A Chinese Christmas tree

Front matter

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II How Lo-lo Got Sick

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The Foreign Doctor

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Foreign Medicine

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Lo-lo’s Wish

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Making Plans .

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Lo-lo Excited .

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The Nodding Tiger

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Ta-ta’s Accident

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Cutting the Tree

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Setting up the Tree

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Christmas Eve

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Christmas Morning .

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The Silver Watch

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Opposite Page

Soon the Christmas Tree was Standing up AGAIN AS IT HAD IN THE Grove . . Frontispiece

LO-LO ASKED HER FOR A StORY . . . . lO

Being Sick was Better than Seeing the Great Dragon 19

The Shuttlecock Ball was Made of Snake’s Skin and was Very Hard .... 36

In a High-pitched Voice He Went through to THE End of the Lesson 44

The Sun was Just Setting as They Started Home 59

Listen! Little Ones, I am Santa Claus” . 71

The Good-bye .•••••. 78

J

Lo4o asked her for a story

I

LO-LO AND TA‘TA

‘‘Yes, and it was a real sure-enough tree,” said Lo-Lo, “and there were different kinds of pretty things hanging on the branches, enough for all the children in the village. Grandma said she saw it with her own eyes.”

“But what did those foreign children want with a tree? Why didn’t they put all those things on the table or on the bed ?” asked Ta-ta, his eyes big with wonder.

The two boys were sitting on a big brick bed in Lo-lo’s house. It had been more than three years since the time when they were lost in the wheat field, and they felt much older now and wiser. Another change had taken place. Lo-lo was no longer a poor boy. The family had moved out of the little one-room house into a big stone dwelling with many rooms and ever so many queer little courts and outhouses. There were several servants too and a horse, and a two-wheeled cart. But although Lo-lo was rich and Ta-ta poor, they were still as good friends as ever.

‘‘Why, you see,*’ said Lo-lo, answering Ta-ta’s question, “these children from over the ocean never do things the same way we do. Papa says when they go out skating they have skates on both feet instead of only one.”

“My! what fun it would be to see them.”

“Yes, and everything else they do is queer. So it isn’t so strange after all if they bring a real tree into the house and put presents on it.”

“No indeed,” replied Ta-ta, “I think that would be lots of fun.”

“Yes, and — but here’s papa. I hear him talking to old Wu.”

Lo-lo’s father entered and Lo-lo got down on his knees and bowed his head to the floor. It was the first time he had seen his father since morning and he had been taught to be very polite to his elders.

“Well, my son, what were you and Ta-ta talking about when I came in? I doubt if it was about your lessons.”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t about our books, but about the little foreign children and their funny ways.”

“Why, what do you know about foreign children?” his father asked, laughing. “Have you been reading about them in your book?”

“Oh, no, it’s what grandma told us about

LO-LO AND TA-TA when she was little, about seeing them take a tree into the house in the winter time, and about their putting presents on it for all their friends/'

‘‘Nonsense, nonsense!” said the father, laughing again in spite of himself.

“But we want to go and see a tree like that, and sing songs together,” pleaded Lo-lo. “Why is it nonsense if you have nice things to eat and toys?”

“What ! go among the foreigners ? Not you. Don’t you know about those people from over the sea? They are not like us. No indeed. You’ll surely come to grief if you go running after them.”

“Yes, but I want to,” pouted Lo-lo. “Grandma said she did when she was little, and she’s never come to grief. She’s almost sixty now and has never even had a toothache in all her life.”

“That’s true,” replied Mr. Chang, “but you must remember you are not your grandma, and what’s more, you never will be.”

II

HOW LO-LO GOT SICK

Next day Lo-lo, Ta-ta, and many other boys were skating on the little pond in front of the schoolhouse. Each boy had a small piece of smooth hard wood under one foot, while with the other foot he pushed himself along. Faster and faster they went skimming over the ice.

Once Ta-ta’s foot slipped off the wooden skate and he went tumbling head over heels. Thud ! went his head on the hard ice. All the other children laughed and shouted in their glee. “See ! he’s trying to skate on his head,” they cried. “Hey! Ta-ta, better get up or you’ll freeze to the pond.”

Then they played games and were having the best kind of time when, all of a sudden, no one knew just how it happened, there came a loud cracking sound, and four of the children found themselves in the water. All scrambled out quickly except Lo-lo. He reached the shore, dripping wet and shivering with cold.

“See! Lo-lo’s crazier than Ta-ta. He tries to swim in the winter time,” shouted one boy who had escaped without a wetting.

HOW LO-LO GOT SICK 15

Lo-lo felt like crying, but he kept back the tears.

“Huh!” he answered, “didn’t you ever get ice water on you ? Why, my grandma says the foreign children drink it instead of tea.”

But very soon Lo-lo’s teeth began to chatter and he had to run home as fast as his legs would carry him. He didn’t like to worry his mother about his troubles, so he climbed up on the warm bed and said nothing about the accident. Below, the fire was burning brightly. The bed was very comfortable and he soon forgot his wet clothes.

Supper time came and went. Then, sitting up close to his grandmother, Lo-lo asked her for a story. In response to this the old lady began :

“Once there was a very bad boy. He was so bad that no one loved him but his mother. Of course she was very fond of him, and, I am glad to say that, bad as he was, he loved her very much and tried to be good to her.

“One night after he had grown to be a young man he did not come home to his supper. At first his mother did not worry about him, for they were very poor and he would not lose much if he missed his supper. Then, too, there were several places where she thought he might be. Bed time came and still her le A CHINESE CHRISTMAS TREE son did not return. The poor woman lay awake all night wondering what could have happened to her boy. She was afraid that he had been doing some mischief and perhaps had got into trouble over it.

''At last she heard a step outside, and soon the door was pushed open.

" ‘See what I have, mother,’ cried the son, entering. He held up a big iron kettle — the kind old Wu uses for cooking rice.

"His mother knew well enough that he had stolen it, and she gave him a good scolding. ‘Don’t you know that those poor people can’t get on without a kettle? How will they cook their millet? Oh, my boy, my boy, why did you steal it? Don’t you know better than to be a common thief?’

" 'But, mother, I can sell it and get money. We are poor. Yesterday we had nothing to eat but yellow millet. To-day we shall have good rice.’

" ‘Not a mouthful of your rice will I taste, for it would be bitter to the taste and would turn sour in my stomach. No stolen food for me.’

" 'But what shall I do with the kettle, mother, now that I have it?’

" 'Take it back.’

HOW^ LO-LO GOT SICK IT

*It is already daylight. They would be sure to catch me and beat me for stealing.^

‘‘ ‘Listen, my son, if you will take the kettle back, I feel sure that the sky will grow dark enough so that you will not be seen.’

“Now, as I told you, the boy loved his mother. So he took the kettle back to the house from which he had stolen it.”

“And did the sky grow dark?” questioned Lo-lo, breathlessly.

“Yes indeed, the sun was darkened by a great shadow. The boy dropped the kettle over the wall and started back full tilt for home without being seen once by the people he feared would catch him.”

“But what made the sun grow dark?” asked Lo-lo.

“Oh, that’s too long a story to tell now, little one,” she said, smiling. “Some people say that the sun and the moon were running around a hill, one from one side and one from the other. First thing they knew, they had butted their heads into each other, smash! And then the whole world was dark for an hour.”

“Do you know what happened to the boy?”

“Yes, they say that long afterwards he was made the God of Thieves and went away up into the sky to live. Now if people want to grow rich, traders and others, they go out-ofdoors on his birthday and worship him/’

“Is that the way papa made his money?” asked the boy gravely, looking up into the old woman’s face.

“You’d better ask your father about that, Lo-lo. He knows better than his mother.” Her eyes twinkled, and he thought she was going to laugh.

Just then the boy began to cough, and his grandmother discovered that his clothes were damp. Soon she found out all that had happened at the pond.

“Better go to bed at once,” she told him. “Get off these wet things, else you’ll catch your death.”

“Nonsense, mother,” said Mr. Chang, who had come in just in time to hear her last words to Lo-lo. “Nonsense! Don’t you know the old saying is, 'If you wish your children to have a quiet life, let them always be a little hungry and a little cold.’ ”

“That wasn’t what I thought when you were a boy,” answered Grandmother Chang, “and I don’t believe it’s true now.”

But Lo-lo went to bed willingly. He always obeyed his grandmother, for wasn’t she the mother of his own father, and don’t mothers always know more than their sons ?

f

Being sick was better than seeing the great dragon

Ill

THE FOREIGN DOCTOR

Next morning Lo-lo woke up with a dull pain in his head and a loud, hacking cough. He did not feel like rising and they could not coax him to taste even a morsel of his breakfast.

'That’s what comes of skating on the ice,” said his grandmother. "Now you are in for a spell of sickness.”

And she was right about it. His head grew hotter and hotter, and his cough louder and louder. Two days passed and still there was no sign of a change. At last even Mr. Chang grew worried.

Grandmother Chang brought out her book of children’s sicknesses. "Let’s see,” said she, "Lo-lo broke through the ice day before yesterday at five o’clock. That was the Eleventh Moon, the tenth day. Ah, here it is in the book, 'Eleventh Moon, tenth day.’ Now, we shall soon find out what to do.”

"Nonsense, mother! That silly book is good for nothing. If the boy is really sick, I say let’s call in a doctor, not one of our old-fashioned Chinese friends who might punch a hole

THE FOREIGN DOCTOR in his head with a needle to let out the pain or give him a dose of snakeskin oil mixed with ground oyster-shell. No, not that kind. We’ll call in a young Chinese who has been to school, or, how would it do to try one of those foreign doctors and see if he can’t cure Lo-lo? Whatever faults those sea-people have, they know how to cure sickness. You remember how that old blind man was cured, and now he can see as well as you or I.”

‘‘All right, call in the foreign doctor, if you like,” said Grandmother Chang, secretly pleased. “I never have thought they were so bad as people say they are.”

“Yes, call him in,” said Lo-lo’s mother.

So Mr. Chang sent word to the big foreign hospital in a near-by village, asking for the doctor to come and see Lo-lo.

When Lo-lo heard them talking about sending for a foreign doctor, he began to feel better already, for he really was not very sick, and thinking about the white people made him forget the pain in his head.

He had always wanted to see more of the foreigners. Ever since the day when he had seen an American on the street and had talked with him for a minute, he had wanted to have another chance. And now he was going to have his wish. A real foreign doctor would come to see him, once, maybe twice, and would talk to him. It was almost too good to believe.

He began to wonder what this strange man would look like, whether he would have a beard, as the older men in China do, or whether his face would be clean and white. Would he wear Chinese clothes, as some of the white men did, or the clothes of his own country? Would his finger nails be short, or long and sharp like a Chinaman’s? What kind of hat would he wear, and would he take it off in the house? And above all, would he know how to talk?

Lo-lo asked himself these and many other questions as he lay waiting. My ! but wouldn’t he have strange things to tell Ta-ta and the others! They would stand around in wonder at his story. After all, it was not so bad to be sick for a few days if his father would always call in a white man doctor. It was better than going to the Punch and Judy show or seeing the great dragon carried through the streets at the holiday season. It must be even better than a visit to the wonderful Zoo at Peking, the one the teacher had told the children about at school.

Just then his heart almost stopped beating, for he heard a strange voice in the next room. ^‘Where is the little boy?” it said.

THE FOREIGN DOCTOR

‘‘Oh, here he is,” said Grandmother Chang.

Then the door opened, and in walked the foreign doctor. It was not a man at all, but a very tall woman with a very high hat.

She came in and sat down beside his bed, and took his hand in hers. “Ah, the poor little fellow has a fever and such a deep cough. How long has he been ill?”

Grandmother Chang told about the skating party and the breaking of the ice.

“No wonder he is ill,” said the young lady, “but it is nothing very bad, and he will soon be up again. If you had waited much longer though, I am not so sure about it. These deep colds in the throat sometimes change into” — and then she gave a strange name that Lo-lo had never heard.

He stared at her in big-eyed surprise.

“Is this the first time you have ever seen one of us?” she asked him with a merry laugh. “It’s as good as going to a show, isn’t it?”

“Oh, no,” gravely, “you aren’t the first one, only the other was a man.”

“Where did you see this man?” she questioned.

Then he told her about hearing a stranger talking to the people, and how the man had given him a piece of foreign candy.

“Are you the boy who asked him what his pockets were for?’' asked the lady, laughing. 'That was my father, and he hasn’t forgotten you yet. Why, I have known you a long while, haven’t I?”

Soon she was ready to go. After speaking a few words with Lo-lo’s mother, she turned once more to the boy : “Now, Lo-Lo, since we are old friends, is there anything you would like to have me bring you to-morrow when I come, some foreign candy, a foreign toy, or perhaps a foreign picture book?”

“No, there is nothing,” he said after a moment’s thought. “Only if it’s not too much trouble, will you please tell me when your Christmas comes and about those strange trees you bring into the house to put gifts on?”

“Gladly,” she answered. “You are surely not hard to please. I fear most foreign boys would have said, ‘Yes, please bring me some candy, toys, and books,’ if I had asked them what they wanted.”

After a farewell smile and a light tap on his flushed cheek, she went away.

IV Foreign Medicine

“What! you say they sent a woman?” said Mr. Chang when he had heard about the doctor’s visit.

“Yes, and the boy’s better already,” answered Grandmother Chang. “She hadn’t more than looked at him when he began to improve. Here is the medicine in these two cups of water. He takes one spoonful an hour from one cup and then a spoonful from the other.”

“You don’t mean it! Is that all the medicine he has to eat ? Why, when I was a boy we ate medicine by the quart instead of the spoonful. I thought these foreigners would feed it to you by the gallon.”

“Yes, and she says he has been eating too much. Pork and other meat is bad for him. People with fever mustn’t eat. Give him all the hot water he can drink, but no tea.”

“Queer, queer! these foreign ways.”

But Lo-lo didn’t worry about the medicine or because they would not give him any pork for his dinner. He thought only of the tall .25 white lady with the strange light-coloured hair.

‘‘What makes her hair so funny ?’^ he asked his mother. “It’s not black at all like yours, and it looks as if she had never combed it.”

“Yes, that’s just it,” replied Mrs. Chang. “They say that these sea ladies never comb their hair and it grows lighter and lighter all the time. Some say that if they would comb it every day as we do and take good care of it, it would grow as glossy and black as ours. But they are all alike. Not one of them slicks down her hair. I have seen five and they are all alike, every one of them wear it all in a fluff.”

But Lo-lo liked the lady doctor in spite of her light fluffy hair and her blue eyes, liked her because she had a soft, sweet voice and was so gentle when she spoke to him. He even thought it a lucky thing to be sick, for being sick had brought her to his side.

“I surely am glad that ice broke,” he said to Ta-ta, “for if I hadn’t got wet I never should have seen the foreign lady.”

“What’s she like?” questioned Ta-ta, breathless.

“Oh, like that lovely lady in the temple, that we prayed to when the baby was sick. You remember, the one they call Kwanyin.”

FOREIGN MEDICINE

“Yes, yes,’' said Ta-ta, “the one with a thousand hands. If it hadn’t been for her, mama says I wouldn’t have been born.”

“Well, how is Lo-lo to-day?”

He awoke with a start. It was the next morning. The lady doctor was sitting by his side, her hand on his forehead.

“Ah, no fever this morning. That’s much better. You’ll soon be running round again. Now, what was that question you asked about Christmas?”

“I asked when Christmas comes and what it’s for. Why do you have a tree, and what do you do with the things that are on it? What—”

“Just wait a minute, Lo-lo; one question at a time, please. Christmas comes next Saturday, just six days from to-day. We have a tree because we think it is pretty, and it is a good thing to hang our presents on. We put gifts on for all our friends, to show them that we love them. Christmas is the day of love. It is the birthday, you know, of the greatest and best man that ever lived, the man who loved everybody in the world. Here is a little song our children sing. It is printed in Chinese on this card. It tells you all about Christmas Day. You can get your father to read it to you.”

Lo-lo picked up the card and began to read off the words very quickly.

‘‘Good! you won’t need your father’s help. What a bright boy you are! It took me almost a day to learn to read that song, and you read it right off in a jiffy. The music is like this.”

She sang it to him, going over and over ^the simple air until Lo-lo, without being asked, joined in and began to sing it with her. Next he sang it by himself, and she clapped her hands at hearing him.

“I must be going now, Lo-lo. If you need me again be sure to send word. Here is a picture book for you to look at, and I think you’ll find some good stories in it, too.”

She was gone. He heard his grandmother and his mother in the next room urging her to drink a cup of tea. Then they walked with her to the outer court.

“I wonder what makes her so good to me,” he thought. “Are all foreigners like that? If they are, I wonder why Ta-ta’s mother calls them ‘sea devils.’ ”

Soon he began to dream about the lady doctor, for his eyes had shut and he was asleep once more.

V. Lo-lo^s Wish

When Lo-lo woke up, he reached for the new book. The first picture he came to made him scream with delight. It was of a real sure-enough Christmas tree, a foreign tree loaded with presents, and under it stood a group of merry children looking at their toys. All of the children seemed very happy. They were dressed in strange-looking clothes. A little brown dog was playing in one corner with a kitten. It was a pretty scene. Lo-lo gazed at it for a long time. “Look, grandma,” he said to the old lady. “Was your tree as pretty as this one?”

“Just like it,” she said with a smile. “Do you really want to go and see a Christmas tree at the foreign children’s house, Lo-lo? Perhaps I can get your father to let you go.”

“No, grandma, I don’t believe I want to.”

“What! you don’t want to go? What has made you change your mind so suddenly?”

“Because I want to have a tree all my own, a real Christmas tree, and have the other Chinese children come. That would be lots better than going to a tree.”

“Hear the boy ! A tree of your own ! That’s a foreign custom. What do we Chinese know about such things?” said his mother. “Next thing you’ll be wanting to go to a foreign school and study English.”

“Perhaps I shall,” he answered. “Do you think papa will let me have the tree?”

“I fear not,” said Grandma Chang. “Your father hasn’t much use for the white people except when he wants a doctor. Then he thinks they’re all right.”

However, Lo-lo determined to ask him..

“A Christmas tree in this house! What a queer boy you are, Lo-lo!” his' father said. “I told you I would give you anything you wanted, because you had been sick, but I didn’t once think it ‘would be that kind of present. The foreign doctor must have been talking to you.”

“Yes, she said Christmas would be next Saturday. If all the American children have Christmas trees, why can’t I? They’re no better than I am. You said so yourself. Please let me have a tree.”

“Next thing you’ll be wanting to cut your cue and wear one of those stiff white bands around your neck.”

“But you said I could have anything I

LO-LO^S WISH 31

wanted, and now you won't even give me a little cedar tree.”

“Where would you get your tree?”

“From the graveyard, of course. You said they were growing up too thick there and some of them would have to be cleared out anyhow.”

“So I did, boy; you’re quite right, and I suppose if you insist I must let you have one of them. Why don’t you wait until Chinese New Year for your fun?”

“That’s too far away. Mother said to-day that it’s more than a month, and besides a Christmas tree must come on Christmas, and Christmas comes next Saturday.”

“Very well, then. Tell old Wu to send the coolie out for the tree. Mind you don’t take one of the big trees. That would cause no end of trouble, you know.”

“Yes indeed,” said Grandmother Chang, “for every old tree has a fairy in it, and you must not do the fairies any harm.”

VI Making Plans

The next day Lo-lo had forgotten all about his illness. He went to see Ta-ta, and the two ■of them began to make plans for the Christmas tree.

'‘Now, you see,” said Lo-lo, “they cut the tree, bring it into the house, and then put all the pretty things on it. All the children stand around it and look on.”

“But what children shall you have?” asked Ta-ta. “I suppose you will have to do without.”

“It wouldn’t be any fun to have a tree if we didn’t have children. Grandma says they always have children. That’s what it’s for mostly, to give the kiddies a good time. Now if we should go to all this trouble and just invite ourselves, it would be foolish. Of course there’s your little sister.”

“Yes, she can come, but she’s only six and small for her age.”

“That’s no matter. Now, about the others. Who shall they be? Why, of course, let’s ask old Wu’s boys, and the other servants have children. They will be glad to come.”

MAKING PLANS

“Shall we ask them now?”

“Of course not. We’ll write out sure-enough letters asking them to come, just the way the grown folks do when they want you to come to a funeral or a wedding.”

“Who’ll do the writing?”

“I will, ’cause I’m the one who is going to give the tree, but you can help if you want to, and I’ll let you pass them round.”

“Where did you learn to write invitations?” asked Ta-ta.

“At school after we are through with the main lessons the teacher tells us how to write letters and do some other things. It’s not hard at all when you know how. Some of the boys have learned how to draw, too. They can make pictures of the sea, and pagodas, and all kinds of things.”

“I wish I could go to school,” said Ta-ta, enviously. “Papa says there’s no use in my learning more than he learned. He didn’t go to school when he was a boy, and he doesn’t want me to get ahead of him. He says he wouldn’t have any face if his boy knew how to read when he doesn’t know anything except counting and money words.”

“The Eleventh Moon, eighteenth day, will be Christmas. Your children are respectfully invited to shed light upon my Christmas tree. Lo-lo bows the head. No. 8 Pig Foot Lane.”

“There, don’t you think that note will do for old Wu’s children?” said Lo-lo, with a last wave of the ink brush.

He folded the sheet of red paper with great care. “That’s the way to ask to a wedding, and it ought to be good enough for a Christmas tree.”

“Yes, indeed,” replied Ta-ta, warmly. “You do know lots, Lo-lo.”

Soon Lo-lo had written three copies of his note, for other friends, and had read all of them aloud to Ta-ta. They were all alike, but that made no difference. He was proud of his letter-writing.

“Now let’s give old Wu his note and tell him to take it home when he goes to-night.”

“All right, let’s do.”

So, hand in hand, they rushed round to the servants’ quarters, where they found old Wu getting a duck ready to be boiled.

“Here is a note for you,” said Lo-lo gravely, holding out one of the red invitations.

“A note for me?” repeated old Wu. “What have I been doing? Yes, this is my name,” looking it over carefully. “No mistake about it, and it has the place where I live, so I sup-

MAKING PLANS 35

pose it’s mine. But what is it for? I am afraid it’s some joke.”

‘‘Read and see,” laughed Lo-lo.

“My name, I know, and the place where I live, but more than that I can’t read, for I’m not a scholar. I’ll have to call Li-nan to read it for me. He has had no little schooling.

Li-nan was the wash-man, and after he had looked at the sheet for a long time, twisting his face into a hundred wrinkles, he began to read it off.

When he read the words, “Lo-lo bows the head,” the cook turned to the boys with a laugh. “Why, this letter is from you.”