"I don't thee ath a Chineth baby lookth any differenth from any other
folkth baby, do you, Perthy?"
"That's what I am trying to find out," said Percy, whom his little
sister May called her "big brother;" for only that morning she had
said to her mother,--"I will athk Perthy, he ith tho big, he muth know
every thing."
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?