"I'm sure we'd be tremendously interested," Mrs. Saltonstone hurriedly put in, "if you'd tell us about your wedding. A Chinese wedding must be--be very gay, with firecrackers and--" "My marriage with Captain Ammidon was not beautiful--I was a widow and he foreign. The Manchu wedding is very nice. First there is the engagement ceremony. I sit like this," she sank gracefully to the floor, cross-legged, "on the bed with my eyes shut, and, if I am noble, two princesses come and put the _ju yi_, it's jade and means all joy, on my lap. Two little silk bags hang from the buttons of my gown with gold coins, and two gold rings on my fingers must be marked with _Ta hsi_, that's great happiness." "I'm told polygamy is an active practice," Mrs. Wibird remarked with a rising interest. "Yes?" Taou Yuen asked. "One man--a lot of wives." "The Emperor has a great many and some Manchus take a second and third. You think that is wrong here. Who knows! The Chinese women are very good, very modest. The Four Books For Girls teach perfect submission; the five virtues are benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, sincerity. Confucius says, 'The root is filial piety.'" "Very admirable," Mrs. Wibird nodded, agitating the small dyed ostrich plumes tipped with marabou of her bonnet; but it was clear to Sidsall that this was not the revelation for which she had hoped. A momentary silence, the edge of an uneasiness, enveloped the visitors. "What lovely satins," Mrs. Saltonstone commented. "Please--I have a box full; you will let me give you some?" "Indeed yes, and thank you." Mrs. Wibird, growing resentful, said that a cousin of her aunt's had been a missionary to China, "and did a very blessed work too." Taou Yuen smoothly agreed that it was quite possible. "Our poor have a great many wrong and lustful ideas," she acknowledged; "they tell lies and beat their wives and gamble. The higher classes too, the mandarins and princes, use the people for their own security and rob them. Sometimes the law is not honest, and a man with gold gets free when a laborer is put in the bamboo cage." Mrs. Clifford said very vigorously, "Ha!" The silence returned intensified. "I remember," the Manchu went on, "this will amuse you. My father-in-law, who was in the Canton Customs, told me that some boxes of Bibles came out from America, with other objects, and when they were opened at the Mission they were the wrong ones and filled with rum."