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But they stand out; three flash-lights of fear above all: One was told me by Zela Wiltsie Worley, a college girl, now a missionary's wife, who has known what it means to lie on the floor of her home an entire morning with machine gun bullets crashing through her home, between the fire of two revolutionary armies. "I was talking with my Amah she is the girl who cares for our children," said Mrs.
Two cooks, country women, sat in the hidden corner behind the stove, and poked in the great bales of straw and gossiped. Their voices and the answers of the serving amah filled the kitchen with noise. In their decorous niche at the upper right hand of the stove sat the two kitchen gods, small ancient idols, with hidden hands and crossed feet, gazing out upon a continually hungry world.
When Nelly said that she was going to meet her father, Little Yi offered to go with her. The two children went out, but saw nothing of Mr. Grey. 'We'll walk to the end of the road and look up Legation Street, said Nelly. Little Yi was quite willing, and they trotted along, all the Chinese staring very hard to see a little foreign girl in the streets without even an amah to look after her.
He meant to reprove Chu Ma for not looking better after her charge, but he did not see her again that evening, and in the morning he forgot it. The next evening, after tea, when Chu Ma was chattering to Mrs. Buckle's amah, Nelly thought it would be nice to have another ride with her father. The gate was again open, and Little Yi was standing near it.
The gate-keeper was awake, brushing out his house with a broom of twigs. He was quite bald, and the top of his head was as tanned and brown as the legs of small summer children. "Good morning, Honourable One," he called. "It is a good omen. The lilies have opened." An amah, blue-trousered, blue-jacketed, blue-aproned, cluttered across the courtyard with two pails of steaming water.
May she eat bitterness all her days!" The amah shouldered the steaming buckets and splashed across the bare boards of the ancestral hall beyond. "The great wife is angry," murmured the gate-keeper. "Oh, Honourable One, shall I admit the flower-girl? She has fresh orchids." Dong-Yung nodded. The flower girl came slowly in under the guarded gateway.
"You dear, brave boy," she said slowly. "You're so honest, too. I'm not ungrateful. Do you know what I'd like Oh, there's the amah!" She drew back, with an impatient gesture. "That stupid, fat Mrs. Earle's waiting for me. I hate to leave you." The stealthy brightness of her admiration changed to a slow, inscrutable appeal. "Don't forget. Haven't you a better friend?"
She halted abruptly, swayed as though to fall, and turned, rather by instinct than by vision, to the other women. "Bertha!" protested Gilly, with a helpless stare. "My dear!" "I couldn't stay!" she cried. "The amah told me. Why did you ever let me come back? Oh, do something help me!" The face and the voice came to Rudolph like another trouble across a dream. He knew them, with a pang.
He would go up and down the streets with them and sell them to any one who would give him a chicken and a bowl of rice in return. "'But do they drown the girl babies now? I asked the Amah. "'Oh, yes, of course, if you already have one or two boys. You know, in my village I am the only Christian. My own family and the rest of the village worship idols. They are afraid of their gods.
At first she used to feel a little afraid when the amah blew out the candle and left her alone in her little bed in the middle of a great big dark room; but her mother had taught her that God takes care of us in the dark just the same as at any other time, and she soon learnt to curl herself up and go quietly to sleep.
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