Jeremy Ammidon muttered one of his favorite pessimistic complaints. "What
did you say her name was?" he demanded abruptly.

"Taou Yuen."

"Taou Yuen Ammidon," the elder pronounced experimentally. "It doesn't
sound right, the two won't go together."

"But they have," Gerrit declared. He thought impatiently that he must
listen to a repetition of Rhoda's assertions.

"I don't know much about 'em," Jeremy proceeded. "All I saw, when I was
younger, was the little singing-girls playing mora and wailing over their
infernal three-stringed fiddles something about the moon and a bowl of
water lilies."

Taou Yuen did not come down to breakfast, and Gerrit stayed away from
their room until her toilet must be finished. It was Sunday; and with the
customary preparation for church under way William said:

"I suppose you will go down to the ship?"

The hidden question, the purpose of the inquiry, at once stirred into
being all Gerrit's perversity. "No," he replied carelessly; "we'll go
with you this morning."

"That's unheard of," William exclaimed heatedly; "a woman in all her
paint and perfume and outrageous clothes in North Church, with--with my
family! I won't have it, do you understand."