They had deemed her disgraced by the union.
They had been well-to-do people, and would have married her to one of her own race.
Her life had held many bitter, unhappy years, but she was proud in her way, and from her lips no word or moan had ever passed.
Children had come and multiplied, and though the wants of such people are very few, often they had not the wherewithal to supply them.
But of late years things had been better, for Mah Khine, who had a keen eye for business, had made and saved a little unknown to every one except Mah May.
The money was kept buried away in a teak-wood box in a corner of their damp, worm-eaten house.
Mah Khine's cherished ambition, trader that she was, was to open a little shop, as many of her class did.
A little place filled with miscellaneous articles: pillows, lacquer boxes, wooden trays, crockery, pewter pans, some sandals, and perhaps, there was no knowing—that is, if she was lucky—some tameins and silk potsos for the men.
There behind it the proud possessor, she dreamt that she would sit and roll the cheroots and have her children by her, keeping an eye on the younger as they played.
This picture Mah Khine often painted to herself; it was her ideal of earthly bliss. She dreamt of it by day and night, but kept it locked up in her own heart.