The whisky spree had only been an appropriate celebration in honor of the man-child on whom Nag Hong Fah had set his heart; and it was because of this unborn son and the unborn son’s future that her husband rose from his tumbled couch, bland, fat, without headache or heartache, left the flat, and bargained for an hour with Yung Long, who was a wholesale grocer, with warehouses in Canton, Manila, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver, British Columbia. ―――― Not a word was said about either Yung Quai or Fanny. The talk dealt entirely with canned bamboo sprouts and preserved leeches, and pickled star-fruit, and brittle almond cakes. It was only after the price had been decided upon and duly sealed with the right phrases and palm touching palm—afterwards, though nothing in writing had passed, neither party could recede from the bargain without losing face—that Yung Long remarked, very casually: “By the way, the terms are cash—spot cash,” and he smiled. For he knew that the restaurant proprietor was an audacious merchant who relied on long credits and future profits, and to whom in the past he had always granted ninety days’ leeway without question or special agreement. Nag Hong Fah smiled in his turn; a slow, thin, enigmatic smile. “I brought the cash with me,” he replied, pulling a wad of greenbacks from his pocket, and both gentlemen looked at each other with a great deal of mutual respect. “Forty-seven dollars and thirty-three cents saved on the first business of my married life,” Nag Hong Fah said to his assembled clan that night at the Place of Sweet Desire and Heavenly Entertainment. “Ah, I shall have a fine, large business to leave to the man-child which my wife shall bear me!” ―――― And the man-child came—golden-haired, blue-eyed, yellow-skinned, and named Brian in honor of Fanny’s apocryphal uncle who owned the Bowery saloon. For the christening Nag Hong Fah sent out special invitations—pink cards lettered with virulent magenta and bordered with green forget-me-nots and purple roses; with an advertisement of the Great Shanghai Chop Suey Palace on the reverse side. He also bestowed upon his wife a precious bracelet of cloudy white jade, earrings of green jade cunningly inlaid with blue feathers, a chest of carved Tibetan soapstone, a bottle of French perfume, a pound of Mandarin blossom tea for which he paid seventeen dollars wholesale, a set of red Chinese sables, and a new Caruso record for the victrola.