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 CHAPTER IX

Wu did not see his wife in Pekin. He stayed with Li several days, and long and earnest was their talk, many and deep their interchanged kot'ows, and the cups of boiling tea and tiny bowls of hot spiced wine they drank together innumerable. Mrs. Wu was well, they assured him, and utterly inconsolable at her approaching departure from her parents. She wept and wailed continuously, and would not be comforted. Wu bowed and smiled. For this was as it should be. No Chinese maiden would do otherwise, and his bride's high estate predicated an utmost excess of grief. And once he caught through a wide courtyard the noisy storm of her grief. Evidently she had been well brought up, and Wu was highly satisfied.

He took profoundly respectful farewells of Mr. and Mrs. Li and hurried home.

And while he waited for the coming of his bride, some days thinking of it a good deal, some days thinking of it not at all, he had twofold and strenuous occupation. He divided his time between preparation for the reception and the housing of his wife, and laying the foundations of his own relations with the inumerable "tongs" or secret societies that in China play so powerful and so indescribable a part in all things of great pith and moment, and more particularly in everything touching international affairs and the treatment of aliens in China.

Sociology and political economy had been no small