Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/233

 she did, him she dared not question. He sent her to call on an English lady in the Barbarians' Hotel on the Peak, and she went, half dead with embarrassment, and carrying a splendid offering of flowers. The lady was out—the mandarin had almost counted on that—and Sing Kung Yah scudded back home, as fast as she could induce the servants to carry her, and burned a score of "thank-you" joss-sticks.

That she was to receive that same lady to-day, and at the very gates, was a care, but one that sat on her more lightly. She was at home here, surrounded by her customary servants, and she might know more or less what to do, how to conduct herself in the unprecedented presence of a foreign guest. And she was thinking of Nang Ping far more than of her own approaching social ordeal, as she sat in her own apartment eating perfumed ginger and quails dressed with sour clotted cream, and waiting for the summons to the gate.

Both were very good: the ginger embedded in jelly-of-rose leaves, and the hot, hot quail smothered in thick ice-cold sauce. She was very nervous, but somewhat phlegmatically resigned, plying her delicate chop-sticks industriously, now in the deep blue and white Nankin-*ware jar of fragrant confiture, now in the silver dish where the sizzling, savory quail was too hot to be cooled by the icy cream, the sour cream too cold to be lukewarmed by the quail.

Just at six her summons came. She sighed a little, gulped down a tiny bowlful of bright green tea, and toddled off almost confidently to play hostess to the lady of the mandarin's latest whim, a little at a loss for herself, but happily and proudly confident that Wu Li Chang could do no wrong, much less blunder, and toddling fantastically because her feet were very small*