“Little Sister Hsia!” she announced.
“Oh, Madame Wu — oh, Madame Kang!” Little Sister Hsia cried. She was a tall, thin, pale woman, now nearly middle-aged, whose birthplace was England. The scanty hair on her head was the color of sand, and she had fish eyes. Her nose was thin and high, and her lips were blue. In her Western dress of striped gray cotton she looked older than she was, but even at her best she could never have been pretty. Long ago the two Chinese ladies had come to this conclusion. But they liked her for her goodness and pitied her for her lonely life in the city where there were so few of her kind. They did not, as some of their friends did, put her off with excuses when she came to see them. Indeed, in this both Madame Wu and Madame Kang were much too kind. But since Little Sister Hsia was a virgin, there could be no talk in her presence of concubines.
“Please sit down, Little Sister,” Madame Wu said in her pretty voice. “Have you eaten your breakfast?”
Little Sister Hsia laughed. She had never, in spite of many years of living in the city, learned to be wholly at ease with the ladies. She laughed incessantly while she talked. “Oh … I get up to box farmers,” she said. She studied Chinese faithfully every day, but since she had a dull ear she still spoke as a Westerner. Now she confused the sounds of two words. The two ladies looked at each other with a faint bewilderment, although they were accustomed to Little Sister’s confusions.
“Box farmers?” Madame Kang repeated.
“Resemble farmers,” Madame Wu murmured. “The two words are much alike, it is true.”
“Oh, did I say that?” Little Sister cried, laughing. “Oh, please, I am too stupid!”
But Madame Wu saw the red rush up from her neck and spot her pale skin, and she understood the tumult in this uneasy foreign heart.
“Ying, bring some tea and some little cakes,” she said. “Bring some of the long-life cakes,” she added, and relented. “Why should I not tell my foreign friend that it is my birthday?”
“Oh, your birthday!” Little Sister Hsia cried. “Oh, I didn’t know—”
“Why should you know?” Madame Wu asked. “I am forty years old today.”
Little Sister Hsia gazed at her with eyes that were wistful. “Forty?” she repeated. She fluttered her hands and laughed her meaningless shy laughter. “Why,” she stammered, “why, Madame Wu, you look twenty.”
“How old are you, Little Sister?” Madame Kang asked politely.
Madame Wu looked at her with gentle reproach. “Meichen, I have never told you, but it is not polite, according to the Western custom, to ask a woman’s age. My second son’s wife, who has lived in Shanghai and knows foreigners, told me so.”
“Not polite?” Madame Kang repeated. Her round black eyes looked blank. “Why not?”
“Oh, ha, ha!” Little Sister Hsia laughed. “It doesn’t matter — I have been here so long, I am so used—”
Madame Kang looked at her with mild interest. “Then how old are you?” she asked again.
Little Sister Hsia was suddenly solemn. “Oh — thirtyish,” she said in a low quick voice.
Madame Kang did not understand her. “Thirty-six,” she repeated amiably.
“No, no, not thirty-six, not so much,” Little Sister Hsia was laughing again, but there was protest in the laughter.
Madame Wu heard this protest. “Come,” she said, “what does age matter? It is a good thing to live life year by year, enjoying each year.” She understood, by her gift of divining others, that the matter of age touched this Western woman because she was still a virgin. An old virgin! She had once seen this before in her own mother’s family. Her mother’s mother’s youngest sister had remained an old virgin, because the man she had been about to marry had died. The family had admired her and at the same time had been irritated daily by an elderly unmarried woman withering under their roof. At last, for her own peace, she had become a nun. In a fashion this Western woman was also perhaps a nun.
In her great kindness Madame Wu now said, “I have guests coming in a short time, Little Sister, but before they come preach a little gospel to us.” She knew that nothing pleased the foreign woman so much as to preach.
Little Sister Hsia looked at her with gratitude and reached her hand into a deep black bag she carried with her always. Out of this she brought a thick book with a worn leather cover and a black spectacle case. She took out the spectacles and put them on her high nose and opened the book.
“I was guided today, dear Madame Wu,” she said in an earnest and touching voice, “to tell you the story of the man who built his house on sand.”
Madame Kang rose. “Excuse me,” she said in her loud somewhat flat voice. “I left my family affairs unsettled.”
She bowed and walked out of the court with her heavy solid footsteps.
Madame Wu, who had risen, sat down again as soon as she was gone, and calling Ying to her side she gave direction that the broth she had promised was to be sent after Madame Kang for her grandson. Then she smiled faintly at Little Sister Hsia. “Tell me what your lord said to this man who built his house on sand,” she said courteously.
“Dear Madame Wu, he is your Lord, too,” Little Sister Hsia breathed. “You have only to accept Him.”
Madame Wu smiled. “It is very kind of him, and you must tell him so,” she said, still courteously. “Now proceed, my friend.”
There was something so unapproachable in Madame Wu’s dignity as she said this that Little Sister Hsia began to read nervously. Her broken accent made the story difficult to follow, but Madame Wu listened gravely, her eyes fixed on the darting goldfish. Twice Ying came to the door of the court and made signs over Little Sister’s bent head, but Madame Wu shook her head slightly. As soon as Little Sister Hsia was finished, however, she rose. “Thank you, Little Sister,” she said. “That was a pleasant story. Please come again when I have time.”
But Little Sister Hsia, who had also been planning a prayer, rose unwillingly, fumbling with her bag and her spectacles and the heavy book.
“Shall we not have a little prayer?” Her mistaken accent really said “cake” instead of “prayer,” and for a moment Madame Wu was confused. They had had cakes, had they not? Then she understood and in kindness did not smile.
“You pray for me at home, Little Sister,” she said. “Just now I have other duties.”
She began walking toward the door of the court as she spoke, and Ying suddenly appeared and took over Little Sister Hsia, and Madame Wu was alone again. She returned to the pool and stood looking down in it, her slender figure reflected in it quite clearly from head to foot. The orchids, she discovered, were still in her hand, and she lifted that hand and let the flowers fall into the water. A swarm of goldfish darted up and nibbled at the orchids and swerved away again.
“Nothing but flowers,” she said, and laughed a little at them. They were always hungry! A house built on sand? But she could never be so foolish. This house in which she lived had already stood for hundreds of years. Twenty generations of the Wu family had lived and died here.
“Mother, I should have come before to wish you long life.” She heard her eldest son’s voice from the door. She turned.
“Come in, my son,” she said.
“Long life, Mother!” Liangmo said with affection. He had bowed before his mother half playfully when he came in. The Wu family was not quite old-fashioned enough to keep the ancient custom of kneeling obeisance to elders on birthdays, but the bow was in memory of that old custom.
Madame Wu accepted his greeting with a graceful receiving bow. “Thank you, my son,” she said. “Now sit down. I want to talk to you.”