flower-branch.

"I have been meaning to call for a long time, Mrs. Li," said the
foreign-born woman.

"The great wife will receive thee with much honor," Dong-Yung answered.

"I am so glad you came with your husband."

"Yes," Dong-Yung answered, with a little smile. "The customs of the
foreign born are pleasant to our eyes."

"I am glad you like them," said the foreign-born woman. "I couldn't bear
not to go everywhere with my husband."

Dong-Yung liked her suddenly on account of the look that sprang up a
moment in her eyes and vanished again. She looked across at the priest,
her husband, a man in black, with thin lips and seeing eyes. The eyes
of the foreign woman, looking at the priest, her husband, showed how
much she loved him. "She loves him even as a small wife loves,"
Dong-Yung thought to herself. Dong-Yung watched the two men, the one in
imperial yellow, the one in black, sitting beside each other and
talking. Dong-Yung knew they were talking of the search. The
foreign-born woman was speaking to her again.

"The doctor told me I would die if I came to China; but John felt he had
a call. I would not stand in his way."

The woman's face was illumined.

"And now you are very happy?" Dong-Yung announced.

"And now I am very happy; just as you will be very happy."

"I am always happy since my lord took me for his small wife." Dong-Yung
matched her happiness with the happiness of the foreign-born woman,
proudly, with assurance. In her heart she knew no woman, born to eat
bitterness, had ever been so happy as she in all the worlds beneath the
heavens. She looked around her, beyond the failure of the foreign
woman's garden, at the piled, peaked roofs of China looking over the
wall. The fragrance of a blossoming plum-tree stole across from a
Chinese courtyard, and a peach-branch waved pink in the air. A wonder of
contentment filled Dong-Yung.

All the while Foh-Kyung was talking. Dong-Yung turned back from all the
greenness around her to listen. He sat very still, with his hands hid in
his sleeves. The wave-ridged hem of his robe--blue and green and purple
and red and yellow--was spread out decorously above his feet. Dong-Yung
looked and looked at him, so still and motionless and so gorgeously
arrayed. She looked from his feet, long, slim, in black satin slippers,
and close-fitting white muslin socks, to the feet of the foreign priest.
His feet were huge, ugly black things. From his feet Dong-Yung's eyes
c