"I am trying to make my father well. She is trying to make him ill," groaned Nancy, addressing her father in desperation. Kuei-lien snorted in bitter amusement.
"What profit would there be for me in making him ill? Doesn't my life depend upon his? Do I wish to be turned away like a penniless beggar?"
"This has gone far enough," protested Herrick, rousing himself to the distasteful duty of interference. "You are both wrong to quarrel in this shameless way."
Nancy's self-possession had been too sorely tested in recent days. She could not hold back tears of vexation at hearing her words dismissed as a vulgar quarrel.
"Oh my father, they are killing you, killing you, and robbing you!" she cried.
Kuei-lien scoffed.
"A nice imagination your daughter has," she said. "She has borrowed too many novels from her old amah."
"Isn't it the truth?" demanded Nancy.
"Oh yes, of course it's the truth if you insist upon it. Your father is so helpless, isn't he, that he must need his seventeen-year-old daughter for a nurse to protect him!"
Herrick had grown more and more uncomfortable; this bickering was compromising his dignity, making him a laughingstock.