Page:Chinese Fables and Folk Stories.djvu/197

Rh now, save for that one thing. I fear the girls can not go to school."

"I will see," replied her son. He thought much for two days. Then he went to find an old doctor in the next village, far enough away so that no one would know. He asked the doctor, "Can you close the ear-holes so that girls' ears will be as boys'?"

"Oh, yes," answered the doctor, "I can if you will pay me." Then the doctor came and put something in the ear-holes and colored it so that it looked like skin, and the grandmother was satisfied to send the girls to school.

But the teacher forgot and called them girls' names. The others laughed at the three boys with funny names, but they did not seem to remember them.

Five or six months went by, and the boys had not yet learned that the three scholars with the pretty names were the girls of last year. Then one boy came to the teacher and asked, "Why do those boys have girls' names? I wish to know."

The teacher thought a moment and said, "Lily — Beauty — Moon. That boy was called Lily, I think, because he was so red when he was a little baby. The mother thought he ought to be called 'Red,' but Chinese Fables—13