Then he turned and joined his wife and addressed himself to the wares and the price-list of old No Wink.
The curio-seller was courteous. He knew of Sên King-lo’s wealth, but his courtesy was frigid and unbending. And Sên King-lo, who had laughed in his generous soul at black Uncle Lysander, could have throttled No Wink.
Much as he had loved her, tenderly as he always had shown it, Sên King-lo showed his wife an added affection, a warmer tenderness, a deeper deference that night. But Sên King-lo’s eyes were sad even when they laughed at her. And To Sung began to believe that his master was crazy.
They never saw Miss Julia again, rarely spoke of her again to each other, and she never again to any one mentioned either of them.
The next day Sên King-lo went again, and alone, to No’s curio-shop.
At lunch her husband gave Ruby Sên a string of pearls. She already had more pearls than she often wore; but she cried out in wonder at the burnished pigeon-breast tints gleaming softly on these and examined curiously the odd clasp of beaten and twisted lead that fastened them.
That same afternoon Miss Townsend received from No Wink, the curio-dealer, a cube-shaped, red crêpe-lined box of camphor-wood and an obsequious note. He begged his distinguished and generous patron’s acceptance of the unworthy and nearly valueless curio he ventured to offer her and explained that it was an old and honored Chinese custom to make some humility gift of appreciation to noble and liberal customers.
Miss Julia Calhoun Townsend did not relish accepting a gift, no matter how small, from a shop-keeper and said so to Dr. Ray, but she liked even less to resent as an over-familiarity what so evidently was an act of respect, and a Townsend always held old customs sacrosanct. So she kept the “trifle,” and before she left Hongkong, made a point of going again to the curio-shop and spending there a sum which she made no doubt was many times the value of the crinkled cup in the camphor-wood box.
But Elenore Ray, who had given some study to ceramics, though she had no idea that this bit of Satsuma was one of the rarest pieces, the gem of No’s collection, and had been, hundreds of years ago, the rouge cup of an Imperial bride, knew that the brownish Satsuma handleless cup was good and very old; and she had no doubt who had paid for it and sent it as a loving-cup, brimming with golden drops of “kindness yet.” But, only seeing that it was carefully packed and well guarded, she said nothing of what she “guessed”—a Southern woman’s fineness of soul perhaps, perhaps a physician’s deep-rooted habit of silence.