Sên King-lo made no reply.
“Slights from whom, Lo?”
“From my own people, perhaps.”
She bent over him then, and something as a mother might. “ ‘Thy people shall be my people,’ ” she crooned, “ ‘and whither thou goest there also will I go.’ ”
Sên King-lo gathered his wife down to his breast and held her there. Neither spoke. The room was very quiet.
CHAPTER XXXVI
But Sên King-lo had no intention of yielding. And for several days they pitted their wills against each other, while Mrs. Sên went quietly on with her packing.
His Chinese will and her English will met and interlocked, and, because her will was a woman’s, Ruby won.
Ruben went into the keeping of Lady Snow, “perfectly delighted to have another baby without any of the preliminary unpleasantness,” the overwatching care of his cousin Charles, with Dick and Blanche for special and voluble bodyguard; and the roses bloomed alone and unpruned on the tiny cottage, and Kwan Yin-ko lived alone in the Kensington house.
“Would you not like to live in China?” Mrs. Sên had asked her husband one day before they left London. “Make it our home, I mean? I have been thinking about it a good deal these last few days. You have been like a boy since you’ve known you were going back to China.”