"What do I mean? What do you mean? I should think. The idea of your keeping portraits in my rose-leaf vase. Here, take it and treasure it, for I do not want it, the wicked, wicked woman!" and here poor Lili-Tsee burst out crying.
"I cannot understand," said her bewildered husband.
"Oh, you can't?" she said, laughing hysterically. "I can, though, well enough. You like that hideous, villainous-looking woman better than your own true wife. I would say nothing if she were at any rate beautiful; but she has a vile face, a hideous face, and looks wicked and murderous, and everything that is bad!"
"Lili-Tsee, what do you mean?" asked her husband, getting exasperated in his turn. "That portrait is the living image of my poor dead father. I found it in the street the other day, and put it in your vase for safety."
Lili-Tsee's eyes flashed with indignation at this apparently barefaced lie.
"Hear him!" she almost screamed. "He wants to tell me now that I do not know a woman's face from a man's."
Kiki-Tsum was wild with indignation, and a quarrel began in good earnest. The street-door was a little way open, and the loud, angry words attracted the notice of a bonze (one of the Japanese priests) who happened to be passing.
"My children," he said, putting his head in at the door, "why this unseemly anger, why this dispute?"
"Father," said Kiki-Tsum, "my wife is mad."
"All women are so, my son, more or less," interrupted the holy bonze. "You were wrong to expect perfection, and must abide by your bargain now. It is no use getting angry, all wives are trials."