A sibilant warning from one of his clerks was too late. Having regained the house by way of the back alley, Mrs. Tai Fu emerged right upon them from out of the living apartments. Never had Ah Kim seen his mother’s eyes so blazing furious. She ignored Li Faa, as she screamed at him: “Now will I make you cry. As never before shall I beat you until you do cry.” “Then let us go into the back rooms, honourable mother,” Ah Kim suggested. “We will close the windows and the doors, and there may you beat me.” “No. Here shall you be beaten before all the world and this shameless woman who would, with her own hand, take you by the ear and call such sacrilege marriage! Stay, shameless woman.” “I am going to stay anyway,” said Li Faa. She favoured the clerks with a truculent stare. “And I’d like to see anything less than the police put me out of here.” “You will never be my daughter-in-law,” Mrs. Tai Fu snapped. Li Faa nodded her head in agreement. “But just the same,” she added, “shall your son be my third husband.” “You mean when I am dead?” the old mother screamed. “The sun rises each morning,” Li Faa said enigmatically. “All my life have I seen it rise—” “You are forty, and you wear corsets.” “But I do not dye my hair—that will come later,” Li Faa calmly retorted. “As to my age, you are right. I shall be forty-one next Kamehameha Day. For forty years I have seen the sun rise. My father was an old man. Before he died he told me that he had observed no difference in the rising of the sun since when he was a little boy. The world is round. Confucius did not know that, but you will find it in all the geography books. The world is round. Ever it turns over on itself, over and over and around and around. And the times and seasons of weather and life turn with it. What is, has been before. What has been, will be again. The time of the breadfruit and the mango ever recurs, and man and woman repeat themselves. The robins nest, and in the springtime the plovers come from the north. Every spring is followed by another spring. The coconut palm rises into the air, ripens its fruit, and departs. But always are there more coconut palms. This is not all my own smart talk. Much of it my father told me. Proceed, honourable Mrs. Tai Fu, and beat your son who is my Third Husband To Be. But I shall laugh. I warn you I shall laugh.” Ah Kim dropped down on his knees so as to give his mother every advantage. And while she rained blows upon him with the bamboo stick, Li Faa smiled and giggled, and finally burst into laughter. “Harder, O honourable Mrs. Tai Fu!” Li Faa urged between paroxysms of mirth.