Almost as soon as Mrs. Yet was pronounced well, and was allowed to go among people again and before Mr. Yet had left the hospital, Baby Yet fell seriously ill—his teeth.

He grew worse, and worse. Yick told me about it one day in a few concise Chinese words, which he snatched an opportunity to drop to me in passing through the dining room. The wily Celestial seems to understand, without being told, that no one is to know that he and I can exchange thoughts in our native tongue.

That afternoon I stole out again, and went down to the little Yet home. It was just as Yick had said, the baby was very ill.

He lay on his little pallet, white and still, almost unconscious, and his mother stood over him wringing her hands, and shedding bitter tears.

"Oh, my baby! My baby! He die and leave me! My heart break!" she cried in Chinese when she saw me. "Precious treasure! Precious treasure!" she continued, bending toward the almost inanimate form on the pallet.
 
The latter is the almost universal term of endearment in China, and no American mother ever agonised more bitterly than did that Chinese mother over that atom of herself lying before her.

I had to do something to comfort her, so I began to tell her about heaven. I, who was not sure that I could get to that blessed place myself (stealing out on the sly in a grandmother's clothes is not a very heavenly trick), said that whoever missed it, babies would be there.

"Will Chinese babies be there? They do not want them in America," she asked rapidly and tremblingly in Chinese.

"Certainly," I replied; and at that moment I seemed to have a vision of all the babies of this ............