The girl worked like lightning, ordering her holder about in a most imperious manner. At last curiosity overcame her, and she demanded the name of her slave.
"What will you name me, then?" said Jerry, looking as though he could devour her. "What you call me shall be my name."
A-tae trembled, as she cast a timorous glance towards her basket-bearer, and replied, "I call you Sho" (beautiful eyes), saying which she laughed, and added, "but surely you will not take that name?"
"I'll call myself any thing you choose to name me."
"Then I give you this,--Yung-Yung" (good-humoured face).
"Me! Don't you know?" said the pretty girl, looking at Yung-Yung in a manner which made his heart bump again.
"I do not. I am a wanderer and a stranger here."
"You don't know my name, yet ask me to be your friend. Speak lower, and look down while you talk, or the overseer will send some one else with me to-morrow."
After casting his eyes about in order to ascertain if any of the pickers were watching, he bent over the girl, who was very deeply engaged in removing some fine shoots from the lower part of a plant, and when she rose, as her cheek came quite close to his, he kissed it gently, and said,
The girl gave a nervous little laugh, then asked him what he meant.
"Where do you come from, Yung-Yung-Sho, that you speak thus? Would I could be given to one like you; but I shall be, like other girls, sent off to slave for some man of my own class, or sold to a mandarin." (It will be perceived that A-tae was, although a Chinese, an advocate for woman's rights). "Oh, Yung-Yung-Sho do you think Buddha knows how badly they treat us poor girls?"
"Can't you run away with me?" observed the now thoroughly "gone" sailor; "slip off in the night, and go away to a country where the women are thought as much of as the men."
"That's where Buddha is, Yung-Yung-Sho. _There_ we shall be men. I know all about that, and have my Tieh papers at home. I'm not as stupid as most girls. You are a benevolent man thus to listen to the nonsense of little me. But why do those Yuen-chae (police runners) point this way? Are you wanted? If so, flee. That way, that way; up among the rocks, and hide in the caves."
Jerry had little time to say farewell, as he noticed the two soldiers, accompanied by police runners, making towards him; so, after bestowing a fervent kiss upon the lips of the astonished A-tae, he sprang over the tea plants and sped away like the wind. The poor girl sunk upon the ground, cried, and wrung her hands like one demented. Her companions gathered round, and finding she was in trouble, prevailed upon her to go home. Meanwhile the soldiers and their party chased the agile sailor, running until they got out of breath; and when they last spied him he was darting into a wood, which was set apart for the use of Buddhist priests, and where they felt sure of bagging him during the course of the day.