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 CHAPTER XIX

A bird was singing rapturously in a honagko tree as Nang Ping rose from her knees. She stood awhile at her open casement—it had been flung wide all night—listening to the little feathered flutist, saying good-by to her garden. The pagoda gleamed like rose-stained snow in the rosy sunrise, and the girl smiled wanly, thinking how like a bride's cake it looked—the high tapering towers, white-sugared and fantastic, that English brides have. She had seen several at a confectioner's in Hong Kong, and she had seen an English bride cut one with her husband's sword at a bridal in Pekin. It was far prettier, Nang had thought, than the little cakes, gray and heavy, that Chinese brides have, but not so nice to the taste—flat and dry. The lotus flowers were waking now, slowly opening their painted cups of carmine, white, rose and amethyst; the peacocks were preening to the day, the king-bird of them all flinging out his jewels to the sun, and the shabbily-garbed hens, in the red kissing of the sunrise refulgence, looking to wear breasts of rose. A lark swayed and tuned on the yellow tassel of a laburnum, and a bullfinch see-sawed and throated on the acacia tree. And every gorgeous tulip was a chalice filled with dew.

"Good-by," the girl said gently, and turned away.

She still wore the rich festive robes of yesterday.