Ku Yum, the little daughter of Wen Hing, the schoolmaster, trotted into
the school behind her father and crawled under his desk. From that safe
retreat, her bright eyes looked out in friendly fashion upon the boys.
Ku Yum was three years old and was the only little girl who had ever
been in the schoolroom. Naturally, the boys were very much interested in
her, and many were the covert glances bestowed upon the chubby little
figure in red under the schoolmaster’s desk. Now and then a little lad,
after an unusually penetrating glance, would throw his sleeve over or
lift his slate up to his face, and his form would quiver strangely. Well
for the little lad that the schoolmaster wore glasses which somewhat
clouded his vision.
The wife of Wen Hing was not very well, which was the reason why the
teacher had been bringing the little Ku Yum to school with him for the
last three weeks. Wen Hing, being a kind husband, thought to help his
wife, who had two babies besides Ku Yum to look after.
But for all his troubled mind, the schoolmaster’s sense of duty to his
scholars was as keen as ever; also his sense of smell.
Suddenly he turned from the blackboard upon which he had been chalking.
“He who thinks only of good things to eat is an inferior man,” and
pushing back his spectacles, declared in a voice which caused his pupils
to shake in their shoes:
“Some degenerate son of an honorable parent is eating unfragrant sugar.”
“Unfragrant sugar! honorable sir!” exclaimed Han Wenti.
“Unfragrant sugar!” echoed little Yen Wing.
“Unfragrant sugar!”
“Unfragrant sugar!”
The murmur passed around the room.
“Silence!” commanded the teacher.
There was silence.
“Go Ek Ju,” said the teacher, “why is thy miserable head bowed?”
“Because, O wise and just one, I am composing,” answered Go Ek Ju.
“Read thy composition.”
“A wild boar and a sucking pig were eating acorns from the bed of a
sunken stream,” shrilly declaimed Go Ek Ju.
“Enough! It can easily be perceived what thy mind is on. Canst thou look
at me behind my back and declare that thou art not eating unfragrant
sugar?”
“To thy illuminating back, honorable sir, I declare that I am not eating
unfragrant sugar.”
The teacher’s brow became yet sterner.
“You, Mark Sing! Art thou the unfragrant sugar eater?”
“I know not the taste of that confection, most learned sir.”
The teacher sniffed.
“Some one,” he reasserted, “is eating unfragrant sugar. Whoever the
miserable culprit is, let him speak now, and four strokes from the
rattan is all that he shall receive.”
He paused. The clock ticked sixty times; but there was no response to
his appeal. He lifted his rattan.
“As no guilty one,” said he, “is honorable enough to acknowledge that he
is dishonorably eating unfragrant sugar, I shall punish all for the
offense, knowing that thereby the offender will receive justice. Go Ek
Ju, come forward, and receive eight strokes from the rattan.”
Go Ek Ju went forward and received the eight strokes. As he stood
trembling with pain before the schoolmaster’s desk, he felt a small hand
grasp his foot. His lip tightened. Then he returned to his seat, sore,
but undaunted, and unconfessed. In like manner also his schoolmates
received the rattan.
When the fifteen aching but unrepentant scholars were copying
industriously, “He who thinks only of good things to eat is an inferior
man,” and the schoolmaster, exhausted, had flung himself back on his
seat, a little figure in red emerged from under the schoolmaster’s desk
and attempted to clamber on to his lap. The schoolmaster held her back.
“What! What!” he exclaimed. “What! what!” He rubbed his head in puzzled
fashion. Then he lifted up the little red figure, turning its face
around to the schoolboys. Such a chubby, happy little face as it was.
Dimpled cheeks and pearly teeth showing in a gleeful smile. And the
hands of the little red figure grasped two sticky balls of red and white
peppermint candy—unfragrant sugar.
“Behold!” said the teacher, with a twinkle in his spectacles, “the
inferior man!”
Whereupon the boys forgot that they were aching. You see, they loved the
little Ku Yum and believed that they had saved her from eight strokes of
the rattan.