“_And_ childless! _And_ in San Francisco! _And_ divorced from me!” “But there is her older brother, Yung Long, the head of the Yung clan. He is powerful and rich—the richest man in Pell Street! He would consider this new marriage of yours a disgrace to his face. Chiefly since the woman is a foreigner!” “She is not. Only her hair and her eyes are foreign.” “Where hair and eyes lead, the call of the blood follows,” rejoined Nag Sen Yat, and he reiterated his warning about Yung Long. But the other shook his head. “Do not give wings to trouble. It flies swiftly without them,” he quoted. “Too, the soothsayer read in the painted sticks that Fanny Mei Hi will bear me sons. One—perhaps two. Afterward, if indeed it be so that the drop of barbarian blood has clouded the clear mirror of her Chinese soul, I can always take back into my household the beautiful and honorable Yung Quai, whom I divorced and sent to California because she is childless. She will then adopt the sons which the other woman will bear me—and everything will be extremely satisfactory.” And so he put on his best American suit, called on Fanny, and proposed to her with a great deal of dignity and elaborate phrases. ―――― “Sure I’ll marry you,” said Fanny. “Sure! I’d rather be the wife of the fattest, yellowest Chink in New York than live the sorta life I’m livin’—see, Chinkie-Toodles?” “Chinkie-Toodles” smiled. He looked her over approvingly. He said to himself that doubtless the painted sticks had spoken the truth, that she would bear him men-children. His own mother had been a river-girl, purchased during a drought for a handful of parched grain; and had died in the odor of sanctity, with nineteen Buddhist priests following her gaily lacquered coffin, wagging their shaven polls ceremoniously, and mumbling flattering and appropriate verses from “Chin-Kong-Ching.” Fanny, on the other hand, though wickedly and lyingly insisting on her pure white blood, knew that a Chinaman is broad-minded and free-handed, that he makes a good husband, and beats his wife rather less often than a white man of the corresponding scale of society. Of course, gutter-bred, she was aggressively insistent upon her rights.