“You have been away for over three hours. Why is this?”
She was a true Chinese and found it difficult to give a direct answer.
“I have been talking to my mother,” said she, rousing wrath where she might have gained sympathy.
“What excuse is this?” said the doctor's wife. “You go away, and when I ask you why, you tell me you have been talking to your mother! Your mother should have more sense than to keep you from your work!”
“But my husband has sold me!” protested the culprit and then we saw that her face was swollen with crying; “and I am a young woman and I don't know what to do when my husband sells me. He keeps the children and he sells me, and Tsao, the man who has bought me, is a bad man,” and dropping down to the ground she let the tears fall on to the work in her hands.
“I am young and so I don't know what to do.” It was the burden of her song. It may be she is wailing still, for the story was unfinished when I left. She was young and she didn't know what to do. She would not have minded leaving her husband if only the man to whom she had been sold had been a better man, but he bore a worse reputation if anything than her husband, and ignorant, unlearned in all things of this world as she was, she and the women round her knew exactly what her fate would be. Tsao would sell her when he tired of her, and her next purchaser would do likewise, and as she gets older and her white teeth decay and her bright eyes fade and her comeliness wanes her money value will grow less and less, and beating and starvation will be her portion till death comes as a merciful release. But, as she kept repeating pathetically, she is young, and death is the goal at the end of a weary, weary, heartbreaking road.
For her husband was quite within his rights. He could sell her. It may be, of course, he will be swayed by public opinion, and public opinion is against the disposing of a wife after this fashion.
“Let her complain to the official,” suggested my assurance.
But the wise women who knew rose up in horror at the depths of ignorance I was disclosing.
“Go to the yamen and complain of her husband!”