Sên King-lo drew a long breath. And his heart blessed her.
“But how can we manage?” his wife reminded. “I haven’t spied a shop since we left the railway.”
“No,” Sên laughed, “and you’ll spy none again until we return to the railroad, unless a heap of mangos and plantains here and there, with a more than half-naked boy squatted beside them keeping the dragon-flies and the white ants off, with a few coins in a wooden bowl beside him for change, will pass muster for ‘shop.’ And if it would, there’d be no chiffons or picture-hats or peek-a-boo blouses for sale there. But I had thought of that. And I have brought you all you’d need.”
“Did Mrs. Yen select my Chinese frocks?” Ruby teased him.
“She did not! Your husband selected and bought them. Will you wear them, if you don’t dislike the feel and look of them when you’ve put them on?”
“Of course I will,” Mrs. Sên cried gaily. “And I promise to like them, my venerable lord!”
Sên took her face in his hands and brushed her cheek with his lips.
Very rarely had he done that. But he had divined long ago that his English wife, little as she liked or even could tolerate kissing, would lack and miss something of love’s legitimate sweetness, if he never paid her the token that every loved wife in the West received.
Once in a great while Sên King-lo kissed his wife lightly—her face or her palm—and when he did Ruby Sên always laughed softly.
Their lips had never met. And Ruby knew that he never had kissed Ruben. She did not often do it herself—and then only a bath-fresh dimpled hip, or the “sugar-spot” on the back of the baby neck.