"No, of course not."
The boy was taken aback by his sister's willingness to forgo an occasion of such promising excitement. But Nancy got rid of Li-an and told her brother all the dreadful prophecies Kuei-lien had made. Edward had never thought of an engagement in this light.
"I'll go see father," declared the boy. "I'll tell him you aren't ready to be engaged."
Nancy, despite herself, smiled at his unconventional daring, but she did not stop him. It was an act Edward never before had thought of doing, to go thus uninvited to his father's room. Yet no prudence deterred him, no thought of hesitation even came into his mind.
"And what do you wish, Edward?" asked Herrick, who was sitting at his desk. He always derived tender amusement from the animated, serious ways of his son.
"Does Nancy have to be engaged now?" asked the boy, plunging into his subject with an Occidental directness for which there was no explanation except the blood in his veins, loyally Western despite all the sages of China. "She doesn't want to be engaged."
"I don't want her to be engaged either," replied the father sadly, "but time takes these affairs out of my hands."
As if to prove the truth of his statement there came suddenly the long blast of a trumpet, the lilt of wind instruments like the festival sprightliness of bagpipes, then a tremendous explosion of firecrackers, long strings of them bursting with redoubled noise in the confines of the hallway.
"You hear," indicated Herrick with a weary gesture. Time had indeed taken the affair out of his hands.
The father paced restlessly up and down the room while the noise continued. Edward's curiosity impelled the boy to join the crowd of women and servants gathered in the courtyard. The t'ai-t'ai had kept her secret so well that only the father had been prepared for the coming of the betrothal gifts, only the father had been allowed to see the trays of return gifts got ready in an outer room of the house.