“I speak of Li Faa,” his mother corrected with stick emphasis. “She is only half Chinese, as you know. Her mother was a shameless _kanaka_. She wears skirts like the degraded _haole_ women—also corsets, as I have seen for myself. Where are her children? Yet has she buried two husbands.” “The one was drowned, the other kicked by a horse,” Ah Kim qualified. “A year of her, unworthy son of a noble father, and you would gladly be going out to get drowned or be kicked by a horse.” Subdued chucklings and laughter from the window audience applauded her point. “You buried two husbands yourself, revered mother,” Ah Kim was stung to retort. “I had the good taste not to marry a third. Besides, my two husbands died honourably in their beds. They were not kicked by horses nor drowned at sea. What business is it of our neighbours that you should inform them I have had two husbands, or ten, or none? You have made a scandal of me, before all our neighbours, and for that I shall now give you a real beating.” Ah Kim endured the staccato rain of blows, and said when his mother paused, breathless and weary: “Always have I insisted and pleaded, honourable mother, that you beat me in the house, with the windows and doors closed tight, and not in the open street or the garden open behind the house. “You have called this unthinkable Li Faa the Silvery Moon Blossom,” Mrs. Tai Fu rejoined, quite illogically and femininely, but with utmost success in so far as she deflected her son from continuance of the thrust he had so swiftly driven home. “Mrs. Chang Lucy told you,” he charged. “I was told over the telephone,” his mother evaded. “I do not know all voices that speak to me over that contrivance of all the devils.” Strangely, Ah Kim made no effort to run away from his mother, which he could easily have done. She, on the other hand, found fresh cause for more stick blows. “Ah! Stubborn one! Why do you not cry? Mule that shameth its ancestors! Never have I made you cry. From the time you were a little boy I have never made you cry. Answer me! Why do you not cry?” Weak and breathless from her exertions, she dropped the stick and panted and shook as if with a nervous palsy. “I do not know, except that it is my way,” Ah Kim replied, gazing solicitously at his mother. “I shall bring you a chair now, and you will sit down and rest and feel better.” But she flung away from him with a snort and tottered agedly across the garden into the house. Meanwhile recovering his skull-cap and smoothing his disordered attire, Ah Kim rubbed his hurts and gazed after her with eyes of devotion. He even smiled, and almost might it appear that he had enjoyed the beating. * * * * *