Yee Wing’s face lost its expression of studied indifference. He let his look rest upon her hair, blue-black, and held at each side by a cluster of mock jewels; let it travel down to the young face,—a clear, polished white except for deep-carmine touches on cheeks and eyelids and on the lower lip of the pouting mouth—to the brown eyes, whose charm was enhanced by a curious little wrinkle just above the darkened brows, a petulant little wrinkle that changed with each passing thought.
“Assuredly,” he answered. “In California, it is always spring-time, Jasmine Blossom.”
Again she sank, bracelets clinking as her fingers met. “Just so it is for a good while each year on the hills of Hupeh, where dwell my illustrious pocket parents. From our hut, during the sunny days, we looked across the tea fields upon groves of bamboo, feather-topped, and rocking gently.”
She stumped to the open door, balancing herself with partly outstretched arms. “Am I free to go forth to-day as yesterday?” she inquired over a shoulder. “The green invites, and there be some beautiful plants yonder, red as the face of the god of war. I can fill the pottery jar.”
“Go,” he bade, “but not over far, lest you tire the two lilies of gold.”
She smiled back at him tenderly. “I spend my heart upon you,” she said in farewell, and went balancing away.
Yee Wing watched her difficult progress across the grassy level that divided the powder-house and his own habitation from Sather, the solitary little railway station of the near-by line. “She has brought tranquillity,” he murmured, “Where now are the five causes of disquietude?” And he, too, smiled tenderly.
The week that followed, which was only the second of the girl-wife’s residence in the new land, found the two supremely happy. They had no visitors other than the superintendent from the works at Pinole, and an expressman from Oakland, bearing an order for a keg of explosive. Yee Wing enjoyed abundant leisure, and he spent it with his bride. They puttered together about the dove-cotes behind the square, black magazines; they shared the simple cares of their single room; in a comradeship as strange to their kind as was the civilisation in which they had come to live; they sallied forth like two children, gathering the fragrant peony, pursuing the first butterflies.
But one morning there arrived a man of their own race. Yee Wing was lolling upon a bench, playing with the white-and-brown pug. Yee Chu, in purple trousers and cherry-hued jacket, was sitting upon a stool, the gay, tinsel rosettes over each tiny ear bobbing merrily as she finished a careful toilet. The white paste had been put on face and throat and carefully smoothed. Now she was dyeing her long nails and rouging her palms. Of a sudden, a shadow fell across the doorway. The two looked up. Outside, staring in, was a Chinese, his round, black, highbinder hat, silk blouse and dark-blue broadcloth breeches proclaiming him above the coolie class.
“Stay within,” cautioned the Powder-man, in a low voice. He went out hastily, and closed the door after him.