“Lo, you are wonderful!” she exclaimed, as the habit grew quickly on the pad, a habit perfect in every detail.
She had found a new talent in her Chinese man, and she leaned and watched him proudly with her hand upon his shoulder.
The tailor slipped up without a sound and came and watched the rapid brush-work too. And when it was finished, he drew a long tape from his sleeve and nodded without speaking.
“He says, ‘Can do,’ ” Sên told her, with a laugh.
And it was true, whether the man had said it or not. The new habit completed would have disgraced neither Rotten Row nor Bond Street.
Sên Ya Tin stood and watched them as they started for their first ride together in China, an odd, but not unkind, look in her sharp, agate-hard eyes. She smiled a little, grimly—she who had not smiled since this Sên’s father had died—smiled when King-lo held his hand under Ruby’s boot and mounted her so. And Ya Tin stood and watched them till they were out of sight, lost in the verdure of the far-off hillside; for the day was very clear, and Sên Ya Tin’s ageing eyes were very sharp.
When Lo had come to tell her that the horses were ready at the house door, Ruby had started a little and then had flushed; for King-lo’s riding clothes were as British as her own.
How would Madame Sên like this, Ruby wondered—if Madame chanced to know.
But, if Sên Ya Tin was surprised, she scorned to show it, and Ruby wondered if she’d already known and consented, for she knew that no innovation intruded into the queendom of Sên Ya Tin that did not come licensed by imperious Ya Tin.
It was the first of many rides, and they were the best and the most wholesome pleasures of Ruby Sên’s sojourn in the homestead of the father of her child.