and Jinty got many another as the days went on. Do what
she could to please and amuse the little foreigner, Ah Lon shrank from
her persistently.

[Illustration: HORRIBLE DREAMS OF MONSTERS AND DEMONS.]

All Jinty's treasures, dolls and toys and keepsakes were exhibited, but
Ah Lon turned away indifferently. The Chinese girl, in truth, was deadly
home-sick, but she would have died rather than confess it, even to the
professor, the only person who understood her speech. She detested the
new, strange country, the queer, unknown food, the outlandish ways. Yet
she was in many respects happier. Some of the old hardships of girl life
in China were gone. Some old fears began to vanish, and her nights were
no longer disturbed with horrible dreams of monsters and demons.

But of all things in and about Old Studley Ah Lon most detested Mike the
raven, and Mike seemed fully to return her dislike. He pecked viciously
at the spindly Chinese legs and sent Ah Lon into convulsions of terror.

"Ah well, bad as he is, Mike's British same's I am, and he do hate a
foreigner!" said Mrs. Barbara appreciatively.

Time went on and Jinty began to shoot up; she was growing quite tall,
and Ah Lon also grew apace. But, still, though the little foreigner
could now find her way about in the language of her new country, she
shut her heart against kind little Jinty's advances.

"She won't have anything to say to me!" complained Jinty, "she won't
make friends, Mrs. Barbara! The only thing she will look at is my pearl
locket, she likes that!"

Indeed Ah Lon seemed never tired of gazing at the pearl-rimmed locket
which hung by a slender little chain round Jinty's neck, and contained
the miniature of her pretty young mother so long dead. The little
Chinese never tired of stroking the sweet face looking out from the rim
of pearls.

"Do you say prayers to it?" she asked, in her stammering English.

"Prayers, no!" Jinty was shocked. "I only pray to our Father and to the
good Jesus. Why, you wouldn't pray to a picture?"

Ah Lon was silent. So perhaps she had been praying to the sweet painted
face already, who could say?

It was soon after this talk that the two little girls sat in the study
one morning. Ah Lon was at the table by the side of the professor, an
open atlas between them and the old gentleman in his element.

But Jinty sat apart, strangely quiet.

Ah Lon, watching out of her slits of eyes, had never seen Jinty so dull
and silent. An