that this was not the revelation for which she had hoped. A momentary
silence, the edge of an uneasiness, enveloped the visitors.

"What lovely satins," Mrs. Saltonstone commented.

"Please--I have a box full; you will let me give you some?"

"Indeed yes, and thank you."

Mrs. Wibird, growing resentful, said that a cousin of her aunt's had been
a missionary to China, "and did a very blessed work too."

Taou Yuen smoothly agreed that it was quite possible. "Our poor have a
great many wrong and lustful ideas," she acknowledged; "they tell lies
and beat their wives and gamble. The higher classes too, the mandarins
and princes, use the people for their own security and rob them.
Sometimes the law is not honest, and a man with gold gets free when a
laborer is put in the bamboo cage."

Mrs. Clifford said very vigorously, "Ha!"

The silence returned intensified.

"I remember," the Manchu went on, "this will amuse you. My father-in-law,
who was in the Canton Customs, told me that some boxes of Bibles came out
from America, with other objects, and when they were opened at the
Mission they were the wrong ones and filled with rum."

There was not, however, any marked appreciation of this on the part of
the Salem women. They rose to leave and Taou Yuen sank on her knee. She