"Good God!" exclaimed Herrick in English, "have we got to find another?"
"My heart will have no peace till she is engaged," she said.
"But Li-an is only a babe in arms."
"She is twelve," the mother repeated.
"I hardly know the child. Bring her here. Let me talk to her."
Herrick's attention had in truth been so predominantly centred on Nancy and Edward that the second daughter came before her father like a stranger. There had never been the contact of English lessons to quicken his knowledge of this fast growing girl.
"Yes, she is pretty," he thought to himself, "and, thank heaven, Chinese."
Herrick examined the scholarship of his daughter, put many questions which she answered cleverly. Then the whim seized him to ask what he had asked of Nancy, to see how she would pass the test of bringing what she valued most. Li-an went at once to her mother and told her of Herrick's strange request.
"The most precious thing you have?" inquired the t'ai-t'ai. "What a thing to ask! We must think about it and make sure not to disappoint him. You might take a copy of Mencius, or the Four Books, or perhaps your ink-stone and brush. No, they won't do; I have a much better plan."
She extracted a photograph from her box.