"Where there is too
much dirt, there is blindness. One-fourth of the population in this
section of China are blind. They go to 'fortune tellers,' and they
remain blind. In nine cases out of ten the simplest of operations
followed by care will cure this type of blindness."

"Good enough; but will they be careful afterward?" Peter was curious to
know.

"Once their sight is given back to them, they follow directions to a T.
I'm leaving behind me a trail of the cleanest Chinamen you ever laid
eyes on!"

She became silent, and so did Peter, who watched, hardly daring to
breathe, the swift, sure dartings of the tiny knife in her white
fingers. It was done in a jiffy; and there seemed to be on pain.

"Shouldn't you have an operating-room?" inquired Peter, as she bound up
the child's eyes in gauze.

She gave him a bright, professional smile. "Peter, I've learned to
operate with a thousand hooting infidels crowding closer than this. In
Nanking I was nearly mobbed."

Peter looked concerned. "Did they harm you?"

"Oh, no! They wanted their children, their wives, and their virtuous
mothers to see the light of day again."

"Eileen, you're an angel!"

"Be careful, Peter, or I'll kiss you in front of all these people."
She blushed and smiled. "I think I was very bold to come up here all
alone. Don't you?"

Peter grumbled something which escaped her.

She sat down wearily on the cask and looked up at him forlornly. "I
thought it would be a lark; but it isn't. It's the hardest kind of
work. There seem to be so many blind people--and I get tired--furious!"

"Can't we break away from this mob and have a little chin-chin by
ourselves?"

"You're not anxious, Peter?"

"This is not Shanghai," he rejoined sententiously. "Ching-Fu is not a
healthy spot for me--or for you. I've been watched. Perhaps, this
very minute----" He stopped and looked at the dour faces pressed about
them.

She shrugged. "Are you going on to Len Yang this time, Peter?"

He nodded slightly. "Perhaps."

"With me?"

"Without you," he stated firmly, dimly conscious of a stir on the
fringe of their audience.

"It isn't fair," she murmured; "I've come all this way----" She
touched her lips with the tip of a pink tongue. What she might have
added was forestalled by rising confusion on the edge of the crowd.
There were harsh voices, shrill voices; then these sounds were dwarfed
by the thunder of furious hoofs.

White with the d