No sooner had the girls opened the mirror case, than terrible things happened. The mother, who was behind the daughter, saw the face of a young woman and was startled at beholding a stranger, as she thought, in her house. Instantly she broke out in a fit of jealous passion.
“Your father has brought home another woman, a ge-sang, from Seoul, to take my place. What does he mean?”
At the same time the daughter, seeing a face in the polished metal, cried out, “No mother, we won’t have any strange woman in your place. Besides she’s too young and will be a tyrant to us.”
Hearing the loud voices and crying, the grandmother hobbled in and asked what was the matter.
“Look, see for yourself, what our daddy has brought home to us to make us miserable.”
Seeing the mirror, Granny looked into it for a moment. Then she too burst into a passion, and cried out, “I won’t have this old woman in our house. It’s enough for my son to support me and his family. Oh, why did he go to Seoul?”
By this time there was such a racket with four women, young, middle-aged, and old, crying so lustily, that each one quickly used up three paper [[125]]handkerchiefs apiece, before they could dry their tears.
While still crying out, “ugo, ugo!” very loudly, grandfather came in, shaking his stick and ordering them to be quiet. Then, looking at their streaming faces and dropping tears, he demanded to know the cause of the trouble.
“See for yourself,” said his wife. Then she handed him the metal trouble-maker, such as had never before been seen in the village.
At once the old man turned almost purple with rage.