"'Oh!' she said, 'girl babies are very expensive the last two or three years. Now you have to pay over ten dollars to get a nice fat one! Before that, if you did not drown them, you had an awfully hard time to get rid of them. There was a man in our town to whom we took the babies—the girl babies I mean. He would go up and down the streets with them and sell them to any one who would give him a chicken and a bowl of rice in return.'
"'But do they drown the girl babies now?' I asked the Amah.
"'Oh, yes, of course, if you already have one or two boys. You know, in my village I am the only Christian. My own family and the rest of the village worship idols. They are afraid of their gods. They do not know any better. Why my sister almost drowned my second little boy by mistake. He had just arrived and she thought that he was a girl, and had already stuck his head down in a pail of water when I rescued him.'
"'But who usually kills the girl babies?' I asked. 'Surely not the mother?'
"'Yes, she does. She is so afraid when she finds it is only a girl, afraid that the gods will be angry because she has brought another girl into the world, that she kills it!'
"'Do they bury it then?'
"'Sometimes they wrap it up, and throw it under a pile of rubbish. You know, we do not have coffins made for any of our babies who die before they have had their first teeth! I have seen so many babies drowned, Mrs. Worley. I never did like it. They cry so!'
"Then I inquired of our Chinese teacher's wife if she knew of girl baby killing still going on in China.
"'Just last week,' this teacher's wife said in answer to my inquiry, 'the woman next door went back to her village two miles from here and she saw her own sister drown a baby while she was there.'
"I asked an English missionary if she knew that this fearful custom was still prevalent over most of China with its more than four hundred million souls.