“AREN'T THE KIDS LOVELY?”
THE STORY
Writer Yen had a crowd of seven children. Dah - ming, the eldest daughter, was clever and active. As she watched her schoolmates riding bicycles to school and back to their homes each day, she wished very much she could also have one herself.
The second, R-mao (Little Puss), a boy enjoyed dismantling and repairs; the third, San - mao (Baby Puss), a fat girl loved candies most; the fourth, Sze - nui (Baby Buffalo), a boy liked fist fights; and the fifth, Fu-r (Baby Tiger), a boy preferred drawing on walls to any other games. Lung-r (Baby Dragon), a boy, an all-time smiling and lovely creature, ranked the sixth, and the last was a girl too, K-moen (Full House) still a baby under nuring.
Amid such a noisy and fussy pack of children, the parents indeed were having a terrible time.
One day Dah-ming tried to ask her father to buy her an used cycle from her schoolmate but without success. For fear of being laughted at by her schoolmates, she was absent from school for three days until the school authority wrote to Yen questioning about her.
When Yen’s publisher friend Uncle Chang, as the kids called him, learned about it, his advice was to transfer Dah-ming to a better school. But Yen would not stand the trouble, and shortly after giving his daughter some discipline, he sent her back to her school.
Dah-ming was unhappy all day long. In order to boost her spirit, R-mao borrowed for her a bicycle from his playmate Lucille.
Unfortunately Dah-ming wrecked the bicycle during race with her schoolmates. R-mao tried to fix it but only made it worse. In despair, they solicited the help of repair shop at a charge of thirty dollars.
They got the money from their father to pay for the charge. But Dah-ming had to give back to her father at the moment she learned of Sze-nui being wounded in street fight and her father needed the money to pay Sze-mui’s hospital fee.
Uncle Chang came just in time to their relief by paying for them the repair charge. In the hospital Chang also found Sze-nui recovering. Chang proposed again for Dah-ming’s transfer to a better school and was finally accepted by the father.
With the help of good schooling and encouragement, Dah-ming became a changed character. After school, she would now teach the youngsters how to read, to play and to keep the house clean and in order. It meant a sweeping change of the familly’s atmosphere from distress into homeliness.
On Mr. Yen’s birthday, the children presented to their father a fountain pen as the gift which was bought with their savings. They sang happily both for the parents and their own brilliant future.