my poor despised people have fallen upon hard lines. lee yet met with an accident on the street and had to be taken to the hospital where he must remain for weeks, and the day following mrs. yet was stricken down with diphtheria.
i was out in the automobile with grandmother and aunt gwendolin and chancing to pass the house of lee yet, i saw the awful word "diphtheria." in black letters on a scarlet ground, tacked to the door.
that night when all his day's work was done i gave yick a coin and asked him to go down and learn who was stricken with the disease.
he came back with the intelligence that it was poor little mrs. yet, and that there was no one waiting on her.
fortunately the next afternoon aunt gwendolin went to "bridge," and again donning grandmother's garments, i slipped out of the house and down to the home of mrs. yet.
meeting the doctor at the door, just as he was coming out, i ordered him to engage a nurse.
he looked at me in surprise, but i paid in advance for a week's service, so he could do nothing but obey me.
opening the door i went into the front room of the little home and found the celestial baby fretting away in its cradle just as any other baby would fret if left to itself. i began to call it all sorts of pet names in chinese, and the little slant-eye cooed and smiled back at me as if he really liked it.
a chinese neighbour woman came in and told me that the baby was to be kept in the front room, while its mother was quarantined in a room upstairs. she further informed me that she came in twice a day to feed the baby, and the rest of the time he was alone.
"i have it! i have it!" i cried exultingly to my own interior self, "i know now my aptitude! i know now what i can do that is impossible to any other; it surely is impossible to any other—in this nation of an hour—to jabber the chinese i can jabber to this eighteen months' old baby! i shall come here and take care of him, while the trained nurse is taking care of the mother upstairs. i'll come for awhile every day anyway, and will pay the chinese woman, who cannot leave her laundry-minding in the daytime, to take care of him at night! he's just as much a dear human baby as any purple-and-fine-linen american baby!"
how fortune favoured me that evening! aunt gwendolin announced that she was going in the morning on a month's visit to another city.
she was not much more than out the door the following day when i asked grandmother's permission to go where i liked every afternoon of the week.
dear grandmother remonstrated a little—for fear i might tire myself too much—or might go where it was not wise to go, etc., etc. but i coaxed, and i won the day.
a strange event happened the very first afternoon. just as i had passed through the lane at the rear of the house, who should be standing there at the back gate but the chauffeur, beside the automobile. he knew me despite my grandmotherly garb (as i had commenced going to the house of mrs. yet in grandmother's black shawl, bonnet, and skirt, i thought it better to continue doing so), politely touched his cap, and said if i had far to go it would take him but a few minutes to whirl me there in the automobile.
he is very good looking, and a gentleman. uncle theodore says he is a student who is taking this means to earn money further to pursue his medical studies. sometimes uncle theodore familiarly calls him "sawbones."
nodding my assent, i entered the car, gave my directions, and soon was down in front of mrs. yet's small house.
i lifted the fretting little baby out of his cradle as soon as i entered, washed and dressed him, he kicking and squirming just as i suppose any other baby kicks and squirms. all the fear i had was that he would roll out of my hands, he was such a slippery little eel when his body was wet.
where did i learn how to wash and dress a baby? i must have known how by instinct, for i never did it, or saw it done before. the chinese woman who keeps the little oriental at night told me the articles that went next the skin, and i had no trouble guessing about where to put the others. after one or two attempts i did it as well as a mother of twenty babies.
every day i am being conveyed down to my duties in the automobile. the chauffeur seemed to divine that i would go out every afternoon (perhaps because aunt gwendolin was away) without my telling him, and is always waiting at the little rear gate in the back street to obey my commands.
what a delightful time we are having! "when the cat's away the mice can play!"
dear grandmother has never seen me either leave or return to the house, but necessarily yick and betty are both into the secret.
"'for ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,' commend me to the chinese."
