A sibilant warning from one of his clerks was too late. Having regained the house by way of the back alley, Mrs. Tai Fu emerged right upon them from out of the living apartments. Never had Ah Kim seen his mother’s eyes so blazing furious. She ignored Li Faa, as she screamed at him:
“Now will I make you cry. As never before shall I beat you until you do cry.”
“Then let us go into the back rooms, honourable mother,” Ah Kim suggested. “We will close the windows and the doors, and there may you beat me.”
“No. Here shall you be beaten before all the world and this shameless woman who would, with her own hand, take you by the ear and call such sacrilege marriage! Stay, shameless woman.”
“I am going to stay anyway,” said Li Faa. She favoured the clerks with a truculent stare. “And I’d like to see anything less than the police put me out of here.”
“You will never be my daughter-in-law,” Mrs. Tai Fu snapped.
Li Faa nodded her head in agreement.
“But just the same,” she added, “shall your son be my third husband.”
“You mean when I am dead?” the old mother screamed.
“The sun rises each morning,” Li Faa said enigmatically. “All my life have I seen it rise—”