Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/43

 drew his palm gently from his friend's, and turned quietly away and walked to the saloon stairs. Muir turned too, and watched the quaint, gorgeous figure as it went—so pitifully magnificent, so pathetically lonely—but did not follow. He understood that the boy wished to be alone. And he himself was glad to be alone just then.

Two hours later, when the dressing warning went, he found his charge in their cabin. Wu had no wish for dinner. He had been crying—almost for the first time in his life; the Chinese rarely weep—and besides, he was very sick. Muir dressed without speaking much, and when dinner was served mercifully left the boy to himself and his pillows.

Across China an old man in shabby robes left his rice untouched, and bowed long before the ancestral tablets of his race.

And that night in her sleep Wu Li Lu gave a little cry; she had cut a tooth.