"Take that," she said; "that will please him."
Herrick received the photograph and looked at it curiously. Then he frowned. The picture was one of himself taken years before, a portrait which revealed its subject in the stiff pose so dear to Chinese photographers: there were flower pots bestowed in harsh symmetry on either side of him, a drop painted to show trees and balustrades behind, and Herrick, glued to the chair, facing the camera with exasperated belligerency as though daring the lens to do its worst—which it did. The man had forgotten such a picture existed. In a moment of weakness he had given way before the entreaties of the t'ai-t'ai and consented to its being taken.
"Who put you up to bringing this atrocity?" he demanded. He tore the picture asunder and threw the pieces on the floor.
"Tell your mother," he said, "that it is rather early to be teaching her daughter to lie."
The t'ai-t'ai appeared, full of explanations, full of apologies. The child had been puzzled by her father's command, and was unhappy because she had nothing precious enough to take to her father.
"So I asked her whom she honored most. 'My father,' Li-an answered, 'of course I honor my father more than anybody.' I showed her the photograph merely to test her and instantly she begged me to let her have it. When I saw the happiness come over her face and how she valued it I suggested that this was the gift to bring to her father. I am sorry it displeased you, but there was no time to frame it suitably."
The excuse was so much more flagrant than the offense itself that the man could not keep back a burst of laughter.
"Not even from your lips can two lies cancel each other, my good lady," he remarked dryly in English. The t'ai-t'ai was a standard by which he could mark his growing absorption into Chinese life and realize how much deeper he still needed to sink himself before the waters covered his soul.
"I'm afraid your daughter is much too clever," he said, openly accepting Li-an's ill-advised act as a joke. "Fancy a child of twelve practising such artful wiles on her old father."
The mother's face beamed in relief.