“Mother, honored parent! Come back and tell me of the new birth!” he cried. But there was no response. Fou Wang returned to the grave and lighted the incense. But he did not wait to see its smoke ascend. Instead he hastened to the house of Kien Lung and said to the girl who met him at the door: “No more shall my longing for thee take the fragrance from the flowers and the light from the sun and moon.” THE PRIZE CHINA BABY The baby was the one gleam of sunshine in Fin Fan’s life, and how she loved it no words can tell. When it was first born, she used to lie with her face turned to its little soft, breathing mouth and think there was nothing quite so lovely in the world as the wee pink face before her, while the touch of its tiny toes and fingers would send wonderful thrills through her whole body. Those were delightful days, but, oh, how quickly they sped. A week after the birth of the little Jessamine Flower, Fin Fan was busy winding tobacco leaves in the dark room behind her husband’s factory. Winding tobacco leaves had been Fin Fan’s occupation ever since she had become Chung Kee’s wife, and hard and dreary work it was. Now, however, she did not mind it quite so much, for in a bunk which was built on one side of the room was a most precious bundle, and every now and then she would go over to that bunk and crow and coo to the baby therein. But though Fin Fan prized her child so highly, Jessamine Flower’s father would rather she had not been born, and considered the babe a nuisance because she took up so much of her mother’s time. He would rather that Fin Fan spent the hours in winding tobacco leaves than in nursing baby. However, Fin Fan managed to do both, and by dint of getting up very early in the morning and retiring very late at night, made as much money for her husband after baby was born as she ever did before. And it was well for her that that was so, as the baby would otherwise have been taken from her and given to some other more fortunate woman. Not that Fin Fan considered herself unfortunate. Oh, no! She had been a hard-working little slave all her life, and after her mistress sold her to be wife to Chung Kee, she never dreamt of complaining, because, though a wife, she was still a slave. When Jessamine flower was about six months old one of the ladies of the Mission, in making her round of Chinatown, ran in to see Fin Fan and her baby. “What a beautiful child!” exclaimed the lady. “And, oh, how cunning,” she continued, noting the amulets on the little ankles and wrists, the tiny, quilted vest and gay little trousers in which Fin Fan had arrayed her treasure. Fin Fan sat still and shyly smiled, rubbing her chin slowly against the baby’s round cheek. Fin Fan was scarcely more than a child herself in years.