Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/227

 "I wonder how on earth she came to be barging along in her private pinnace à la Lady of Shalott, anyway," Alan mused. "Her mamma must be in a stir."

But they did not know the ways of China. They did not know that in this vast land of fearful poverty and teeming life, when there is not enough rice for the whole family, girl babies must go—in spite of Western law and Western disapproval. For what good is a girl! Can she intercede, after one is dead, with those august ancestors? Can she light at one's grave the needful incense? What is she but a burden to the household, a useless emptier of the rice-pot? She must be thrown out that the illustrious sons may live. Poor mother, who had sent this baby to sail down the stream! If she drowned, the woman would not know. That she might grow to happy womanhood somewhere and marry a prince of the province was a possibility which might be held fast in the imagination.

Meanwhile, the baby lay in the stern of the Sham-Poo and blinked her very black eyes at the boys. Her hair was very black, too; it lay in wet wisps against her round little olive face.