“Some one,” he reasserted, “is eating unfragrant sugar. Whoever the miserable culprit is, let him speak now, and four strokes from the rattan is all that he shall receive.”
He paused. The clock ticked sixty times; but there was no response to his appeal. He lifted his rattan.
“As no guilty one,” said he, “is honorable enough to acknowledge that he is dishonorably eating unfragrant sugar, I shall punish all for the offense, knowing that thereby the offender will receive justice. Go Ek Ju, come forward, and receive eight strokes from the rattan.”
Go Ek Ju went forward and received the eight strokes. As he stood trembling with pain before the schoolmaster’s desk, he felt a small hand grasp his foot. His lip tightened. Then he returned to his seat, sore, but undaunted, and unconfessed. In like manner also his schoolmates received the rattan.
When the fifteen aching but unrepentant scholars were copying industriously, “He who thinks only of good things to eat is an inferior man,” and the schoolmaster, exhausted, had flung himself back on his seat, a little figure in red emerged from under the schoolmaster’s desk and attempted to clamber on to his lap. The schoolmaster held her back.
“What! What!” he exclaimed. “What! what!” He rubbed his head in puzzled fashion. Then he lifted up the little red figure, turning its face around to the schoolboys. Such a chubby, happy little face as it was. Dimpled cheeks and pearly teeth showing in a gleeful smile. And the hands of the little red figure grasped two sticky balls of red and white peppermint candy—unfragrant sugar.
“Behold!” said the teacher, with a twinkle in his spectacles, “the inferior man!”
Whereupon the boys forgot that they were aching. You see, they loved the little Ku Yum and believed that they had saved her from eight strokes of the rattan.
THE MERRY BLIND-MAN
