Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/117

 "Wu." The English woman said it slowly, as if trying to send, on the sound of it, her peccant memory back to some forgotten hour.

"Oh! it is a most general name. It means Military. I do not know why, for," she added almost hastily, "we have had no soldiers in our family—everything almost but that. All Chinese names mean something, but of most of them—they are so old—the meaning is lost in the mists of far, far back, uncounted years before history was written or kept in record. And perhaps I ought to have remembered that one Wu was a soldier once. Wu Sankwei defended Ningyuan against T'ientsung when the Manchus first overran China. But that was, oh! so many years ago, and since then none of my honorable ancestors have been soldiers—or at least very few," she added, with a sudden blush beneath her paint, too honest to conceal from Basil's mother, who was also her guest, her military forbears, descent from whom she felt to be a bitter disgrace, though she knew, as every educated Chinese must, that in all China's long history there are few greater names than that of Wu Sankwei, the defender of Ningyuan. "'Li' is the name in China the most common and perhaps the most proud. It is our 'Smith' name. And we are very proud of it, because many of its men have been great and noble, and because their honorable wives have borne them many children. Scarcely the census-takers can count the Lis. My honorable mother was a Li before my honorable father married her to be Mrs. Wu. They were cousins, but more than a century away—'twenty times removed,' as you would call it in your English. The honorable Li Hung Chang's our distant kinsman, my honorable kinsman on both sides. My own honorable father has 'Li' blood on the