Percy was as full of wonder as little May over the baby sleeper. He wanted to see the back of her head, but it was resting on the soft pillow, and the eyes were tightly closed. May stood at the foot of the bed longing, and yet afraid, to pull up the cover, and look at the little feet. “Do you thpect she wearth pink thatin thlipperth like thothe in the glath cathe?” she said.
The voices did not waken the baby even when Percy made May give a little scream as he pulled her braided hair, and carried off the ribbon, saying,—“You’ve got a Chinese pig-tail anyway.” Did you ever see a big brother do any thing like that? Then Percy went out and slammed the door, and left little May thinking very hard, and the baby asleep, after all that noise. What was May thinking about? She had heard mamma talk a great deal about China, and had seen queer pictures of people with bald heads and a long braid of hair hanging down behind, and in the cabinet in the sitting-room was a pair of tiny pink satin slippers, so small that her little hand could just go into one of them. Then she had a Chinese doll with almost a bald head, and the queerest shaped eyes; and that was why she and Percy wanted this baby to wake up that they might see what she looked like. That very morning while the children were visiting their grandmother, a carriage came to their house, bringing a little baby and its mother; and by the time they got home, the child was in May’s crib, fast asleep, and the two mothers were talking together as they had not done for years before. Baby Elsie was not easily wakened, for she never had a very quiet place to sleep in. She was quite used to strange noises on shipboard, creaking ropes and escaping steam, loud voices giving orders to sailors, sometimes roaring waters and stormy winds. She had been many nights in a railroad sleeping-car, and she was not disturbed by the rush of wheels, or the whistling of the locomotive. Before that, she lived part of her little life on a boat in a narrow river, and a few months in a crowded, noisy house. Does it seem as if she had been quite a traveler? She had just come all the way from China—a land on the other side of the round world—and that was the reason that May called her a Chinese baby. Percy and May had never seen Elsie’s mother, although she was their own aunt, for she and her husband had been more than ten years missionaries in China, and had come on a visit to America. Don’t you think the two mothers, dear sisters, who had been so long and so far apart, had a great deal to say to each other? Do you expect they wanted Elsie to sleep quite as much as her cousins wanted her to wake? She was a good child, but she knew how to cry, and after a few days Percy said,—“She’s not so much after all, she can’t talk and tell us anything, and when she cries, she boo-hoo’s just as you do, May.”
In a week, two more Chinese travelers came; the baby’s father, and another cousin, Knox, a boy nine years old. Did you ever fire off a whole pack of Chinese fire-crackers at a time? That was almost the way that questions were asked by the two boys, back and forth, so quick and fast that there was hardly time to answer each one. The boy from Shanghai found as many things strange to him as the New York boy would have seen in China. Percy, and May, although she could not understand half she heard, were full of wonder as Knox told of living on a boat in the river, of so many boats around them, where people lived crowded together as closely as houses could be on land. He told of the cities, of narrow, crooked streets, all the way under awnings, to be shielded from the hot sun; of riding many miles in a wheel-barrow, with a Chinaman to push it along the road. They all laughed when Percy said they called their cousin Elsie “a Chinese baby;” and the grown folks helped to tell about the black-eyed babies over there, wrapped up in wadded comforts and placed standing, a great, round roll, in a tall basket, instead of a cradle. Percy thought the best thing he heard was of a boy in a royal family. He had to be well taught, for he must be a wise scholar in Chinese learning, but no one dared to touch or hurt him; so a poor boy of low rank was hired and kept in the house to take all the whippings for him; and whenever the young prince deserved correction, the bamboo rod was well laid on the poor boy’s back. What would you think of such a plan? Elsie’s father and mother were going back to China, but they were not willing that Knox should grow up there; he must go to some good school and stay in this country. Even little Elsie they dared not trust out of their sight among the Chinese.
And so for the love of the dear Master, who said,—“Go and teach all nations,” they were willing to leave father and mother, and home, loving sister and friends, even their own young children, for His sake.
Don’t you believe our heavenly Father will watch over Knox and Elsie, and make them grow up wise and true; ready to go back to the land where they were born, to carry on the good work their father and mother are doing in that strange, far-off country?
Do you know of any ways in which children at home can help such work in China, or in other far-off foreign lands?
KITTY STRIKER.
Little Kitty Striker saw
A handsome, fat, old goose
Out a-walking with her gosling.
And she said,—“Now what’s the use,
Of letting that old waddler have
Such a pretty thing as that?
I’ll run right out and get it;
I’ll go without my hat.”
Out she ran upon the dusty path,
On the grass, all wet with dew,
And the old goose turned round quickly,
She wished an interview.
And Kitty said,—“Oh, open your mouth
As much as ever you please;
I’m going to take your gosling,
Because I love to tease
Such a cranky, impudent squawker as you.”
And she laughed right out, and stooped
To take the toddling little thing,
When down upon her swooped,
The angry goose with hisses fierce,
And wildly flapping wing,
And gave her a nip that was no joke!
On the heel of her red stocking!
Miss Kitty screamed, but tightly held
The little yellow ball,
And you know she’d not the shadow of right
To that goose’s gosling at all.
Then its mother made a terrible snap
At Kitty’s pretty blue dress!
And that thoughtless, mischievous little girl,
Was pretty well frightened I guess.
For she jumped and screamed, danced round like a top,
And the goose’s eyes flashed red;
And she struck her wings in Kitty’s eyes,
And on her little brown head!
She dropped the gosling, and ran for home,
Screaming, and crying,—“Boo! hoo!”
And learned a lesson she never forgot,
And it’s as wholesome for me and for you,
That it’s best to be kind to our barnyard friends,
And let them have their fun too.