Part 41 (1/2)

”There, there!” said her master soothingly. ”Your motherly heart would never turn away a poor orphan from our door!”

But Mrs. Barbara sniffed herself out of the room, and it was weeks before she reconciled herself to the new and disagreeable prospect.

Indeed, when poor, s.h.i.+vering Ah Lon arrived at Old Studley, the good woman nearly swooned at the spectacle of a little visitor arrayed in dark blue raiment consisting of a long, square-shaped jacket and full trousers, and a bare head stuck over with well-oiled queues of black hair.

”I thought as Mr. William wrote it was a girl, sir!” she gasped faintly, with a shocked face.

But the old professor was in ecstasies. All he could think of was the fact that under his roof was a being who could converse in pure Chinese; in truth, poor bewildered Ah Lon could not speak in anything else but her native tongue. He would have carried her off to his study and monopolised her, but Mrs. Barbara's sense of propriety was fired.

”No, sir,” she interposed firmly. ”If that being's the girl Mr. William sent she's got to look as such in some of Miss Jinty's garments and immediately.”

So Ah Lon, trembling like a leaf, was carried off to be attired like a little English child.

”But as for looking like one, that she never will!” Mrs. Barbara hopelessly regarded the strangely-wide little yellow face, the singular eyes narrow as slits, and the still more singular eyebrows.

”Oh, never mind how she looks!” Jinty put her arms round the little yellow neck and lovingly kissed the stranger, who summarily shook her off. Perhaps Ah Lon was not accustomed to kisses at home.

It was a rebuff, and Jinty got many another as the days went on. Do what she could to please and amuse the little foreigner, Ah Lon shrank from her persistently.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HORRIBLE DREAMS OF MONSTERS AND DEMONS.]

All Jinty's treasures, dolls and toys and keepsakes were exhibited, but Ah Lon turned away indifferently. The Chinese girl, in truth, was deadly home-sick, but she would have died rather than confess it, even to the professor, the only person who understood her speech. She detested the new, strange country, the queer, unknown food, the outlandish ways. Yet she was in many respects happier. Some of the old hards.h.i.+ps of girl life in China were gone. Some old fears began to vanish, and her nights were no longer disturbed with horrible dreams of monsters and demons.

But of all things in and about Old Studley Ah Lon most detested Mike the raven, and Mike seemed fully to return her dislike. He pecked viciously at the spindly Chinese legs and sent Ah Lon into convulsions of terror.

”Ah well, bad as he is, Mike's British same's I am, and he do hate a foreigner!” said Mrs. Barbara appreciatively.

Time went on and Jinty began to shoot up; she was growing quite tall, and Ah Lon also grew apace. But, still, though the little foreigner could now find her way about in the language of her new country, she shut her heart against kind little Jinty's advances.

”She won't have anything to say to me!” complained Jinty, ”she won't make friends, Mrs. Barbara! The only thing she will look at is my pearl locket, she likes that!”

Indeed Ah Lon seemed never tired of gazing at the pearl-rimmed locket which hung by a slender little chain round Jinty's neck, and contained the miniature of her pretty young mother so long dead. The little Chinese never tired of stroking the sweet face looking out from the rim of pearls.

”Do you say prayers to it?” she asked, in her stammering English.

”Prayers, no!” Jinty was shocked. ”I only pray to our Father and to the good Jesus. Why, you wouldn't pray to a picture?”

Ah Lon was silent. So perhaps she had been praying to the sweet painted face already, who could say?

It was soon after this talk that the two little girls sat in the study one morning. Ah Lon was at the table by the side of the professor, an open atlas between them and the old gentleman in his element.

But Jinty sat apart, strangely quiet.

Ah Lon, watching out of her slits of eyes, had never seen Jinty so dull and silent. And all that summer day it was the same.

”What's amiss with my dear maid?” anxiously asked Mrs. Barbara, when bed-time came.

Then it all came out.