"It is all very good to talk about sacrificing oneself to do good," replied his wife tartly. "And when I am at home I just love to hear missionary sermons, and sometimes to attend women's missionary meetings. But to come out here and live among those natives and think you can make them any better and get them to know anything about the religion which educated, intelligent white people believe in, is sheer foolishness. I am very much disappointed in Dr. Sinclair. It is nothing but foolishness."
"I think that it is just splendid to do something like that," said her daughter. "Just think of it, to be over there where hundreds of men are being brought in wounded and to be the only one who can do anything for them! And to have those poor creatures wonder at the cures! Why wasn't I a man?"
"Yes, and have one of the dear, grateful creatures stick a knife into you when your back is turned," said her mother sarcastically.
But her daughter paid no attention to the interruption:
"Mr. De Vaux, do you know the country over there, around Keelung, where the fighting is going on? Of course you do. Won't you tell us all about it?"
So through the remainder of the breakfast she plied De Vaux with questions, and brought out the fact that he had really a remarkable store of knowledge about the island and its inhabitants. And all the while the father looked on, and occasionally thought of her conduct the evening before, and wondered. But her mother looked unutterable things, ever and anon interjected an acid remark, which served as pickles to the bill of fare, and frequently sniffed.
XV
THE LURE OF THE EAST
Mountain and river, land and sea slept that afternoon in the wealth of sunshine which flooded the earth. A scarcely perceptible sea-breeze ever and anon caused the lighter foliage to tremble. The great fronds of the palm trees hung absolutely motionless, the air quivered in the heat. Millions of cicadas shrilled in the trees and shrubbery. In some way or another their ceaseless quavering, shrilling notes seemed to fit in with the quivering wavelets of atmosphere, until one came to look upon them as cause and effect and inseparably associated. That tremulous atmosphere would not be complete without those quavering notes. The notes would not be complete without the atmosphere.
The native birds were all silent. Only the English sparrows seemed utterly indifferent to the heat. They fluttered and chirped and fought just as cheerfully as they would have done in the soft climate of their native England or amid the Arctic frosts of a Western Canadian January.