“All light!” he sobbed, and started in great fear up the narrow stairway. Ugh! how dark it was! and he trembled, as his little sandalled feet crept hesitatingly on. When he at last reached the end of the stairway he found himself in a dark and narrow hall thick with the fumes of opium.
Where were the beautiful ladies?--and the little cakes? Nothing was to be seen but the gaunt figures of Chinamen gliding stealthily to and fro in the narrow hall. There were many doors on either side the hallway, and in each door was a small, square lattice into which the men would speak some queer words in Chinese, when the door would be cautiously opened, and he would enter. When the doors opened little Sing Ho caught glimpses of many Chinamen with cards in their hands, seated around some tables and calling out in a loud voice strange Chinese words which he could not understand. In some of the rooms he could see men reclining on bamboo couches and smoking opium. Oh, if his mother could see him now, as he stood there alone, and trembling in the half-darkness!
Just then his dear and beautiful little mother had put the last stitch in the blouse she was embroidering, and proudly held it out to the admiring gaze of her sister, who lived with her.
“He is playing outside; I go get him,” she said; and with a smile on her lips she opened the door and called him.
“Why, that is strange,” she thought. “Maybe he come in the house and go to sleep.”
She hurried into the small bedroom and looked eagerly at the couch. No, there was no _samen jai_ there. She was trembling now, with a nameless fear. Her pretty face grew pale, and the little brown nervous fingers were like ice.
Her boy--her baby--the honored one of the house of Sing, whose birth had crowned her with glory. Why, he must be there; he could not be gone from her--and yet--where was he? Her little tender baby boy who had never been from her side; the little brown face, naughty, sometimes, it is true, but always, to the mother, the dearest of things in all the big world.
Without stopping to change her house-robes she rushed down the street, and to the store of her husband, Sing Kee. He was just going down into the cellar after some tubs of preserved ginger, when he was startled by seeing his wife appear before him. The cat, that had always been loved and petted by little Sing Ho, lay sunning itself at the entrance, and Sing Kee looked up with a very serious face, for he knew that no little matter would bring his wife thus unexpectedly to his place of business. She surely would not be going on the street the day before the New Year.