Chinamen of all kinds were thronging the streets, and so many children, too, were toddling along with some older person, that no one noticed that the little boy was alone.
He believed he had only to walk back just a little way and he would be at home. He did not know that he had made several turns, and that it would be impossible for him to find his way back alone.
Naughty little Sing Ho! There were so many American people, too, in the shops, buying curious and beautiful things. On both sides of the street were rows of great dragon lanterns. He looked at them in childish wonder, longing for the great swaying globes. Suddenly he felt something hit him on the arm, and, looking upward, saw far above him some beautiful Chinese ladies on a balcony; and what is this that they have thrown down? Something very near to the heart of a boy,--a bright bunch of fire-crackers!
He was smiling now without any difficulty. Just then he heard a woman’s shrill, high-pitched voice speaking to him from the latticed window above him, saying: “Little boy! little boy! where is your _mo chun_?”
“She at home,” he replied, and then hesitatingly faltered, “_Ngo pa ngo tong cho lu lok_” (I am afraid I have lost my way).
He was crying now, and presented a very mournful appearance to the gaze of the passer-by. These ladies above him were those of the tiny “golden lily feet,” and very wealthy and aristocratic, so they could not leave their rooms and come down to him, as that was not their custom. If it had been the next day they could have done so, for on every day of the week of San Nin they were permitted to leave their homes and go anywhere they pleased.
“_Ni kiu mat meng a?_” (what is your name?) they asked.
“You come up,” they called down to him, pointing meanwhile to a dark and narrow stairway which led up from the street.
“It so dark--Sing Ho ’flaid to go alone--I want _mo chun_--boo, hoo,” he wailed, in a pitiful little voice.
“But you must come. We find _mo chun_; we give you heap plenty fiah-clackeh (fire-cracker), plenty nice little cake; come on!”
Baby though he was, he remembered that his mother had always warned him against strangers, and told him never to allow any one to persuade him to go with them. But finally he decided that this was very different, and that anything would be better than being lost on the street.