With Kuei-lien's encouragement it became a habit for Nancy and Edward to go walking by themselves. No one had forbidden them. Several days of rain and Herrick's annoyance at meeting impudent intruders from his own country had interrupted the father's inclination to stroll with his children. The nurse was busy managing the house; because of her bound feet she could not have walked even had she wished. So the brother and sister assumed tacit consent for little excursions to the bottom of the ravine, whither Kuei-lien often went with them. Very happy they were to lie on the sun-baked rocks, where they could watch the dragon flies skim between the boulders and could toss leaves into the limpid pools of the stream.
These were mere short flights, a testing of the wings. Kuei-lien pretended much interest in the place where Nancy and Edward had met their Englishmen and when she suggested going there she noticed the flush of color which betrayed Nancy's own eagerness.
"Yes, there are beautiful flowers there," said the younger girl quickly.
"Aha, my child," thought Kuei-lien, "it's not the flowers you will be seeking."
There were flowers in great abundance, harebells, Michaelmas daisies, campanula, single larkspur velvety indigo in color. Of all these Nancy picked lavishly and then piled her blue spoils on the grass where she knelt looking at them, a little sorry because she had picked them and could never give back the radiant lives she had taken.
"What lots of flowers you have plucked," said Kuei-lien, smiling at Nancy's thoughtfulness. "Are you glad?"
"No," said Nancy, "I am sad for them. They die so quickly."
"What does it matter? There will be hundreds more to-morrow."
"Yes, but not these."
"They give us happiness; isn't that enough?"