The home of my future husband was some little way off, and his father was a broken-down scholar, who kept a small school, and was a slave to opium. The lad was his youngest son. The mother bore a bad reputation for quarrelling and scolding, so you may imagine I didn’t look forward with much pleasure to entering my new home, and hoped the day was far off. But it came sooner than I expected. When I was about seven years old, I began to notice that father was away a great deal at night, and that we didn’t get much to eat. The furniture slowly disappeared, and our clothes were poor and scanty. My mother seemed anxious, and cried much. I found out the meaning of it one day when I caught sight of father slinking into a dirty hovel near by, which I knew to be an opium den. Alas, he had become a victim to the “foreign smoke”! Day by day the craving grew upon him, and every scrap of money he could get went in opium, and mother had to support herself and me by making shoes and washing clothes. Father ate but little, and gave mother so little money that we were nearly starved. In the morning, before the craving came on again, he was very miserable and bad-tempered. He cursed himself and the English who, he said, had brought this evil on China; yet he couldn’t break away from the habit, and things grew worse and worse. Very soon we had to move into a smaller house, and had hardly any possessions. Mother did the best she could, but no money was safe from father; and one day she said she could bear it no longer, and went out with a wild look on her face. She soon returned with some black stuff that looked like paint, and went into the bedroom crying. After a while she was quiet, and I thought she was sleeping, so I went away to play. It was some time before I returned, but mother was still sleeping. She looked so strange that I ran next door to ask them to come. They came; and at once there was a great hubbub, and somebody ran for father, but he was smoking opium and wouldn’t come. Then I knew that the black stuff mother had bought was opium, and that she had swallowed it to end her troubles. Her relatives came and made a great row. They abused father, and he abused them; and they demanded a lot of money, now mother was dead, though they never tried to help her when she was alive. Father didn’t seem to care much, as opium eats all the spirit and manhood out of its victims. He hadn’t any money, so thought the best thing was to send me at once to my future husband’s home, and so obtain the amount they had practically bought me for. With this he was enabled to satisfy mother’s relatives, and I soon found myself transferred to my new home. I never saw my father again. The cruel opium had made me worse than an orphan. CHAPTER III. LITTLE GOLDEN LILIES.