"Where is your daughter now?" I inquired.
She pointed to a window which opened into an inner chamber. I looked in, and to my glad surprise saw seated on a low stool, holding an open book in which she seemed wholly absorbed, the same girl who had so attracted me on the Sunday evening previous.
Her face was very fine and seemingly full of spiritual beauty, and her figure surpassingly beautiful. While we stood gazing at her, some sudden and apparently painful emotion flitted rapidly across her face as she read in the book, like the shadow of a dark cloud over the quiet water.
The mother was silent, evidently making an effort to master the feelings which this sight occasioned in her breast, so as to speak calmly about it.
I sat down again, and inquired the name of the book in which her daughter was so absorbed.
"It is a book called Beeble," said the woman. "What kind of a book is it?"
I assured her that it was a very good book, the Book above all others ever printed; that her daughter did well to read it, and that it would help to develop her into a lovely and beautiful character.
I then left my kind hostess, satisfied and yet saddened by my trip to Tâmsèng.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] Rungeâh, a sort of magenta-colored lotus, found in the pools and marshes of Siam.