mother there; she does not like my coming to you, if mother hears of it she will not love me. She will say of me, 'That girl is good-for-nothing, she omits to ask of me, her mother, and must needs ask of her father; what am I, his wife, in the house for, then?'"
And he said, "Truth, my child, and then tell me about that tango, my child."
And she said, "That tango that I came with the other day, that day when you were ill, when you went to a neighbour's to play at Bao, and came back quickly before any one had come to call you, and asked mother why it was so long, the sun had reached nine o'clock, did she not say 'The food is done, and I am washing the plates, that I may send some one to call you?' And you said, 'If the food is done, serve up.' And she said, 'It is done.' And the woman went, and served up three plates, one yours, father, one her daughter's, and one mine. Your plate of rice, and her daughter's of rice, and my own had put in it the dry part which was scorched and the head of the fish. And I went round behind with mine, and I looked at that rice and could not eat it, and I was very grieved, and cried very much, and I said, 'If my mother were alive, I should eat good rice as my companion does, who is given it by her mother.' Well, then, when you had finished eating, father, and washed your hands and went out, I too went out in the bitterness of my soul, and went to the grave of my mother, and was much grieved, and cried very much; then I got up and went round behind the grave, and looked down, and saw a tango plant, and I gathered two tangos, one I munched, and one I took myself to make a doll. When I came here into the house, mother here asked me, 'Where do you come from with the tango?' I did not tell her, 'I come with it from the grave of my mother;' I told her, 'I come with it from people's gardens
