. She would be there with her baby, and if it won a prize, why, perhaps its father might be got to regard it with more favor, so that he would not frown so blackly and mutter under his breath at the slightest cry or coo.
On the morning of Christmas Eve, Chung Kee brought into Fin Fan’s room a great bundle of tobacco which he declared had to be rolled by the evening, and when it was time to start for the show, the work was not nearly finished. However, Fin Fan dressed her baby, rolled it in a shawl, and with it in her arms, stealthily left the place.