"He became tired," answered Nancy, scarcely knowing what she said.
"Ah, that is our weakness when we become old. We do grow tired of searching out the equal of our hopes. We have been doing it in vain for so many years that at last we think the search is useless—and then we make our mistakes. If your father had sat here to-day, he would have known that you do not belong here, not with these people."
"I belong nowhere," cried Nancy in despair.
"You don't belong with sheep and donkeys."
The old woman sat meditating. Then she smiled.
"I suppose there are sheep and donkeys the whole world over," she reflected. "Your father thought his own people were sheep and donkeys and I think mine. No, my child, you don't belong to them and you can't always belong to an old woman like me because I am old and you are young. Why were you weeping?"
"Because I was lonely and miserable," said Nancy, surprised by the abruptness of the question.
"Lonely, yes, of course, the wise are bound to be lonely. But you cannot be lonely yet. You are too young."
"I am not lonely with you," Nancy declared.
"Ha, my child, you have a way with the old. You flatter old bones like mine. But you are not yet twenty and I am seventy. I shall keep you with me; I cannot give you up. But when they carry me out to the hills there will be no place here for you. Don't you see what I have been doing?—what they have been doing too?—making it impossible for you to live here. I came here a stranger too, like yourself; ai, that was long ago. My home was in the south where it is warm and the bamboos foam up the mountain sides, but not here—" With a gesture she pictured the bleak Chihli plains, drab, leafless country which the north wind is in a desolate hurry to leave behind. "Not here—and I don't wish you to get used to the smell of horse-drench and the braying of asses. You might have got used to it, ah, that's the pity, but you never can now, for there is no place for you here. You will never be the head of this family. Ming-te has a new wife; she is your servant, yes, but the servant will become the mistress. They don't tell me that; they think I don't guess their plans; bah, they think I can live so long and be blind; but if they came to me and consulted me openly I would tell them that it is not their plan but mine."