Mee. Rader funny, don’t you t’ink?
Yung. You are very silly, Mee-Mee.
Mee. Ya-as, me velly silly—me know dat! Not evellybody so gleat wise person as Mr. Yunglangtsi. H’m? H’m?
Yung. You think I like you, Mee-Mee, don’t you?
Mee. Ya-as—a leetle.
Yung. Well, I don’t then. I dislike you. There’s no one I dislike more. Shall I tell you why?
Mee. If you please.
Yung. It’s because you’ve robbed me—yes, you, you shabby little interloper! I’m not the man I was once: you don’t know anything about me. Till you came here with that confounded horoscope of yours I was happy—I’d reason to be, then.... D’you know what I was? [She shakes her head.] A grocer! I suppose you don’t know what that means? Well, it means sitting in a great shop where people come to buy, and giving orders to everybody. And all round you there are barrels of oil, with taps that run, and casks of sugar, and tea by the ton; and bins of rice, and boxes of spice, and everything nice as nice can be! And a crushing-machine where things are ground, and the samples all have a different sound. And you plunge your arms in flour or meal; and if you can’t see what it is—you can feel!
Mee. Oh! how beautiful!
Yung. And soap, Mee-Mee! Oh, there’s a fortune to be made out of soap alone. There was a man once, Mee-Mee, who spent three years inventing the name of a soap.... And when he’d invented it he turned it into a syndicate and sold it. He sold it for twenty thousand yen.