The scene was a Chinese cabin, scantily furnished, but extremely neat in its simple arrangements. On lines outside, handsomely made clothes were drying, while on the one large piece of kitchen furniture in the cabin–a huge stove–numerous irons were heating.
Ching Ling, as he was called, was a great overgrown boy of seventeen, who had picked up religion, as his companions grotesquely name it, at some of the chapel meetings connected with one of our institutions for learning. He was a quaint, original character, and could turn his hand to almost anything useful–turn it to good purpose too. He had learned to read, nobody knew how or when, and now the absorbing, irrepressible longing of his heart was to get an education, at the college. It made no difference how much or how often others ridiculed the eager desire, there it remained, and after some laughable banter on the part of his less ambitious associates on one occasion, as to his many projects and failures in attempting an entrance to those halcyon halls, his good-natured reply was:
“Oh, me wriggly in yet, somehow. You see!”
Ching Ling was ironing briskly and skillfully when Dr. Wharton’s buggy stopped before the door, and without alighting the doctor beckoned Ching to come to him.
“Want to earn some money, Ching?” asked the Doctor.
Ching’s delicate hands were instantly held out in mock display of entreaty.
“Would you go into danger for money, Ching?”
The small hands were quickly withdrawn as he replied:
“Me do no wrong for muchee monee?”
“But would you go into a close, sick room, and nurse a gentleman who has a dangerous disease–a man perhaps dying with fever?”