“Not my child,” answered Pau Lin.
Sankwei turned away from her. “Come, little one,” said he to his son, “we will take supper tonight at the restaurant, and afterwards Yen shall see a show.”
Pau Lin laid down the dish of vegetables which she was straining and took from a hook as small wrap which she adjusted around the boy.
“Now go with thy father,” said she sternly.
But the boy clung to her—to the hand which had punished him. “I will sup with you,” he cried, “I will sup with you.”
“Go,” repeated his mother, pushing him from her. And as the two passed over the threshold, she called to the father: “Keep the wrap around the child. The night air is chill.”
Late that night, while father and son were peacefully sleeping, the wife and mother arose, and lifting gently the unconscious boy, bore him into the next room where she sat down with him in a rocker. Waking, he clasped his arms around her neck. Backwards and forwards she rocked him, passionately caressing the wounded hand and crooning and crying until he fell asleep again.
The first chastisement that the son of Wou Sankwei had received from his mother, was because he had striven to follow in the footsteps of his father and use the language of the stranger.
“You did perfectly right,” said old Sien Tau the following morning, as she leaned over her balcony to speak to the wife of Wou Sankwei. “Had I again a son to rear, I should see to it that he followed not after the white people.”
Sien Tau’s son had married a white woman, and his children passed their grandame on the street without recognition.