Sên King-lo turned and took her in his arms, and told her where he was going, when and why.
Her dark eyes sparkled with quick pleasure. But she exclaimed chidingly, “And that was what was in those two letters you had from China by the first post yesterday! And you’ve only told me now! A whole day wasted, and with all the packing to do in no time at all! Lo, you are simply wicked.”
“Since when have you done my packing, Mrs. Sên? And I seem to remember that I not unfrequently have done yours. My mistake no doubt.”
Ivy giggled and tried to shake him. There was an interlude.
“I shall not take much luggage,” Lo told her.
“Your luggage!” his wife retorted contemptuously. “Two handkerchiefs and a razor and a book of poems—I know your luggage. But you don’t imagine that I and Baby and Nurse are going half-way across the world with only one suitcase between us, do you?”
“Dear,” her husband said very gently, “we couldn’t take Baby. It’s too far, the way too hard, whole weeks of discomfort, if not worse—for you and him, I mean. I shall enjoy every rod of it, with my goat-legs—and home at the end of the journey. I never am ill, and, if I were, the smell of Ho-nan would be all the medicine I needed. But we can’t take our frogling off of the doctors’ beats.”
“No!” the frogling’s mother instantly agreed. “Oh—Lo—I shan’t like leaving him behind. But—of course—for his own sake—but, oh! Lo—how shall we do it!”
“Of course not,” he answered her quickly, with a hand on her hair, “so you’ll have to stay with him, mother-girl.”
Ruby Sên slipped from her husband’s arms, thrust them gently but firmly away, and sat up on the pillows, eying her husband.