"Well, what I mean is that Basil must return home before all the eligible young ladies of his acquaintance forget him."
"That means"—the girl's voice hurt her throat—"he is going home to marry?"
"Well," his mother admitted, "there is a young lady at home, I believe, who will be very glad to see him again, so I hope it will eventually come to that."
Nang Ping laughed. And Mrs. Gregory thought, "How very oddly the Chinese laugh! It's anything but gay."
"And he will never come back?"—the strange creature said it with a smile.
"Oh, yes!" Hilda said, joining them, "some day, perhaps, when he has settled down, to take charge of this branch."
"I'm afraid Basil is the sort of son who never settles down," his mother said lightly. Nang Ping thought it most strange, and not nice, that the mother should say it at all, but she quite believed—now—that it was true. She rose, and clapped her hands for Ah Sing.
"If you will honor me by taking tea," she said, and led the way to the highly decorated table where the ornate meal was elaborately laid, the blue-clad servants standing about it in a circle, as still as stones. At their young mistress's approach they bowed almost to the ground—so low that their cues swept the grass, and one caught and tangled in a verbena bed. Mrs. Gregory suppressed a smile, but Hilda could not suppress a low giggle. But she tried to, and that much is to her credit.
"How jolly!" she cried, as they sat down to an accompaniment of many bows from the cousins. "How perfectly jolly!"
"Delightful!" agreed her mother. And Nang Ping,
