“I was telling all this to Gar Ling,” went on Bow, straining the last drop of tea into Fa’ng’s bowl, “and he told me he would settle my quarrel, but it would cost one thousand dollars. When I told him I had not even a thousand copper cash, he became angry and abusive. As he walked his way, quickly, like a foreign devil, he spat in my direction and called me an unspeakable name.”
“Ts, ts! You should have wrung his neck. Repeat to me his unspeakable words.”
“He said,” cried Bow Sam, his face twisted in fury, “that I am the son of a turtle!”
“Aih-yah! How insulting! As anyone knows, in all our language there is no epithet more vile!”
“That is true. But what is even worse, I did not remember until after he had gone that he had not paid me for the piece of sugar-cane. Such is the way of the younger generation; and we, who have been long in the land, can do nothing.”
“Yet it is by such things that one learns the lesson of enduring tranquillity,” remarked Fa’ng, smacking his lips and moving back from the table.
For about the time, then, that it takes one to make nine bows before the household gods, neither man made speech. Then Fa’ng arose.
“An excellent bowl of rice, my good friend.”
“Aih, it shames me to have to give you such mean fare.”
“And the tea was most fragrant.”