Ruth started up from the porch where she had been sitting in some
seclusion with Luke. In other secluded places Agnes and Neale were
talking over matters that concerned them, and Hal and Nalbro were
similarly engaged.
“Hold on! Where are you going?” asked Luke, as he put a detaining hand
on Ruth’s arm.
“I’m going to see Hop Wong. Poor man, probably he’s in trouble. He does
work for us sometimes, and at Christmas he brought me the loveliest,
cutest little chest of tea—the best I ever drank. He has a quaint little
laundry at the end of our street, and——”
“You don’t take this message seriously, do you?” asked Luke, and Ruth
could see by the moonlight that he was smiling.
“Take it seriously? Of course I do, Luke. Hop Wong isn’t the kind of
Chinese to play jokes; though when he first came here the boys played
enough mean jokes on him. But he was patient. Of course, I take it
seriously. Maybe some new boys have been annoying him—none of those who
know him would bother him,” and Ruth started down the steps.
“Wait a minute!” counseled Luke, with a laugh. “I think this is one of
Sammy’s tricks,” he whispered to the Corner House girl. “We’ll see if we
can’t turn it on Sammy himself.”
But Ruth did not take this view of it, and instead of pretending to
believe what Sammy had said, which was Luke’s intention, she at once
“spilled the beans,” as Luke said afterward, by blurting out:
“Sammy, you’re not joking, are you?”
“Sure not, Ruth!”
“Does Hop Wong really want to see me?”
“Cross my heart he does!” and Sammy quickly performed this childish
rite, than which there is no stronger confirmation.
“Did he say what he wanted?” demanded Luke. “And how did he come to send
word by you, Sammy? Why didn’t he come to the front door, or even the
back door, himself?”
“’Cause he was skairt, I guess,” was all Sammy could think of.
“Frightened by what?” demanded Luke.
“I dunno. All I know is that Dot and Tess and me was playin’ hide and
coop at the end of the garden an’ Hop Wong comes slidin’ along—you know
how funny he walks.”
“What did he say?” asked Ruth.
“Oh, he talked so funnily Dot and I had to laugh!” put in Tess.
“You shouldn’t laugh at the poor man. Think how silly you would sound
trying to talk Chinese,” chided Ruth.
“I can almost talk it. Anyhow, I can say words that sound like it,”
declared Sammy. “Want to hear me?” he asked hopefully.
“Tell us what Hop Wong said,” suggested Luke.
“Oh, he just gibbered away,” reported Sammy. “And all I could make out
was that he wants to talk to Ruth. He said for me to come and tell her
to come down where he was at the end of the garden.”
“He said,” giggled Tess, “‘Tell Missie Luth I wanna spleak her muchy
qulick!’” And Tess gave such a good imitation of the funny talk of Hop
Wong that even Luke laughed.
“Well, I’ll go see what he wants,” said Ruth. “I imagine it must be
something about his laundry business. Once before he came to me. It was
when the man who owns his shop was going to raise the rent to a
prohibitive figure. I went to see Mr. Howbridge about it, and he was
able to arrange matters so poor Hop Wong didn’t have to pay so much.
Ever since then Hop thinks I regulate the universe, I guess.”
“You do—for some of us,” said Luke, as he reached forward and pressed
Ruth’s hand.
“Silly!” she whispered.
“I hope he gives her some lichi nuts,” said Sammy to the two little
girls, as they followed Ruth and Luke to the path that led to the end of
the yard. Nothing was said to the other two young couples.
The moon shone brightly on the old-fashioned garden of the Corner House,
casting fantastic shadows where the old pavilion stood—the pavilion,
vine-covered, where Uncle Peter had spent his last lonely days.
“Where is Hop Wong?” asked Ruth, as they neared the place where Sammy
had said the Celestial Kingdom’s citizen was waiting.
“Oh, I guess he’s around here. He was right under the apple tree when I
saw him first,” the boy reported.
Then, as they all looked about and saw no slant-eyed figure waiting for
them, Sammy raised his voice and called:
“Hop! Oh, Hop Wong! Where are you? Here’s Ruthie!”
There was no answer—just the white, silent moonlight over everything.
“Hop Wong!” called Sammy again. “Ruth Kenway is here.”
“Maybe you’d better say ‘Missie Luth’ like he does,” suggested Tess.
“Hush!” came from her oldest sister.
They waited in silence.
“I guess he’s gone,” said Sammy at length. “Got tired of waitin’,
maybe.”
Luke walked about, peering amid the bushes. Then Dot called:
“What’s that white thing?”
“Where?” demanded Tess. “Don’t you go seeing white things now!”
“It’s on the apple tree,” went on Dot.
They all looked toward the nearest apple tree. Gently fluttering in the
night breeze was a piece of paper, caught in the crevice of the apple
tree bark. Luke reached for it.
“Guess Hop Wong left your laundry check here,” he said, as he opened a
bit of folded paper of the typical Chinese kind and saw on it some marks
in very dull black India ink. “It must have been forgotten when the
laundry was left at his shop,” Luke went on.
“We haven’t sent him any laundry this week,” declared Ruth. “Are you
sure it’s a laundry check?”
Luke looked at it again. Then he started in surprise.
“Why, no!” he exclaimed. “It isn’t a laundry check, and it isn’t written
in Chinese characters, as I thought at first! It’s a note to you, Ruth!”
“A note to me, Luke?”
“Well, perhaps not to you exactly. It’s to all of you. Wait, I guess I
can read it.”
He stepped from beneath the shadowy apple tree into the stronger
moonlight and held up the paper with its black characters. Then he read,
and afterward Ruth perused the queer note which said:
“Korner Hous gals pay Hop Wong 100 dols
Hop Wong mak grat much money gals.”
For a moment neither Ruth nor Luke spoke. With heads close together they
again read the queer note, while Sammy, Tess and Dot stood idly there,
rather awed by the strangeness of it all.
“Hum,” murmured Luke, “I wonder if he wrote this himself or got some one
to do it for him.”
“Hop Wong can write a little English,” said Ruth. “A very little, as
perhaps you have noticed,” she went on to Luke. “He told me once he had
gone to a Mission School.”
“Then he should have been taught not to play tricks,” and Luke’s tone
was a bit severe.
“Do you think this is a trick, Luke?”
“I’m sure of it! Aren’t you?”
Ruth paused a moment before replying. She again read the note.
“No,” she answered, “I think it is genuine.”
“You mean he isn’t trying to play a joke, perhaps put up to it by some
one else?” demanded Luke.
“I think Hop Wong is in earnest,” said Ruth, simply.
“Well,” began Luke, “I——Let’s take this up and see what the others
think,” he said, with a change of thought.
“Perhaps we’d better look about and see if Hop Wong has really gone,”
suggested Ruth. “His courage may have failed him at the last moment. See
if he’s hiding in the bushes. Sammy, please call him again. He seemed to
trust you.”
But neither hails nor search revealed the Chinese, and after a short
period the party returned to the piazza.
“We were just coming to look for you!” exclaimed Nalbro. “Where in the
world have you been?” and she and Hal halted on the side path up which
came Luke and Ruth.
“We have been—picking cherry blossoms,” answered Ruth.
“Cherry blossoms!” echoed Hal.
“I think she has confused Japan and China,” remarked Luke, with a laugh.
“This is worse and more of it!” chimed in Agnes, who had come along with
Neale. “What’s the big idea?” she asked slangily. Ruth disapproved of
slang, but Agnes, backed by Neale, liked to use it.
“Hop Wong has been trying to stage a mystery,” explained Luke. “Here is
the concrete evidence of it. I claim it’s a joke, but Ruth takes it
seriously.”
“Let’s see!” demanded Neale, reaching for what Luke had taken for a
laundry check.
“Suppose we go into the house where the light is better,” suggested
Ruth. “And, Sammy, I don’t want to be impolite, but perhaps your mother
wants you to go to bed.”
“Oh, no’m, she doesn’t!” quickly declared the boy. “I asked her an’ she
said I could stay up late to-night on account of your party.”
“Well——” went on Ruth.
“Suppose we keep Sammy here a little while,” suggested Luke in a low
voice. “It isn’t very late and we might need him. I have an idea,” he
added.
“All right,” agreed Ruth, after a quick look at her friend. “You may
stay a little longer, Sammy.”
“Goodie!” cried Tess and Dot.
The children were not much interested in the odd note—particularly when
they saw Linda come in with cake and ice cream. And while Sammy and the
small girls were enjoying this feast in one corner of the room, the
others gathered under the light to read again the strange message.
What did it mean?