CHAPTER VI
Heart Ache
But it was summer again before he went. The mandarin
was taken ill soon on their home-coming, and
all through the cold northern winter only just lived.
Death means little to the Chinese, but somehow, for all
his relentlessness of purpose, for all his iron of will, the
old man could not bring himself to part with the child
while his megrim was sharp. With spring he grew better,
and when the great tassels of the wistaria were
plump and deeply purpled he sent the boy with his tutor
to Hong Kong.
They took their parting in a room in which they had passed much of their close and pleasant companionship. James Muir understood that the old man avoided, both for himself and the lad, the strain of the parting, long drawn out, that the cross-country journey must have been. And Muir suspected also that the mandarin did not dare the bodily fatigue of such a journey, no matter how easily and luxuriously taken.
Muir was right. But chiefly, Wu chose to say good-by in their home—the home that had been theirs for generations and for centuries.
Except a few pagodas there is not an old building in China. The picturesque houses, with their pavilions and their triple roofs, flower-pot hung, curling and multi-*colored, spring up like mushrooms, and decay as soon. Houses last a few generations—perhaps. Great cities
