Captain June
Copyright© 2024 by Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
Chapter 2
“Seki San, look at the old woman with black teeth! What made them black? What have the little girls got flowers in their hair for? What are they ringing the bell for?”
Seki San sitting on her heels at the car window tried to answer all June’s questions at once. The sad parting was over. Mrs. Royston had left in the night on the steamer they had crossed in, and the Captain and the Purser and all the passengers were going to take care of her until she got to Hong Kong, and after that it was only a short way to Manila, and once she was with Father, June felt that his responsibility ceased.
When they first boarded the train, June had sat very quiet. If you wink fast and swallow all the time, you can keep the tears back, but it does not make you feel any better inside.
“If God has got to take somebody,” June said at length gloomily, “I think He might take one of my grandmothers. I have got four but one of them is an old maid.”
“Oh no,” said Seki, “she isn’t.”
“She is,” persisted June, “she keeps every thing put away in little boxes and won’t let me play with them. Seki, do you guess God would jes’ as lieve for me to have a horn as a harp when I go to Heaven? I want a presser horn like they have in the band.”
“But you will not go for many long times!” cried Seki, catching his hand as if he were about to slip away. “Look out of the window. See! They are giving the cow a bath!”
In a field nearby an old man and woman were scrubbing a patient-looking cow, and when the creature pulled its head away and cried because it did not want to get its face washed, June laughed with glee. After all, one could not be unhappy very long when every minute something funny or interesting was happening. At every station a crowd of curious faces gathered about the car window eager to catch a glimpse of the little foreign boy, and June, always ready to make friends, smiled at them and bobbed his head, which made the boys and girls look at each other and laugh.
“We bow with our whole self, so,” Seki explained, putting her hands on her knees and bending her body very low, “and we never shake with the hands nor kiss together!”
“Don’t the mothers ever kiss the children good-night?” asked June incredulously.
“Oh! no,” said Seki, “we bow.”
While June was thinking about this strange state of affairs, a man came close under the window, carrying a tray and calling: “Bento! Eo Bento!”
Seki San took some money from a little purse which she carried in her long sleeve, and handing it out to the man, received two square wooden boxes and a fat little tea-pot with a cup over its head like a cap.
The Tea-Party on the train.
“Are we going to have a tea-party?” asked June, scrambling down from his perch.
“So,” said Seki San, reaching under the seat and pulling out a tiny chest, in which were other cups and saucers and a jar of tea leaves, “we will have very nice tea-parties and you shall make the tea.”
June, following instructions, put some of the tea in the small pot and poured the hot water over it, then he helped Seki San spread two paper napkins on the seat between them.
“Now,” he said, “where’s the party?”
Seki San handed him one of the boxes and began to untie the string of the other.
“I have some sticks tied on to mine!” cried June, “two big ones and a tiny little one wrapped up in paper.”
“That is your knife and fork and pick-tooth,” said Seki San. “You must hold the sticks in one hand like this.”
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