“For his sake!” echoed Ah Wing.

“Yes, for his sake,” answered the little sick boy. “It is so good to see him happy. It is that which makes me happy.”

The tears came into Ah Wing’s eyes.

“Honorable lantern man,” said he, turning to the father of the little sick boy, “I wish no more for the peacock lantern. Keep it, I pray thee, for thy little sick boy. And honorable father”—he took his father’s hand—“kindly buy for me at the same price as the peacock lantern one of the other beautiful lanterns belonging to the honorable lantern man.”

CHILDREN OF PEACE

I

THEY WERE TWO YOUNG PEOPLE with heads hot enough and hearts true enough to believe that the world was well lost for love, and they were Chinese.

They sat beneath the shade of a cluster of tall young pines forming a perfect bower of greenness and coolness on the slope of Strawberry hill. Their eyes were looking ocean-wards, following a ship nearing the misty horizon. Very serious were their faces and voices. That ship, sailing from west to east, carried from each a message to his and her kin—a message which humbly but firmly set forth that they were resolved to act upon their belief and to establish a home in the new country, where they would ever pray for blessings upon the heads of those who could not see as they could see, nor hear as they could hear.

“My mother will weep when she reads,” sighed the girl.

“Pau Tsu,” the young man asked, “do you repent?”

“No,” she replied, “but—”

She drew from her sleeve a letter written on silk paper.

The young man ran his eye over the closely penciled characters.

“’Tis very much in its tenor like what my father wrote to me,” he commented.

“Not that.”

Pau Tsu indicated with the tip of her pink forefinger a paragraph which read:

Are you not ashamed to confess that you love a youth who is not yet your husband? Such disgraceful boldness will surely bring upon your head the punishment you deserve. Before twelve moons go by you will be an Autumn Fan.

The young man folded the missive and returned it to the girl, whose face was averted from his.

“Our parents,” said he, “knew not love in its springing and growing, its bud and blossom. Let us, therefore, respectfully read their angry letters, but heed them not. Shall I not love you dearer and more faithfully because you became mine at my own request and not at my father’s? And Pau Tsu, be not ashamed.”

The girl lifted radiant eyes.

“Listen,” said she. “When you, during vacation, went on that long journey to New York, to beguile the time I wrote a play. My heroine is very sad, for the one she loves is far away and she is much tormented by enemies. They would make her ashamed of her love. But this is what she replies to one cruel taunt: