Just then word came from the mother-in-law, “Your child is alive. Come home.”
Woo-Liu-Mai went home and saw the child sitting [[53]]on the grandmother’s lap. And the grandmother said, “Three days your child lay on the floor as if dead. His face is changed, his body is changed. Strange, he seems not like the same baby, but he is alive, alive.”
Then they thanked the gods with great joy, and the boy grew and was wise beyond the number of his years.
Woo-Liu-Mai’s heart was now filled with great peace, and she no longer complained even in secret against the gods.
Woo-Lau-Chan, the real mother, kept her secret well and no one knew, but in her heart she said,
“The time will come, when I must tell my son all. When the years have grown old, Kwoh-King, his children and his children’s children will bow in reverence to the ancestors who brought them into life, and it is right that he should know the truth and have his own birthright.”
But in his youth she said, “Not now, for the judgment of youth is unstable and he might forsake Woo-Liu-Mai, and leave her again sorrowful.”
When Kwoh-King was seven years old, he began school, and he learned fast. But in time the money was nearly gone and Woo-Liu-Mai was too poor to send him longer to the nearest school.
One of her cousins, who was a teacher, sent word that he would teach the child, so he was sent to the school [[54]]where he need not pay. When Kwoh-King was sixteen years old, he finished his studies with great honor. He was still wiser than his years and went to work for the government, soon being given a high state position.
Then his mother, Woo-Lau-Chan, who was also a widow, wrote the whole truth to Kwoh-King and to the government—his father’s name, his mother’s name, his home, his house—all with great care.