“In this country, she is most happy who has no child,” said Lae Choo, resting her elbow upon the shoulder of Sien Tau. “A Toy, the young daughter of Lew Wing, is as bold and free in her ways as are the white women, and her name is on all the men’s tongues. What prudent man of our race would take her as wife?”
“One needs not to be born here to be made a fool of,” joined in Pau Lin, appearing at another balcony door. “Think of Hum Wah. From sunrise till midnight he worked for fourteen years, then a white man came along and persuaded from him every dollar, promising to return doublefold within the moon. Many moons have risen and waned, and Hum Wah still waits on this side of the sea for the white man and his money. Meanwhile, his father and mother, who looked long for his coming, have passed beyond returning.”
“The new religion—what trouble it brings!” exclaimed Lae Choo. “My man received word yestereve that the good old mother of Chee Ping—he who was baptized a Christian at the last baptizing in the Mission around the corner—had her head secretly severed from her body by the steadfast people of the village, as soon as the news reached there. ’Twas the first violent death in the records of the place. This happened to the mother of one of the boys attending the Mission corner of my street.”
“No doubt, the poor old mother, having lost face, minded not so much the losing of her head,” sighed Pau Lin. She gazed below her curiously. The American Chinatown held a strange fascination for the girl from the seacoast village. Streaming along the street was a motley throng made up of all nationalities. The sing-song voices of girls whom respectable merchants’ wives shudder to name, were calling to one another from high balconies up shadowy alleys. A fat barber was laughing hilariously at a drunken white man who had fallen into a gutter; a withered old fellow, carrying a bird in a cage, stood at the corner entreating passersby to have a good fortune told; some children were burning punk on the curbstone. There went by a stalwart Chief of the Six Companies engaged in earnest confab with a yellow-robed priest from the joss house. A Chinese dressed in the latest American style and a very blonde woman, laughing immoderately, were entering a Chinese restaurant together. Above all the hubbub of voices was heard the clang of electric cars and the jarring of heavy wheels over cobblestones.
Pau Lin raised her head and looked her thoughts at the old woman, Sien Tau.
“Yes,” nodded the dame, “’tis a mad place in which to bring up a child.”
Pau Lin went back into the house, gave little Yen his noonday meal, and dressed him with care. His father was to take him out that afternoon. She questioned the boy, as she braided his queue, concerning the white women whom he visited with his father.
It was evening when they returned—Wou Sankwei and his boy. The little fellow ran up to her in high glee. “See, mother,” said he, pulling off his cap, “I am like father now. I wear no queue.”
The mother looked down upon him—at the little round head from which the queue, which had been her pride, no longer dangled.
“Ah!” she cried. “I am ashamed of you; I am ashamed!”