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pudding generously into Old Lady’s bowl.
    “Spoon—where’s my spoon?” Old Lady muttered, and Madame Wu put a spoon into the old hand.
    Then she continued to watch Mr. Wu thoughtfully while everybody at the table was silent in enjoyment of the dish. Mr. Wu was beyond doubt lingering beside Madame Kang’s pretty daughter. The child was modern, too modern, for her hair was cut to her shoulders and curled in the foreign fashion. She had been to school for a year in Shanghai before that city was taken by the enemy. Now she frequently made her mother and father wretched by her discontent in living in this small provincial city.
    Madame Wu watched her as she lifted her head and replied pertly to something Mr. Wu had said. Mr. Wu laughed and went on, and Madame Wu took her spoon and dipped up a fragment of the glutinous sweet. When Mr. Wu returned she looked at him with her long clear eyes.
    “Thank you, my sons’ father,” she said, and her voice was its usual music.
    The feast went on its long pleasant course. The sweet was followed by meats, and then at last by the six bowls. Instead of rice the cook had made long fine noodles, because it was a birthday feast and the long noodles were a symbol of long life. Madame Wu, always delicate at eating, refused the meats, but it was necessary that she eat some of the noodles. They were made even longer than usual by the zealous cook, but she wound them with graceful skill around her chopsticks.
    But Old Lady had no such patience. She held the heaped bowl to her mouth with her left hand and pushed the noodles into her mouth with her chopsticks, supping them in like a child. Old Lady ate everything heartily. “I shall be ill tonight,” she said in her penetrating old voice. “But it is worth it, daughter, on your fortieth birthday.”
    “Eat to your own content, Mother,” Madame Wu replied.
    One by one guests rose with small wine bowls in their hands, and toasts were drunk. To these Madame Wu did not reply. She was a quiet woman, and she looked at Mr. Wu, who rose in her place and accepted the good wishes of all. Only Madame Kang, catching her friend’s eye, silently lifted her bowl, and as silently Madame Wu lifted hers and the two drank together in secret understanding.
    By now Old Lady was full of food, and she leaned against the high back of her chair and surveyed her family. “Liangmo looks sick,” she declared.
    Everybody looked at Liangmo, who indeed smiled in a very sickish fashion. “I am not ill, Grandmother,” he said hastily.
    Meng gazed at him with troubled eyes. “You do look strange,” she murmured. “You have been strange all morning.”
    At this, brothers and brothers’ wives all looked at him, and he shook his head. Madame Wu did not speak. She quite understood that Liangmo was still unable to accept what she had told him today. He looked at her at this moment with pleading in his eyes, but she merely smiled a little and looked away.
    It was when she turned her head away that she caught the shrewd, too-intelligent gaze of her second daughter-in-law. Tsemo’s wife, Rulan, had not said one word all during the feast, but speech was never necessary for this girl’s comprehension of what was happening about her. Madame Wu perceived that she had seen the son’s pleadings and also the mother’s reply. But Tsemo himself paid no heed to what went on. He was an impatient young man, and he sat back from the table, tapping his foot restlessly. For him the birthday feast had lasted long enough.
    Somewhere an overfed child vomited suddenly on the brick floor with a great splatter, and there was a fuss among the servants.
    “Call in the dogs,” Madame Kang advised, but Ying, hastening to the scene of the disaster, begged her pardon.
    “Our Lady will not allow dogs under the tables,” she explained.
    “You see, Mother,” Madame Kang’s pretty third daughter pouted. “I told you nobody does—it’s so old-fashioned. I’m always ashamed when you do it