"Is she really a concubine?" asked Elizabeth in awe. "She is such a dear, and prettier than a picture," a compliment well earned by Kuei-lien's unerring skill in the colors she chose to combine, jacket and trousers of a slatish tan piped with magenta brocade.
Back and forth between them Nancy translated flattering remarks. The servants stood gaping. The old nurse ran hither and thither, like a bemuddled hen, cackling interminable yet disjointed recollections to any and all who even seemed to listen. The nine bowls were got at last on to the table, despite the confusion which prevailed, and Nancy was made amends for her awkwardness with knife and fork by the merrily clumsy way her guests wielded chopsticks.
"I believe you arranged this deliberately to have your revenge," said Helen, surveying the havoc they had wreaked on pork balls and bean curd.
Herrick himself came to view this unprecedented party. Nancy, Edward, Kuei-lien, all rose at his entry. The others followed, while the elderly man insisted upon shaking hands with his three visitors.
"Eat, my children," he said; "don't stand any more. It does an old man good to see so many young faces."
"Why do they have to grow up?" he kept repeating, when he had gone back to Nasmith and Beresford. "Why do they have to grow up? Children are the only good thing in this world. Excuse my curiosity. I have learned Chinese ways, you know—you are not married, are you?"
They were not.
"Of course; I forgot. You Englishmen don't marry so young. I suppose you are not thirty? Only twenty-four? Each of you. Ah, that's a promising age—and a difficult age, too. Well, we'd all of us risk the difficulties, would we not?"
His inquiries went further. He extracted their names, told them his own, apologized for having none but Chinese cards to offer in return for their own. So they were teaching in a Government technical school; did they like it? With insinuating persistence he found out their opinions of China. He read them a little homily on the classics, translated lyrics from the glorious T'ang poetry, grew genial and discursive, giving rein to his love of the mountains and trees and falling streams and unfading children, always children,—ah, why could they not take the immortality of the sun they played in?—and he ended before their wondering eyes by writing them each a pair of scrolls in large symmetrical characters, the characters to which he had given thirty years of his life. He translated them:—
"The sun moving to the west kindles a splendid beacon for the moon;
The moon following from the east tenderly displays the reflection
of the sun."