"No it is not stupidity," the girl replied firmly. "My father was a very learned man—he belonged to the literati—" looking proudly around her to see the effect of this announcement, "and he said the custom of binding the feet became the fashion because an Empress was once born with club feet, and then all the officers of the court wrapped up their daughters so that the poor Empress would not feel bad when she looked at her own.
"Your father must be very smart to tell you such a likely tale as that," one of her companions retorted sarcastically. "It's a wonder he did not become a story-teller upon the street, for surely all would have flocked to listen to him."
"I once heard the Viceroy tell the mistress that the men of the country originated the idea of binding the women's feet, so they would not go gadding about," Wang interposed. "It truly is a good way to keep them at home."
"I bound the feet of my little girl," said one of the women, "and oh, how she did cry. But I didn't mind that, for I was determined that when she grew up she should have a husband, and no man wants a woman with big feet. And it's better never to be born than to be born a girl, any way, and it's also better to have never been born than not to have a husband. She would not sleep at night, but lay sobbing that they hurt her so, and begging me to take the bandage off. Of course I did not listen to her, and had she lived her feet would have been as small perhaps as those of the Viceroy's wife; but when she died every one said I ought to be glad to get rid of a girl, and that there would be one mouth less to feed."
"Were you glad?" asked Tuen.
The woman shook her head.
"No," she said. "I loved her if she was a girl."
"My father and my mother both loved me," Tuen told them with a sigh, "and they would not have sold me if they had not been hungry. Then they did not want to do it, but I made them."
"And you are a lot better off," Wang said.
"I would have rather been poor all my life and stayed with them," was Tuen's answer.