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Jo smiled over his own drawing, as Quang Po inspected it.

“Wha’ fo’ you do that?” inquired Quang Po, mustering his English.

“This drawing?” questioned Jo. “Oh, you see, my cousin is an artist on one of the city papers. He’s older than I am, and he earns a good deal of money. I’m going to learn to make pictures for papers, too. Some day I’ll have as good a position as my cousin has.”

Quang Po looked puzzled. He did not understand. He always thought American pictures strange. They were not made as Chinese pictures were.

But Quang Po knew that once he had thought other American things strange, too. Some Americans believed in teaching Chinese girls wonderful stories and words from a wonderful Book. When Quang Po’s niece had been taught first by such an American, great was Quang’s wrath. To increase his indignation, another thing happened. He had burnt incense at the stone in the middle of the fishing-village, in order to find out what day would be most lucky to go fishing, and had found that according to the stone the twenty-second day of the month would be the most lucky day. He had therefore gone fishing on the twenty-second, and he had come back sulky, having caught almost nothing. Then Quang Po’s niece had actually laughed at the ill-fortune of her uncle, and had openly expressed her unbelief in the village stone! Quang Po had been very angry for many days, but there came a time when Quang Po’s niece induced him to go with her to the little mission school on the hill-side, and there Quang Po heard that for which his soul thirsted. He saw the picture of the Crucified. He understood the story, and he, like his niece, lost faith in the village stone and in the incense-shelves. Quang Po yielded his will and his life to Christ, and the Christian religion seemed strange to him no longer.

So, when this Chinaman handed back the drawing to Jo, Quang Po smiled and said the kindest thing he could think of, although the drawing did not accord with his Chinese ideas of art.

“You draw like Melican,” said Quang Po, winding his queue about his head, and preparing to return to work.

Jo felt somewhat ashamed. He wished that he and the other boys had not cut the sinkers off Quang Po’s big net. Perhaps Quang Po did not know that Jo had taken part in that mischief, but the thought of it made Jo uncomfortable. So did the remembrance that he and the other boys had slyly at night cut the line that held the flounders high in air above the village street. The flounders now were safely stretched aloft again, but the last time Jo remembered seeing them they were lying in the dust. Jo was not an ill-natured lad, but he had not objected to helping do the mischief. And now Quang Po had spoken kindly of Jo’s drawing! Jo winced a little. He was rather proud of his ability as an artist, himself. He turned his attention, to the flaming yellow pair of trousers worn by a small Chinese boy among the numerous Chinese children in the street below. The brilliant color made the little fellow most conspicuous as he toddled here and there. In watching him, Jo tried to forget his own self-reproach.

So far did he succeed in forgetting it that, that evening, when Louis Rouse, one of the other boys whose parents were staying at the resort during the summer vacation, proposed going over to the Chinese village, Jo did not object, though he knew that the purpose of going was to have some “fun,” as Louis called it.

“Was the line of flounders up?” asked Louis gleefully, as the boys went over the fields in the dusk. “Let’s cut it again! And, say, let’s just tip over one of those frames for drying fish in the field back of the village. We can do it carefully, so they won’t hear.”