through
at Wellesley, had joined him as a nurse and kindergarten teacher. She'd
been living in Kaio Chow for three years and the mission outfit was
getting along fine when some kind of a Boxer mess broke out and they all
had to leave. Coming back on an Italian steamer from Genoa she met Bill,
who'd been in aviation, and there'd been some lovely moonlight nights
and--well, Bill had persuaded her that teaching young Chinks to learn
c-a-t, cat, wouldn't be half as nice as being Mrs. William Hartley.
Besides, he had a good position waiting for him in a big wholesale
leather house right in New York, and it would be such fun living among
regular people.

"I suppose it is fun, too," says Esther, "but somehow I can't seem to
get used to it. Everyone here gives you such, cold, suspicious looks;
even the folks you meet in the hallways and elevator, as though they
meant to say, 'Don't you dare speak to me. I don't know who or what you
are, so don't come near.' They're like that, you know. Why, the street
gamins of Kaio Chow were not much worse when I first went there. Yes,
they did throw stones at me a few times, but in less than a month they
were calling me the Doctor Lady and letting me tell them how wrong it
was to spend so much time gambling around the food carts. Of course,
they kept right on gambling for fried fish and rice cakes, but they
would grin friendly when they saw me. Up to tonight no one in New York
has even smiled at me.

"It's such a wonderful place, too; and so big, you would almost think
there was enough to share with, strangers. But they seem to resent my
being here at all, so I go out very little now when I am alone. And as
Bill is away all day, and sometimes has to work evenings as well, I am
alone a great deal. About the only place I can see the sky from and
other people is this little kitchen window. So I stay there a lot, and I
am sorry to say that often I'm foolish enough to wish myself back at
the mission among all those familiar yellow faces, where I could stand
on the bamboo shaded galleries and hear the hubbub in the compound, and
watch the coolies wading about in the distant rice fields. Isn't that
silly? There must be something queer about me."

"Not so awfully queer," says Vee. "You're lonesome, that's all."

"No more than I am, I'm sure," says Lucy Lee. "I wonder if there are
many others?"

"Only two or three million more," says I. "That's why the cabarets and
movie shows are so popular."