Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/166

 brought a garden full of flowers. That call should be returned, post-haste. Perhaps she could help, the woman who had left the flowers and the absurd red card; and the girl, the little girl who had given them tea, she could help, too, to persuade the all-powerful mandarin, if it needed much to persuade him; of course she could and she would; of course she would—she had had the kindest eyes and a soft, girlish mouth. How she, his mother, wished that Basil might have shown little Miss Wu just a little more attention—not too much, of course; that might have alarmed or even offended a Chinese girl—you never could tell about such oddities; but if only he'd shown a little less—yes—a good deal less cold indifference—indifference so cold that it had been almost a rudeness—and girls felt such things, and resented them too—even Chinese girls, probably. Of course, she, his mother, rejoiced in the niceness of her boy, and that he was not as other young Englishmen were in China—some of them—but manly Aryan self-respect was one thing, and an almost brutal display of racial superiority and masculine indifference was quite another. She wished indeed, that he had treated the only child of the great Wu less cavalierly, for his manner to the pretty Chinese creature had been very cavalier—Chinese, but a girl for all that. Still, his fault was in his favor, and it was no part of a mother's office to forget that. Basil was innately and intrinsically—and she believed irradicately—nice. Thank God for it! He had been a little wild at school—the best boys always were (repeating to herself the foolish old threadbare paternal fallacy); a trifle lax at Oxford too—but, her son and always nice!

There was nothing cavalier about the way in which Ah Wong carried her fragrant burden through the hotel corridors. Her manner to the honorable flowers grown