Short Stories
together and wedding of a man and a woman? Paint them,
paint them apart, the three originals, unrelated, so that we
may know how the wise men of old wisely built up the ideo-
graph of to marry."
And Ah Kim, obeying and painting, saw that what he had
painted were three picture-signs—the picture-signs of a hand,
an ear, and a woman.
"Name them," said his mother; and he named them.
"It is true," said she. "It is a great tale. It is the stuff of the
painted pictures of marriage. Such marriage was in the begin-
ning; such shall it always be in my house. The hand of the
man takes the woman's ear, and by it leads her away to his
house, where she is to be obedient to him and to his mother. I
was taken by the ear, so, by your long honourably dead father.
I have looked at your hand. It is not like his hand. Also have I
looked at the ear of Li Faa. Never will you lead her by the ear.
She has not that kind of an ear. I shall live a long time yet, and
I will be mistress in my son's house, after our ancient way, un-
til I die."
"But she is my revered ancestress," Ah Kim explained to Li
Faa.
He was timidly unhappy; for Li Faa, having ascertained that
Mrs. Tai Fu was at the temple of the Chinese AEsculapius mak-
ing a food offering of dried duck and prayers for her declining
health, had taken advantage of the opportunity to call upon him
in his store.
Li Faa pursed her insolent, unpainted lips into the form of a
half- opened rosebud, and replied:
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