do about a doctor. You say that you are 400
miles from a doctor, even here. What about your children, when they take
sick?" I asked him, and then was sorry that I had asked the question
because of a terribly hurt and unutterably sorrowful look in his eyes.

"Mother and I don't like to talk about that or to think about it!" he
said simply, and I knew that I had torn open an old wound which was just
over his heart.

His voice broke as he spoke, and he looked at the woman who was his
brave helpmate and said again: "Mother and I don't like to think about
that!" The tears ran down over his cheeks and "Mother's" too, and mine
also.

"I am sorry! I am sorry if I have opened an old wound!" I said, quite
helpless to remedy the damage I had done. I felt as one who had
unwittingly trodden on a flower bed and crushed some violets. They
bleed, even though you see no blood. I saw that their hearts were
bleeding. But he spoke.

"We were 400 miles from a doctor. Baby took sick. If we could have had a
doctor she would have been saved."

"Now Daddy, we do not know for certain about that," said the
ever-conservative woman in her.

"There was not a Filipino doctor. She died in mother's arms!"

It was oppressively silent in that far-off mission home for a few
minutes. I thought some one would sob aloud. It might have been any one
of us, the way we all felt. I took hold of my cane chair with a grip
that numbed my hands for a half hour afterwards.

CHAPTER VII

FLASH-LIGHTS OF FUN

All the "Peck's Bad Boys" of the world are not confined to American
soil.

I found them all over the Far East; especially in China.

I was annexed by one of them who became a sort of a guide de luxe when
we were going through the ruined Palaces of the romantic regions of
Peking.

He annexed himself to us in somewhat the same fashion as a thistle or a
burr annexes itself to you as you walk through the field where thistles
are thick.

He was an acquired asset of questionable value. With him were a lot of
followers but it was plain to be seen that he was the leader of the
gang; which was, for all the world, like a typical street gang in an
American city.

Who could pass up that group of a dozen little rascals who followed us
through the ruins of the old Summer Palace? Who could resist their
imitations of everything one did? I sneezed and the little rascals
sneezed also. I counted one, two, three, four, as I adjusted my Graflex
for a pictu