There were also some big candy dragons, with great staring eyes, but now, instead of the dragons eating them, they were going to eat the dragons. My! what fun that would be! and they could not wait, but planted their strong white teeth in the white heads, and bit them off. My! how sweet they were! so sweet that their bodies went next, and soon there were no dragons at all.
There were all kinds of gaudily painted toys of clay, and little Ping Yet’s dancing eyes danced more than ever, and she fairly rippled over with smiles when she saw, sticking out of a bright red pair of embroidered sandals, a real Chinese doll. It looked very much like Ping Yet herself, with its bright black eyes, rosy cheeks, and coal-black hair. She thought it surely must be the most beautiful thing in the whole big world, but _mo chun_ said she knew something more beautiful. The little one wondered vaguely what it could be, and how anything could be more beautiful, but she was too busy to wonder long, for Ping Pong had uttered such a shriek of delight that she almost jumped out of her little sandals. What could be the matter?
“What foh you cly? you buhn youh fingeh?” she cried; and he in reply pointed to the cause of all his excitement; it was--oh, joy!--a pagoda, and _mo chun_ said:
“The dragon pagoda it touches the sky; The dragon pagoda, thirteen stories high.”
It was just exactly like the one they had asked _ho chun_ to buy, and the dear white rabbit in the moon must have seen right down into their minds and brought what they wished. And oh, they were so glad now that they had gone to the joss house, and burned the incense and thrown the fortune sticks, for if they had not--who knows?--the white rabbit might have forgotten them.
Mo Chun called her the little Almond Blossom, as she was so bright and beautiful, and she loved her so. Her real name was Gum Sing, and she was, so the mother thought, the prettiest thing in all the big Chinatown of San Francisco.
Gum Sing’s father kept a store, where they sold all sorts of fine china and silk. She often went to her father’s store, but never alone. Oh, no! she was too precious to be trusted out alone, and then she was too young to find her way through the winding streets, and the doors all looked alike to her, so the _mo chun_ or the nurse always accompanied her.