"Adopt Tuen?" she breathed.
"Yes, why not?" he answered. "She is beautiful and modest, and her apt replies are marvellous. We are childless, and she will be an ornament to any home. I will arrange a great marriage for her."
"Oh, very well," his wife said indifferently. "I never saw anything at all unusual about her, but I suppose she is as desirable as any other girl." Here she commenced to weep again, as she thought of the dead Tung-li, and even the Viceroy said with a sigh:
"Of course she can never take the place of a son, for she will soon marry and belong to her husband's parents, but still she is intelligent and pretty. We can take her now, and later I will look around for the son of a relative to adopt."
"I don't want any one but my own Tung-li," sobbed the poor lady of the Viceroy; and because he disliked to see a woman cry, and always tried to escape from any domestic unpleasantness, the Viceroy went back to his audience hall in haste, and sent for Tuen.
When he told her that she was henceforth to be his daughter, the little slave girl of Hunan could scarcely believe her ears, and stood staring at him as one stricken dumb. All at once she understood this great good fortune that had come to her, and with a cry of joy she threw herself at his feet, and embraced him ecstatically.
"Oh, I will try to be so good—Oh, I will try to be so good," she said over and over; and she sobbed for very gladness.
The Viceroy pulled himself away from her feeling distinctly aggrieved, for it seemed that he could not escape weeping females—the one thing he particularly detested.
But when Tuen stood up before him, her eyes shining all the brighter for her tears, and her face radiant with joy, he forgave her for her sobs, and said pompously: