“Yes, but I didn’t remember it until last night,” he answered gravely. The weeks that followed were brimful of joy to Rue, and she won her way straight into the home and the hearts that had opened to receive her. “And so you think I may tell the matron that you do not care to go back, but are willing to stay here?” questioned the Captain, when the allotted time had expired. “I guess,” replied Rue, looking down at her dainty dress, and suddenly flinging her arms around Mrs. Grey’s neck, “that you didn’t ever live there, and eat soup, and wear check aprons, and have nobody like this to love, ’r else you’d know.” But she has not learned yet that it was her own missionary effort that brought so great reward. How Yin-Dee Changed Her Name CHAPTER I. “LEAD ALONG A BROTHER.” The first thing I know about myself is that I was born; and that I had a father and mother, too, just as you have. I thought I had better tell you this, as I have often heard ignorant country people ask the missionary if in his country children are born the same as in China, just as they will ask him if there are a sun and moon, rivers and hills, there as here. My grandfather used to say that foreigners belonged to a country where people had holes in their chests and were carried about on a long pole by two men. But he had never seen any foreigners at all. Of course when I was born nobody wanted me. Whoever wants girls? I was the first child; so my parents were bitterly disappointed. Well, I couldn’t help it; and I have often thought how hard it was that I should be badly treated, as if it were my fault. My father said bitter things to mother, so she called me “Yin-dee,” which means, “Lead along a brother.” After a time they got more used to me, and were not more unkind than most parents. Sometimes when I was extra good mother would take me in her arms and call me her “precious,” for, as the proverb says, “All have the parent heart.” Now, if I had been a boy how different it would have been—there would have been no end of rejoicing and feasting! My mother’s parents would have supplied me with a cradle and lots of pretty clothes. When a month old there would have been another feast, and the barber would have come to shave my head and mix the hair with rice and give it to the dog to eat, to make _me_ brave. I should always have had my own way and have been petted by all. When a year old, they would have called my relations together and spread before me a lot of things, to see what my future was to be. There would be books and pens, scissors and scales, a rule, and some money; and they would have waited to see which was the thing I grabbed. If it had been books how it would have pleased them, for it would have meant that I was to be a scholar; if scissors, then a tailor; and so on. Now, I wonder which I should have chosen? Not books, I’m afraid; for I don’t like learning—do you?