“They’re a Multitoode” and other stories
[Illustration: “I wish you would tell me the story of Yin-dee.”]
“They’re a Multitoode”
and Other Stories
COMPILED BY
THE SECRETARY
OF THE YOUNG PEOPLE’S
FORWARD MOVEMENT
FOR MISSIONS
[Illustration]
TORONTO:
The Missionary Society of the Methodist Church
The Young People’s Forward Movement for Missions
F. C. STEPHENSON, Secretary
“They’re a Multitoode”
“We ain’t expected to do only our part.”
Christopher Morton, Jr., was looking through the morning mail in the
office when there came a knock at the door. He glanced at the clock and
frowned. It was too early for visitors by five minutes, and this vigilant
young man of business was very careful of his minutes.
While he hesitated, the door opened without ceremony and admitted a
gaunt, unfashionable figure, hollow-chested and sallow-faced.
“Hello, Christy, old chap!” cried the intruder, stretching out a hearty
hand and feeling apparently no doubt of a welcome. “How are you?”
For an instant the other looked at him vaguely, the crease still showing
in his forehead. Then his eyes lit.
“Why, Jim Perry, is it you!” he shouted, getting around the table with a
bound.
“Part of me,” said Jim, sinking into a chair. He panted a little, but he
smiled yet.
Christy looked him over discontentedly.
“What have you been doing to yourself?” he asked.
“Caught a fever,” explained Jim, with a nod. “The missionaries sent me
home. I might better have stuck it out there, but I had no breath to
argue with them, so they packed me off. I am to go back in September.”
“I have always believed in foreign missions,” said Christy, “but when
they took you out of the country I found it hard to keep my faith. And
now—” he stopped abruptly.
“It was a mighty good day for me when I went,” said Jim Perry. “I have
got a good deal out of living these past three years.”
There was no mistaking the ring in his voice.
“You have snug quarters here,” said Perry. “They tell me that you are a
prosperous man of affairs.”
“I am getting on,” said Christy, modestly, “I have some turn, I think,
for making money.”
“We out in China,” said Jim, with a chuckle, “haven’t any; it is the last
thing we can do. Our strong point is spending. We claim that nobody on
earth can surpass us in that. We will invest for you if you like. By the
way—” He plunged his hand into his pocket and brought out a flat strip of
cardboard which he proceeded to fit together into a money box.
“There!” he said, setting it up gravely on the corner of the mantelpiece.
“You will kindly contribute.”
“What is it?” asked Christy, regarding the small object distrustfully,
very much as if it were a dynamite bomb.
“We are trying,” explained Jim, “to raise a special Christmas offering
for missions. Along with the rest of her Christmas giving, the church is
asked to give to those who have never learned what Christmas is.”
There was a slight pause.
“Could anything,” Jim asked, “be more acceptable to Him in whose name our
festival is kept?”
“The original meaning of Christmas has been overlaid in a good many
minds,” commented Christy, briefly.
“To their loss,” said Jim, “and to the bitter loss of many besides.”
He rose from his seat and began to pace back and forth over Christy’s
thick carpet. But he was weak; he soon came back to his old place.
“I have walked,” he said musingly, “the swarming streets of heathen
cities, I have gone into heathen homes, I have stood face to face with
weary, heavy-laden, heathen souls, and I have been taught what Darkness
is. But then, thank God, I have time and again seen the Star of Bethlehem
break in the black sky and stand still over some place where the Christ
was born, and I know, yes, I know, the brightness of its rising!”
There was another silence.
Again Jim was the first to speak. “No doubt,” he said, “you give a number
of Christmas presents.”
“I don’t think of them in September,” said Christy.
“That is fortunate,” responded Jim, tranquilly. “It will give you more
leisure to think of this betimes.”
He looked at his watch and said that he must go.
They walked together to the corner where he took the car, and then
Christy hurried back to his work.
“That man will never go to China next September,” he muttered to himself,
as he rang up the elevator. “It will be another Celestial Kingdom for
which he will start, unless the signs are wrong.”
For the rest of the morning, Mr. Morton was not so undivided in his
attention to business as was customary with him. Many times his mind
wandered to the face that was like, and so unlike, the face of his old
college mate. It was aged. It was lined. It was tired.
“But you could trust it,” Christy concluded, “to the uttermost.”
“Jim Perry,” he said, facing at last the crucial idea which he had sought
to evade, “has got much out of life. What am I getting?”
The roar of the city came in at the open windows. Christy did not hear.
“If I should die to-night—that is too trite a supposition. If I should
have softening of the brain to-night, or advancing paralysis, what
satisfaction would there be to which I could hold fast, as I sat with my
face to the wall while life passed me by?”
The breeze fluttered the papers on his desk.
“If my plans stopped now, nothing would be left from the failure. They
need the future in order to amount to anything. If Jim Perry never gets
back to China, why”—he leaned his head on his hand and thought came
slowly—“he has lived for an object and attained it as he went along.”
Christy was still thinking of the look in Jim’s eyes and the sound of his
voice when footfalls along the corridor foretold an interruption.
Several men followed on the heels of one another. When they were all
gone, Christy’s mind had largely recovered its ordinary temper.
“Jim Perry is an awfully decent chap; it was upsetting to see him looking
so done. If he had stayed in this country, three-quarters of a lifetime
of work would probably be before him. One can’t help remembering it.
But—I can accept the logic of missions.”
He took the little cardboard box from the drawer into which he had thrust
it and read every Scripture verse on all its sides.
“Yes, the arguments are strong. I don’t pretend to gainsay foreign
missions. But yet it can’t be denied that thousands of the holiest of
saints have lived their lives out within the limits of Christendom and
found more than their hands could do with their might. However, that sort
of incompatibility between the two sides of a truth is the commonest
thing in the world. It does not shake the claim of the missionaries.”
“I wonder,” he meditated, “how much genuine missionary spirit there is in
the church of to-day. I don’t mean among the specialists, the experts,
like Jim (and me)”—Christy had the grace to laugh a little—“but in the
rank and file.”
He lifted the contribution box and regarded it with a new expression.
By-and-bye he smiled broadly.
“It will be an interesting experiment,” said Christy. “Let us try it.”
He put the box up again on the mantelpiece, where Jim had first set it,
clearing a space about it that it might stand unshadowed in a small rim
of black marble.
Another hour of the afternoon passed as many other hours had done.
Christy had returned to his habit of absorption in what was in hand.
An old woman, rich and “crotchety,” had been talking business with him
for the last fifteen minutes.
“The old dame is as keen as a weasel,” thought Christy, as he listened
with bowed head, deferentially. “Not many men could fool her on a deal.
She is honest herself, and she doesn’t mean to be cheated. The most of
her time is given to padlocking and double-barring her money chest.”
Finally she came to a pause. She pointed across the room.
“You have something new there. What is it?”
“A collection box,” answered Christy, accepting his cue, promptly.
“A college classmate of mine, a missionary to China, left it. The
missionaries are calling for a special offering at Christmas.”
The old lady heard him out patiently. When he had finished, she began to
speak of further precautions and provisos that had occurred to her as to
her affairs. Then she arose stiffly to go.
At the mantelpiece she stopped, took a bill from her full purse and
slipped it into the narrow opening of the missionary box. She had given
the first contribution to Jim’s heathen.
“Of her abundance,” quoth Christy, as he shut the door behind her.
Miss Craig, his stenographer, was moving at the other end of the office.
She shut up her typewriter; it was the hour for her to leave.
A little time before Christy had felt a sensation in regard to Miss
Craig. He did not often do this, which was one of his chief virtues.
But, just now, in the midst of his discourse on foreign missions, he had
been arrested for an instant by meeting the straight, intent gaze of the
young woman who always, unless directly addressed, kept her discreet eyes
upon her work.
Miss Craig put on her hat and gathered up her handkerchief and purse.
“May I trouble you to post these, Miss Craig?” said Christy, giving her a
handful of letters. “Thank you. Good afternoon.”
She laid the letters down on the mantelpiece while she opened her purse,
which was shapely but thin. Out of it she took a dollar bill, leaving
some silver, and put it in the money box.
Christy had started up to expostulate. He sat down to recover.
“She was as calm and matter-of-course about it,” he gasped, “as if it
were only natural for poor working girls to help evangelize China out of
their slim wages.”
During the next two or three days much notice was taken of the missionary
box.
The notice was diverse in kind. The curiosity of some was quickly
satisfied. Some stared politely. Others openly scoffed.
One fashionable club man put in a penny.
“To see how it feels,” he said.
“The shock can’t be very great,” observed Christy, “even to so new a
subject as yourself.”
“But you know,” said the club man with a grin, “it comes on top of
finding you running the machine. My nerves are all gone.”
A clergyman who coughed gave liberally.
“If I could have guessed that he was coming,” said Christy, with
chagrin, “I would have covered the thing up. Some men can no more pass a
collection basket than a drunkard can a corner saloon. But they are few.”
A hard-headed merchant furtively dropped in a gold piece.
“I got it in change,” he apologized, when he met Christy’s gaze. “It is
as well to make some special use of it before I pay it out for a quarter.”
A circuit judge lifted the box in his hand and read the verses as Christy
had done. When he set it down again he stood before it in silence while
Christy looked up, wondering, and did not disturb him.
At last the judge aroused himself. He made a large donation.
“My daughter was interested in all these things,” he said. Christy
remembered then the young girl who had died the year before.
In one way and another, Jim Perry’s missionary box grew heavy. Then it
was full.
Christy took it apart, put the money in a pigeon-hole in his desk and set
it back into place. He did not allow himself to comment.
[Illustration: “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall
be to all people.”]
On the same afternoon, Chippy Black, the errand boy, was waiting in the
office for a note. Chippy was a new boy; Christy did not feel sure of
him. Lifting his head now to give directions, Chippy was caught in the
act of “hefting” the missionary box.
“Ah,” said Christy to himself, with vexed enlightenment. Hunting office
boys was a bore.
“Why, this is empty!” said Chippy, facing round on him and holding out
the box. “Did you send it off?”
“No,” answered Christy, uncertainly. “It was full. I took the money out.”
“I see,” said Chippy. There was relief in his voice and in the clever,
dark, little face.
He plunged his hand into his jacket and brought out a small newspaper
parcel tied with twine.
“I promised Lin to bring it to you,” he said. “It would have been too bad
if I’d been too late.”
“What is it?” asked Christy, receiving the packet with no show of
distrust in its dinginess. And he was fastidious. “Who is Lin?”
“It’s money. She’s my sister,” answered Chippy. “She wants it to go with
the rest.”
Christy pushed a chair towards him. “Sit down,” he said. “Tell me all
about it. Take your time.”
Chippy crossed his knickerbockered legs, and by tilting forward a little
managed to keep one toe on the carpet.
“There’s two of us boys home,” he began. “And there’s Lin. My brother Bob
and me are like lots of other fellows. But Lin is extry. I’d call her
quite extry myself. She’s like—well, she’s like Lin. That’s all I can
say.”
“I have seen one or two such persons,” said Christy.
“One Sunday night one of those foreign preachers was talking about the
heathen. If it hadn’t been for Lin,” said Chippy, “we’d have forgotten
all about them inside of a week. But Lin was bound that something had
got to be done. ‘There’s so many of them, Lin,’ says Miss Loretta Pease.
(Miss Loretta lives on the next floor to us; she’s educated.) ‘They’re
a multitoode,’ she says. ‘You can’t never reach ’em.’ ‘Not all of them
at once,’ says Lin to her. ‘Not just us alone by ourselves. We ain’t
expected to do only our part.’”
“Miss Lin is sagacious,” said Christy.
“‘It isn’t any more than right for us to do our part,’ she told Miss
Loretta. ‘And for one I won’t back out of it,’ Nor, you may be sure, she
wouldn’t. Lin is the sort that wouldn’t.”
“An uncommonly good sort,” said Christy.
“You are like that, too, ain’t you!” said Chippy, looking over at him
kindly.
“Miss Loretta came round all right after Lin had worked over her a while.
She ain’t obstinate. She’s genteel. So Lin fixed it up that we was all to
chip in together and make up a purse for the heathen. So we did it. And
there it is.”
He nodded proudly toward the newspaper parcel.
“You must have worked hard,” said Christy.
“It’s savings, mostly. I mean our part of it is, Lin’s and my brother’s
and mine. Lin got off the neighbors, too, you know; it’s all there
together.”
“You saved yours?” questioned Christy.
“Yes, sir. Lin is grand on saving. She scatters it. She don’t bunch it
all on one thing till it appears as nothing else but just that was worth
eating. First it’s sugar, and then it’s sausage, and then it’s something
different again. And sometimes it ain’t anything at all. You don’t hardly
miss it that way.”
Chippy slipped still farther forward on his seat and felt for his cap. He
glanced at Christy’s unfolded note.
Christy got out an envelope and dipped his pen in the ink. Then he let it
rest over the edge of the desk, where it dried.
He picked up the roll of money.
“You must have been collecting this for some time.”
“All summer,” said Chippy. “There’s a good deal of it. Lin and Miss
Loretta had just begun to talk about where they would carry it when you
first began to take up money here. I told them about it and I told them
that, so long as this was where I worked, I thought you’d ought to get
it. So after a bit they decided on that.”
Chippy plainly felt that the bestowal of Lin’s patronage was no light
thing.
Christy agreed with him.
“I’m very much obliged to you,” he said heartily. “This will help me
along splendidly. Let’s put it in at once.”
He pulled at the twine string, which was tied in a very secure knot, and
laid open the hoard.
It was made up of all the original pennies and nickels; there was also
one dime among them. The sum total was $2.11.
Christy handed Chippy a nickel and held one himself. He brought the
missionary box.
“Now, drop yours in,” he directed. “Then I will drop mine. We’ll take
turn about.”
Chippy was eager. His interest grew with every rattling coin until the
last was safely inside. Then he straightened himself with a long breath.
“Lin said she was going to do it, and she’s done it,” he said.
“And she doesn’t know how much she has done,” said Christy, soberly.
“That’s so,” answered Chippy, with quick perception. “That’s the best of
it, I suppose. The best of everything, Lin says, is what the Lord can
make out of it. Anything will go twice as far with Him, she says. You
talk a great deal like her.”
Christy lifted the box.
“It’s about full,” he said. “It’s just about ready to empty again. But
there is a little space yet. We will leave it. I shall be glad to see
what gift will be put in on top of this.”
The weeks passed. Several times over the missionary box was emptied into
the pigeon-hole. On a foggy December afternoon a Mr. Richards was alone
with Christy in the office. He had brought the young man a windfall of
$1,000.
“It is by happy strokes like these,” said Mr. Richards, “that a man grows
rich.”
Many such strokes of various kinds had come in the way of Mr. Richards
during a long life.
“I have built up my own fortunes,” he continued, “from the stub. From
what I see of you, Mr. Morton, I predict you success.”
He regarded Christy with a glint of favor in his iron-gray face as he
added in climax, “You are very much like I was at your age. You are like
myself.”
Christy was rather silent. When he was left alone he thought of Jim
Perry. He often thought of Jim now. His late visitor and his classmate
stood side by side before his mind.
“There is wealth and wealth,” he mused. “Mr. Richards has one kind, Jim
has another. I am not so awfully pleased,” he thought resentfully, “with
my likeness to Richards. I don’t fancy being a cash register. All the
man’s fortunes are in money.”
Christy looked down at the cheque in his hands; he looked at Jim’s box.
“I said the real Christmas was forgotten. I said that all the missionary
spirit of the present resided in the missionaries and me. I doubt whether
Mr. Richards at my age was such a fool. Poor Richards! He is old. I shall
have a good part of my life yet, I trust.”
He wrote on the back of the cheque and folded it small.
“Richards, and Jim, and Lin, and the others have spoiled my taste a
little for happy strokes, however innocently come by. The mission shall
enjoy this one.”
He pushed the cheque through the slit in the money box, which was getting
frayed and worn.
Christy met Mr. Richards on the street soon afterwards.
“I hope,” said Mr. Richards, “that you have found a good investment for
your money.”
“I have,” said Christy.
“Is it reasonably sure?”
“Perfectly.”
“Nothing in this world can be perfectly sure, Mr. Morton.”
“But there is another world,” said Christy.
“It may be,” he said.
As the man of millions passed on, Christy heard a faint sigh. Three days
later the office door burst open and in walked Jim Perry, broad and brown.
Christy stared at him speechlessly.
“I’m well again,” announced Jim, superfluously.
Christy shook him by the hand, clapped him on the shoulder and thumped
him on the chest.
“Providence knows how to give to missions!” he said.
Jim turned to the mantelpiece and shook his money box. It was empty. He
was openly disappointed.
“You lazy beggar,” he cried. “Are you leaving all the giving to
Providence?”
“I am not a lazy beggar,” said Christy. “I am a very industrious one.
Look at this.”
He put the contents of the pigeon-hole in front of Jim and watched him
fall upon them, and enjoyed tremendously his blank delight.
“Why,” stammered Jim, “what does it mean? Is it all for us?”
“It means,” said Christy, “that a week from to-day will be
Christmas.”—_Y. P. M. M._
The Penny Ye Meant to Gi’e
There’s a funny old tale of a stingy man,
Who was none too good, though he might have been worse;
Who went to church on a Sunday night,
And carried along his well-filled purse.
When the sexton came with his begging plate,
The church was but dim with the candles’ light;
The stingy man fumbled all through his purse,
And chose a coin by touch, and not sight.
It’s an odd thing now that guineas be
So like unto pennies in shape and size,
“I’ll give a penny,” the stingy man said;
“The poor must not gifts of pennies despise.”
The penny fell down with a clatter and ring;
And back in his seat leaned the stingy man,
“The world is so full of the poor,” he thought,
“I can’t help them all—I give what I can.”
Ha, ha! How the sexton smiled to be sure,
To see the gold guinea fall into his plate;
Ha, ha! How the stingy man’s heart was wrung,
Perceiving his blunder, but just too late!
“No matter,” he said, “in the Lord’s account
That guinea of gold is set down to me,
They lend to Him who give to the poor;
It will not so bad an investment be.”
“Na, na, mon,” the chuckling sexton cried out;
“The Lord is no cheated—He kens thee well;
He knew it was only by accident
That out of thy fingers the guinea fell.
“He keeps an account, no doubt, for the puir;
But in that account He’ll set down to thee
Na mair o’ that golden guinea, my mon,
Than the one bare penny ye meant to gi’e!”
There’s a comfort, too, in the little tale—
A serious side as well as a joke;
A comfort for all the generous poor
In the honest words the sexton spoke.
A comfort to think that the good Lord knows
How generous we really desire to be,
And will give us credit in His account
For all the pennies we long to “gi’e.”
Rue’s Heathen
The long line of blue check aprons followed the other line of small blue
jackets through the wide hall, up the bare, polished stairs, and into
the clean, airy chapel. Then, at a signal, every apron and jacket was
still. Little Rue’s apron had been about midway in the procession, and
so she found a seat near the middle of the chapel, where, swinging the
small feet that could not quite touch the floor, she looked listlessly
out through the window opposite, over a beautiful view of grove and
meadow, and then up at the white ceiling, where a great fly buzzed at his
pleasure, without having to walk in line.
On the platform a man in fine broadcloth and gold spectacles was
beginning to talk; but Rue only listened dreamily.
“My dear children, I am delighted to visit this grand institution—to
see so many of you in this beautiful home, so well cared for, so well
instructed, and so happy.”
Rue wondered why all the men who talked there said that. She wondered if
he really would like to eat and sleep and walk in a row and always wear a
blue check apron. Then she forgot all about him, in watching the sunlight
play on the small head immediately in front of her. What a brilliant red
head it was! And then a bright thought occurred to Rue. A few of those
hairs, twisted together, would make a beautiful chain for the neck of her
china doll, her one treasure; and, of course, Mary Jane Sullivan would
never miss them, if she only pulled out one here and there.
Forward crept Rue’s eager little fingers; but they were too nervous
in their haste to be sure that they held but a single coarse hair
before they twitched, and the result was a sudden explosive “Ow!” from
Mary Jane, the turning of a battery of eyes in that direction, and
an immediate investigation by the authorities into the cause of the
disturbance. Poor little Rue was marched off in disgrace; but, as she
reached the door, she heard the speaker say:—
“I am sorry this has happened; sorry that any one should miss what I am
going to say; for I hoped to interest all these dear children in the work
of sending the gospel to the heathen.”
It was kind of him to call them _all_ dear children after that dreadful
event, Rue reflected, as, with burning cheeks and tearful eyes, she
stood, with a number of other little culprits, in one of the wide halls,
for even punishment was in rows at the Home. Shifting her weight from one
restless foot to the other, yet trying to stand sufficiently upright to
answer the requirements of the penance, Rue did sincerely wish that she
had been a good girl and remained quietly in the chapel, partly because
of the humiliation that had befallen her, but also because she wanted to
hear what he had to say on the particular subject he had named.
“Why didn’t he begin with that, and then I’d have listened!” she thought,
rather resentfully. For back among Rue’s shadowy memories of the past,
of love, and mother, and a home that was not _the_ Home, was a dim
recollection of some curious articles which her baby hands had only been
allowed to touch carefully, because they were mementoes of an uncle who
had died far away on a mission field. “So it would have been most like
hearing about my relations; only I haven’t got any,” mused Rue. “Oh,
dear! I wish I’d stayed good and hadn’t pulled Mary Jane’s hair. I didn’t
mean to, anyway.”
She tried to find out about it afterwards by inquiring of one of the
other girls.
“Oh! he wanted the children to try and save up something, so they could
help send Bibles to the heathen. Guess, if he lived here long, he’d find
we hadn’t anything to save,” was the hurried reply.
Bibles! That was where Rue was rich. She actually had two that had been
brought from that faintly remembered home.
“I don’t suppose I’ll read one of ’em to pieces; not if I used it till
I’m a big woman,” she said to herself. “I might give the other one. I
ought to help, ’count of being a relation, somehow, and I want to be
good. I just do.”
Later in the day she ventured another inquiry:
“How will he get those to the heathen?”
“I don’t know. Why, yes, he’ll send ’em through the post-office, of
course. What do you care so much about it for?”
That was what Rue did not mean to tell. She chose her prettiest
Bible, spent the play-hours of two days in writing an epistle on the
fly-leaves, and tied it up in a piece of brown paper. Her knowledge of
the post-office and its requirements was exceedingly limited, but she
supposed it would be necessary to put something on the outside of the
packet, to tell for whom it was intended. She wanted it to go where
it was needed most, and of course the post-office people would know
where that was, she reflected; so she carefully printed, in very uneven
letters, “For the greatest heathen,” and then laid the precious package
away to await a future opportunity. She would trust her secret to no one,
lest some unforeseen interference might result, and she cautiously sought
information.
“How do you do when you put anything into the post-office?” she demanded
of Mary Jane Sullivan.
“Why, you just put ’em in. You go in the door, and there’s an open place
where you drop ’em right down,” exclaimed Mary Jane, lucidly.
How good Rue was for days after that. How she washed dishes in
the kitchen, under the care of Miss Dorothy, and made beds in the
dormitories, under the supervision of Mrs. Mehitable, and so at last
earned the privilege of being the one sent to town on some trifling
errand for the matron.
Thus it happened that one bright morning the clerks in the post-office
were surprised by a little packet tossed in upon the floor, and a glimpse
of a blue check apron vanishing hurriedly through the door. Unstamped,
and with its odd address, it created a ripple of amusement.
“‘For the greatest heathen.’ That must be you, Captain,” declared one;
and the postmaster laughingly took charge of it, and then forgot it
until, at home that evening, he found it in his pocket.
[Illustration: Rue writing the letter to “The Greatest Heathen.”]
“What is it?” asked his wife, presently, as she saw him silent and
absorbed, and, looking over his shoulder, she read the little letter with
him. Original in spelling and peculiar in chirography it certainly was,
but they slowly deciphered it:
“I haven’t any money to give ’cause I’m one of the little girls
at the Home. Some of them have relations to send them things
sometimes; but I haven’t. I have two Bibles; but I wouldn’t
give this to any one but the heathen ’cause my own mamma gave
it to me. It’s nice to have a mamma to cuddle you up and love
you just by your own self, and tuck you into bed at night, and
not have to be in a row all the time. It makes a lump all swell
up in my throat when I think of it, and my eyes get so hot and
wet I can hardly see. I wish God did have homes enough, so He
could give every little boy and girl a real one, and we needn’t
be all crowded up in one big place, that’s just called so.
Sometimes, when I see all the houses it ’most seems as if there
must be enough to go ’round; but I suppose there isn’t. I guess
it’ll be the real kind we’ll have up in heaven, and I want to
go there; and that’s why I send you this Bible, so you can
learn about it. You must read it and be good. Oh, dear! it’s
dreadfully hard to be good when you haven’t any mamma. I hope
you’ve got one, if she is a heathen, for I’m most sure that’s
better than no kind. Good-bye.
“Rue Lindsay.”
“Poor little thing!” exclaimed the lady, half laughing, but with a sudden
moisture in her brown eyes.
Captain Grey looked around the beautiful room.
“I’m inclined to believe that letter was properly directed, and has
reached its rightful destination,” he said, thoughtfully. “Think of it,
Mary—all these cosy, pretty rooms, and no one to occupy them but you and
me, while there are so many little home-sick souls in the world! You have
spoken of it before; but I was too selfishly contented to care about it.
If I’m not ‘the greatest heathen’ I have certainly been far enough from
the sort of Christianity this book requires.”
“Well?” questioned Mrs. Grey, with shining eyes, waiting for the
conclusion of the matter.
“Shall I go to-morrow and bring this little midget home with me—for a
visit, say—and see what will come of it?”
It did not occur to little Rue that the stranger she met in the hall the
next day, and who had a long interview with the matron, could be of any
possible interest to her small self, until she was summoned down stairs
to see him.
“Would you like to go home with this gentleman, for a visit of a week or
two, Rue? He has come to ask you,” said the matron.
“Me?” questioned Rue, oblivious of grammar lessons, and with a dozen
exclamation points in her voice. There was no danger of her declining.
The prospect of a visit anywhere was delightful, and the possibility
of such a thing almost as wonderful as a fairy tale. So it was a very
bright little face that Captain Grey found beside him in the carriage,
and Rue looked up at him shyly through her rings of sunny hair, to ask,
as the only imaginable solution of the happy problem: “Are you one of my
relations?”
“Yes, but I didn’t remember it until last night,” he answered gravely.
The weeks that followed were brimful of joy to Rue, and she won her way
straight into the home and the hearts that had opened to receive her.
“And so you think I may tell the matron that you do not care to go back,
but are willing to stay here?” questioned the Captain, when the allotted
time had expired.
“I guess,” replied Rue, looking down at her dainty dress, and suddenly
flinging her arms around Mrs. Grey’s neck, “that you didn’t ever live
there, and eat soup, and wear check aprons, and have nobody like this to
love, ’r else you’d know.”
But she has not learned yet that it was her own missionary effort that
brought so great reward.
How Yin-Dee Changed Her Name
CHAPTER I.
“LEAD ALONG A BROTHER.”
The first thing I know about myself is that I was born; and that I had a
father and mother, too, just as you have. I thought I had better tell you
this, as I have often heard ignorant country people ask the missionary if
in his country children are born the same as in China, just as they will
ask him if there are a sun and moon, rivers and hills, there as here.
My grandfather used to say that foreigners belonged to a country where
people had holes in their chests and were carried about on a long pole by
two men. But he had never seen any foreigners at all.
Of course when I was born nobody wanted me. Whoever wants girls? I was
the first child; so my parents were bitterly disappointed. Well, I
couldn’t help it; and I have often thought how hard it was that I should
be badly treated, as if it were my fault. My father said bitter things to
mother, so she called me “Yin-dee,” which means, “Lead along a brother.”
After a time they got more used to me, and were not more unkind than
most parents. Sometimes when I was extra good mother would take me in
her arms and call me her “precious,” for, as the proverb says, “All have
the parent heart.” Now, if I had been a boy how different it would have
been—there would have been no end of rejoicing and feasting! My mother’s
parents would have supplied me with a cradle and lots of pretty clothes.
When a month old there would have been another feast, and the barber
would have come to shave my head and mix the hair with rice and give it
to the dog to eat, to make _me_ brave. I should always have had my own
way and have been petted by all. When a year old, they would have called
my relations together and spread before me a lot of things, to see what
my future was to be. There would be books and pens, scissors and scales,
a rule, and some money; and they would have waited to see which was the
thing I grabbed. If it had been books how it would have pleased them,
for it would have meant that I was to be a scholar; if scissors, then a
tailor; and so on. Now, I wonder which I should have chosen? Not books,
I’m afraid; for I don’t like learning—do you?
Well, as I wasn’t a boy, I had none of this, so had to be content. As
smallpox was very bad, I had a label on my back to say I had already had
it (though I hadn’t), but that was to deceive the goddesses. Then, to
make quite sure, I had a cloth monkey strung round my neck, which made a
nice plaything. I am afraid I wasn’t always good at night—I am sure you
all are!—but cried, for I didn’t have enough to eat most of the time; so
father got the teacher next door to write a verse and paste it on the
wall outside. This is how it goes:
Tien hwang, hwang, dee hwang, hwang,
Ngo jah yo go yea coo long,
Go wong jwin dz nien san bien,
Ee jo shway dao da tien liang.
In English it is—
Ye gods in the heavens, ye powers on the earth,
My baby began from the hour of her birth
With horrible screams to rend the night!
O passing stranger, these my rhymes
Read, I pray you, through three times,
And then she will sleep till broad daylight.
But I’m afraid there were not many who read them three times, for it
didn’t make much difference. Still, it was the correct thing to do, so
mother felt satisfied.