The Little Girl Lost Part 1

The Little Girl Lost.

by Eleanor Raper.

CHAPTER I

NELLY AND HER FRIENDS

Nelly Grey was a little English girl who had never been in England. She was born in China, and went with her father and mother to live in the British Legation compound in Peking when she was only three years old. A compound is a kind of big courtyard, with other courts and houses inside. Nelly's was a large one, and very open. It had several houses in it: not like we have in England, but only one storey high, and with deep, shady verandahs round them. There were also a little church, some tennis-courts, and several small buildings for the Chinese servants at the back.

Nelly could speak both English and Chinese very well. She could play the piano a little, though not so well as most English children of nine years old. She could ride a donkey, skate, and play tennis, but she had never seen a bicycle or a real carriage, because there were no such things in Peking. But Nelly was quite lively although she was shut up in a compound all the time. She would have been ashamed to feel dull and cross, for she had once heard the Minister's wife say, 'Nelly Grey is an intelligent child and has sense enough to amuse herself.' Since then she had felt that she must not let the lady change her opinion. Besides, there were several other foreign[1] children in Peking whom Nelly saw from time to time. In her compound, living next door, was Baby Buckle.

He had only been there six months, for that was his age, and Nelly loved him very much. He was such a jolly little fellow, always laughing and crowing, and almost jumping out of the arms of his Chinese nurse (who was called an amah) when he saw Nelly coming. And he used to open his mouth wide and try to bite this old yellow woman, and put his little fists into her eyes and kick her, until the poor old thing was almost worn out and could scarcely walk or even stand on her little misshapen feet. To be sure, he slept a great deal, or the amah would have been obliged to hand him over to a younger woman. There was another boy in the Legation, a little Scotchman, who was one year older than Nelly.

They played together very often. But Nelly did not like boys--only baby boys, she said. Indeed, she often made Arthur Macdonald feel very lonely and unhappy because she preferred to leave him and go off to play with a Chinese girl of her own age, called Shiao Yi. Shiao in Chinese means 'little,' so we will call her Little Yi.

[1] English, Americans, French, and all other white people are called foreigners in China.

Little Yi's feet had never been bound, because she was a Manchu child, and the Manchu women do not bind their feet; so she could run and skip about the compound almost as freely as Nelly. Almost, I say, not quite, because Chinese children are not dressed for running about. Their shoes are hard and clumsy, and in winter their clothes are so thickly wadded that they look like little b.a.l.l.s.

Then there were two little girls of eleven and twelve who lived at the German Legation, and were called Bertha and Liza Wolf. It was very strange for Nelly the first time these children came to see her. Mrs.

Grey was calling upon their mother, who told her that they had just arrived from home with their governess. At once Mrs. Grey invited them to come to tea the next day, and she did not think of asking if they could speak English; neither did their mother, who spoke English beautifully, remember that her children could not do so. When they arrived, Nelly was alone with Chu Ma, her amah, and they all laughed a great deal when they found that they could not understand one another.

Bertha Wolf had picked up the Chinese word 'pu,' which means 'not,' and she kept repeating that and mixing it up with German. It sounded very funny. Nelly showed them her dolls' house, and Liza made the dolls sit down and stand up in a marvellous way by bending their legs and sticking pins into them. When tea-time came the children had become fast friends by means of nods, shakes of the head, and the Chinese word 'pu'; which shows that little girls can get on very well together even when they don't chatter all the time. Since then Nelly had been taken to the German Legation twice a week to have German lessons from Fraulein, Liza's and Bertha's governess, and they, besides quickly picking up Chinese, came and took English lessons from Mrs. Grey very often.

At the American Legation Nelly had a friend, Bessie Bates, who had a brother named Bob, a regular tease. Bessie was only eight, but Bob was eleven, and every one said that he ought to be at school in America.

Then there were several children living in the mission compounds, but none of them were near Nelly. At one of the missions there were fifteen children among the four families stationed there. Nelly told her mother that it made her hoa.r.s.e to go to that mission, because there were so many people to talk to.

Even if there had been no other companions, Nelly would have been content to be with her father and mother. She used to love the time just before she went to bed, when Mrs. Grey nearly always read to her and told her stories about England. They often talked of Nelly's brother Tom, who had gone to school at Brighton when the Greys came to Peking.

With seven o'clock came Nelly's amah to put her to bed. The amah would have willingly done everything for Nelly, but Mrs. Grey insisted that she must undress herself and not become helpless, as children brought up in the East often do, because there are so many servants to wait on them. 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 G.o.d 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.

CHAPTER II

LOST

One Monday, when Nelly had had her tea, she went out of doors to watch for her father coming home. He had been out on his pony, and Nelly wanted him to take her up and give her a ride round the compound. The large gates were open, because the gatekeeper had just been out and seen Mr. Grey coming, so Nelly ran out into the road without thinking what she was doing. If she had stopped to think, most likely she would not have pa.s.sed the gate, as she knew that she never went outside the Legation compound alone. However, she soon saw her father, who was very much surprised and rather alarmed to see his little girl there. But Mr.

Grey, who spoilt Nelly, did not scold her, but stopped, took her up, and gave her the ride she wanted. 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.

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. They had not far to go before they came to the corner, but when they looked up the street they could see no one but Chinese.

'We might walk on a little,' Nelly said. 'He is sure to come this way, and it will be such a nice long ride back. You, Little Yi, can ride with the ma-fu (groom). It will be fun.'

But Mr. Grey had not gone in that direction at all, and the little girls were not likely to see him.

Of course the Chinese went on staring at the children, and a crowd soon gathered round them. Presently some rude boys began to ask them all sorts of questions and to laugh at them. Nelly did not like it at all.

She thought she would not wait for her father any longer, but go home.

They tried to turn back, but found Chinese all round them, and felt quite frightened. Then a nice, clean-looking woman came up to them and said:

'Don't mind all those people. Come through my house and return home round the other way; I'll show you.'

Nelly and Little Yi thought the woman very kind. They went with her through a door into her compound, and, after crossing two or three court-yards, they came to a small set of rooms which the woman said were hers. She asked the children to sit down, gave them some sugared walnuts, and said she would go and ask her son to take them home.

Chinese sugared walnuts are very good, although they don't look tempting, being of a purplish whity-brown colour. Nelly liked them better than the chocolate creams which auntie always sent for her in the big box of groceries Mrs. Grey had from England twice a year. When all the walnuts were eaten, the children amused themselves by wandering round the room and examining everything in it. It was not at all like any room in an English house. The floor was stone, and part of it, called a kang, was raised like a platform. Every house in North China has one of these kangs, with a little fireplace underneath. In winter the Chinese burn charcoal in this fireplace, and at night they spread wadded quilts on the warm brick platform and sleep there. In the daytime the quilts are rolled up and the kang is used as a seat. The windows were small, with tiny-squares filled in with paper instead of panes of gla.s.s. There were two large square arm-chairs and a square table with a tray and some tea-cups upon it. On the walls were scrolls with funny pictures of men running all over each other, like flies on a cake, Nelly thought.

When they had waited a very long time and it was getting dark, the children began to be afraid. The door was locked and they could not get out. Nelly was a brave little girl, but she could not help crying when she thought of the anxiety her parents would be in about her.

'Oh dear,' she sobbed, 'why don't they let us out? Let us scream, Little Yi.'

And both the children shrieked their hardest, until they heard footsteps hurrying across the court.

The door was unlocked, and the woman who had brought the children there came in with a very old woman, a girl of sixteen, and a boy of ten.

'What is the matter?' they asked.

'Oh, take us home,' cried Nelly. 'It is quite dark.'

The boy having brought a lamp, the room was no longer in darkness, but Nelly meant that as it was dark it must be late.

'We can't take you home,' said the woman. 'None of us know the way to the British Legation except my son, who is not here. He will not be home now until to-morrow. He went outside the city into the country, and must have arrived at the gate after it was closed.'

'Then please take us to the door you brought us through and lend us a lantern, and we can find our way quite well,' said Nelly.

'No, no, you can't. You would get lost,' replied the woman. 'You must wait here until my son comes home.'

'We won't,' said Little Yi, and made a rush for the door. But the boy caught her and forced her back on the kang.

'Why do you want to keep us?' asked Nelly.

'It is our custom in China, when we find children, to keep them until we can hand them over to their parents,' said the woman whom they had thought so nice, but whom they now considered very cruel.

She was a tidy-looking woman, wearing black trousers bound tight round the ankles, and the usual blue cotton smock. Her feet were not very small, and she could walk about fairly quickly. The old woman was very ugly and untidy, but the girl evidently gave a good deal of attention to her toilet. She had silk trousers and a handsomely embroidered smock over them. Her feet were very small, and just like a claw. Her hair, which was a beautiful jet black, was dressed most elaborately with a sort of comb behind, and flowers stuck in. Her lips were stained red and her face was powdered. She wore long silver nail-protectors on the third and fourth fingers of each hand, and had very large round jewelled earrings. The boy had a greasy black cotton coat and a thick long tail of hair.

Nelly tried her best to persuade the family to allow Little Yi and her to go, but they would not listen to her. Then Little Yi began.

'You don't know what bad luck you will have if you keep a foreign child all night,' she said. 'The foreigners are wonderful people. They can do all sorts of things--take out their teeth and put them back again, their eyes too, some of them.'

There was once at Peking a gentleman with a gla.s.s eye, and Little Yi had heard that he was able to remove it. As for teeth, she knew quite well that the British Minister slept with his on his wash-stand every night.

When Little Yi found that the women were not at all afraid, she said:

'If you keep us here, she (pointing to Nelly) will die, and then she will always haunt you. Everything you eat will taste bitter and make you ill.'