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She did not realize how seriously ill her husband was, for he had written cheerfully: "Tell Mrs. Ahok that I have been a little ill for some weeks and that now I am staying at the Ato house. I find it very restful staying quietly at the old home.... Tell Mrs. Ahok, please, not to worry at all about me." On saying good-bye to friends in England Mrs.
Ahok lent us all her own pretty things for the table, lovely little silver cups, ornamented silver spoons, red china tea cups with silver stands, and ivory chopsticks mounted with silver; so we were very grand. We had two tables, ten at each. We were twenty in all, counting ourselves."
"I wish you could go with me, Mrs. Ahok," Miss Bradshaw said, when she had told her of the physician's decision. This was a very remarkable suggestion to make to this little Chinese woman, whose life had been such a secluded one that a few years before she would not even accept an invitation to dinner with the Baldwins, since there were to be foreign gentlemen present.
Only a short time before, when the Baldwins were returning to America and Mrs. Ahok had gone with them, on her husband's launch, to the steamer anchorage, twelve miles away, they had considered it a great honour, since this Chinese friend had never been so far from home before. But Mrs.
Ahok too absorbed in her grief to remember her friend in her happiness, for little Jimmy carried with him a beautiful bunch of flowers for the bride. As soon as the news of Mr. Ahok's death reached England, a letter of sympathy signed by nearly five hundred of Mrs. Ahok's friends in England was sent to her.
Then we will sit here together and I will have so many things to tell you. Again and again she said to her children, 'Study your lessons diligently and pray night and morning." Mrs. Ahok sailed from Foochow the 26th of January, 1890. At Hong Kong she was told, "There are a hundred miseries ahead of you," but she answered unflinchingly, "If there were a thousand more I would go."
She was very glad and thankful that all went off so well, but quite tired after her exertions, and sat holding her poor little bound feet in her hands, saying they did ache so." One day when Mrs. Ahok went to call on one of her English friends, Miss Bradshaw, she was startled to find that the physician had ordered her to leave for England on the next steamer, sailing three days later.
One of her friends wrote to England, at the time of her son's death, that the thought that her friends in England would be praying for her was one of the greatest sources of comfort to Mrs. Ahok. In the midst of her busy life in China she has never forgotten England nor her friends there.
Ahok was willing to attend similar gatherings in other homes. She frequently called at the home of her friend, Mrs. Baldwin, but never when there were strangers there. On one occasion when Mrs. Baldwin was entertaining a few guests at dinner, she invited Mr. Ahok to dine with them. He accepted readily, and Mrs. Baldwin went on to say: "We very much desire that Mrs. Ahok should come with you.
Ahok is so pleased with the reception we received that she is anxious, if possible, to arrange for us to go again next week." Even more formidable than ceremonious social calls in wealthy Chinese homes, is the thought of entertaining the aristocracy in one's own home. "I want to tell you about our grand feast," one lady writes.
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