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 Learning
A Behavioral, Cognitive,
and Evolutionary Synthesis
 As always, for Jeanne and Elaine

SAGE was founded in 1965 by Sara Miller McCune to support

the dissemination of usable knowledge by publishing innovative
and high-quality research and teaching content. Today, we
publish more than 850 journals, including those of more than
300 learned societies, more than 800 new books per year, and
a growing range of library products including archives, data,
case studies, reports, and video. SAGE remains majority-owned
by our founder, and after Sara’s lifetime will become owned by
a charitable trust that secures our continued independence.

L o s A n g e l e s | L o n d o n | N ew D e l h i | S i n g a p o r e | Wa s h i n g to n D C
 Learning
A Behavioral, Cognitive,
and Evolutionary Synthesis

Jerome Frieman
Kansas State University

Steve Reilly
University of Illinois at Chicago
FOR INFORMATION: Copyright  2016 by SAGE Publications, Inc.

SAGE Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
2455 Teller Road reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
Thousand Oaks, California 91320 electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
E-mail: order@sagepub.com recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the
SAGE Publications Ltd. publisher.
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United Kingdom Printed in the United States of America

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Acquisitions Editor: Reid Hester This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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Proofreader: Eleni-Maria Georgiou
Indexer: Kathleen Paparchontis
Cover Designer: Anupama Krishnan
Marketing Manager: Shari Countryman 15 16 17 18 19 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
BRIEF CONTENTS

Preface xv
About the Authors xxiii
Prologue xxv

CHAPTER 1 • Where Learning Fits Into the Big Picture 1

PART I: Learning to Predict Important Events 35

CHAPTER 2 • The Procedures and Phenomena We
Call Pavlovian Conditioning 37

CHAPTER 3 • Pavlovian Conditioning Is an Inference Task 81

CHAPTER 4 • Identifying the Predictors

of Significant Events 109

CHAPTER 5 • The Representations of

Knowledge in Pavlovian Conditioning 141

CHAPTER 6 • From Knowledge to Behavior: The Forms

and Functions of Pavlovian Conditioned Responses 181

PART II: Learning About the

Consequences of One’s Behavior 213
CHAPTER 7 • The Procedures and Phenomena
We Call Operant Conditioning 215

CHAPTER 8 • How Individuals Adjust Their Behavior

to Meet the Demands of the Situation 279

CHAPTER 9 • Adjusting to Schedules of

Partial Reinforcement 305

CHAPTER 10 • Life Is About Making Choices 335

BRIEF CONTENTS v
 CHAPTER 11 • Inference and the Representations
of Knowledge in Operant Conditioning 375

CHAPTER 12 • The Similarities Between Operant

Conditioning and Natural Selection 413

PART III: The Social Transmission of Knowledge 433

CHAPTER 13 • Social Learning 435

Epilogue 465
Glossary 469
References 487
Author Index 543
Subject Index 557

vi LEARNING: A BEHAVIORAL, COGNITIVE, AND EVOLUTIONARY SYNTHESIS

DETAILED CONTENTS

Preface xv
About the Authors xxiii
Prologue xxv

CHAPTER 1 • Where Learning Fits Into the Big Picture 1

What Is Knowledge? 2
How Can We Study Something We Cannot See? 4
Learning and Performance 5
How We Study Learning 5
Defining Various Kinds of Learning by Procedures and Phenomena 9
Habituation 9
Sensitization 12
Phase-Specific Learning 16
Pavlovian Conditioning 18
Operant Conditioning 19
Social Learning 21
The Evolution of Learning 21
The Doctrine of Evolution by Natural Selection 24
Knowledge and Natural Selection 26
Learning Is an Adaptive Specialization 29
Learning Is Part of an Integrated System of
Psychological Processes 32
Summary and Conclusions 33
Study Questions 33

PART I: Learning to Predict Important Events 35

CHAPTER 2 • The Procedures and Phenomena We
Call Pavlovian Conditioning 37
Jaws: How They Get You in Horror Films 37
Procedures, Phenomena, and Processes 38
Examples of Pavlovian Conditioning Before Pavlov 39
Why We Call It Pavlovian Conditioning 40
Conditioned Emotional Responses 50
Summary: How We Use Conditioned Suppression
as an Index of Conditioned Fear 58

DETAILED CONTENTS vii

 Conditioned Drug Reactions 60
Conditioned Taste Aversions 65
Sign-Tracking (Autoshaping) 72
Summary and Conclusions 77
Study Questions 78

CHAPTER 3 • Pavlovian Conditioning Is an

Inference Task 81
The Elements of Causal Inference 82
The Effects of CS-US Consistency in Pavlovian Conditioning 86
The Effects of Temporal and Spatial Contiguity on
Pavlovian Conditioning 96
The Effects of Temporal Precedence on Pavlovian
Conditioning 100
Why These Seemingly Contradictory Data
Support the View That Pavlovian Conditioning
Is an Inference Task 102
Summary and Conclusions 106
Study Questions 106

CHAPTER 4 • Identifying the Predictors

of Significant Events 109
The Salience of Stimuli 109
Salience and Discriminability 110
The Overshadowing of One Predictor by Another 111
Salience and Prior Experience With Potential
Conditioned Stimuli 112
The CS Preexposure Effect 113
Zero Contingencies and Learned Irrelevance 115
The Adaptive Value of the CS Preexposure Effect and Learned
Irrelevance 118
Relative Validity in Pavlovian Conditioning 118
Surprise and Pavlovian Conditioning 122
Blocking of Pavlovian Conditioning to a Redundant
Predictor of the US 122
Blocking by the Context: The US Preexposure Effect 125
A Mathematical Model of Pavlovian Conditioning
Based on Both Salience and Surprise 126
Overshadowing, Relative Validity, and Blocking:
Learning About the Other Stimulus 136
Summary and Conclusions 138
Study Questions 138

viii LEARNING: A BEHAVIORAL, COGNITIVE, AND EVOLUTIONARY SYNTHESIS

CHAPTER 5 • The Representations of
Knowledge in Pavlovian Conditioning 141
CS-US Associations: The Representation of
Relationships in Pavlovian Conditioning 142
Using Post-Conditioning Devaluation of the US to
Study Associations in Pavlovian Conditioning 143
Evidence That Pavlovian Conditioning Involves Declarative
Knowledge About the CS and US 144
Representations of the Sensory and Hedonic
Aspects of the US 148
Summary of the Evidence on the Representations of
Knowledge in Pavlovian Conditioning 151
Transitive Inference and the Linking of Associations in Second-Order
Conditioning 151
Second-Order Conditioning 152
Sensory Preconditioning and Within-Compound Associations 153
What Sensory Preconditioning, Second-Order Conditioning, and
Post-Conditioning Devaluation of the US
All Have in Common 155
Representing Conditional Relationships: Feature-Positive
Discriminations, Hierarchical Associations, and Occasion
Setting 156
Conditioned Inhibition: Learning to Predict the Absence
of the Unconditioned Stimulus 160
Procedures for Producing Conditioned Inhibition 162
Tests for Conditioned Inhibition 163
Evidence That There Is More Than One Kind of Conditioned
Inhibition 165
Representations in Conditioned Inhibition 167
The Role of the Environmental Context in
Pavlovian Conditioning 168
Evidence of Context-US Associations 168
The Context as an Occasion Setter 169
Representing the Temporal Relationships Between Events 171
Extinction Revisited 174
Summary and Conclusions 177
Study Questions 178

CHAPTER 6 • From Knowledge to Behavior: The Forms

and Functions of Pavlovian Conditioned Responses 181
Conditioned Responses: Deciding What to Measure 181
Dogs Do More Than Salivate to Signals for Food 182

DETAILED CONTENTS ix
 The Relationship Between Conditioned and
Unconditioned Responses 185
Behavior Systems and Pavlovian Conditioning 186
The Organization of Behavior Systems 188
Pavlovian Conditioning in the Predation
Subsystem in Rats 189
Pavlovian Conditioning in the Social Module in the
Feeding System in Rats 192
Pavlovian Conditioning in the Browsing Subsystem 193
Conditioned Responses to Arbitrary Conditioned
Stimuli Signaling Food 194
The Functions of Pavlovian Conditioned Responses 195
Defense Against Predators 196
Defense of Territory 197
Conditioned Drug Reactions 199
Conditioned Responses in Feeding Systems 200
Changing Value and Preference Through
Pavlovian Conditioning 202
Conditioned Emotional Reactions 205
Pavlovian Conditioning as an Adaptive Specialization 207
Summary and Conclusions 210
Study Questions 210

PART II: Learning About the

Consequences of One’s Behavior 213
CHAPTER 7 • The Procedures and Phenomena
We Call Operant Conditioning 215
Procedures, Phenomena, and Processes 216
An Example of Operant Conditioning From
Ancient Times 217
The First Laboratory Experiments on
Instrumental Learning 217
B. F. Skinner and Operant Conditioning 225
The Evolution of Skinner’s Methods for Studying Operant
Conditioning 225
The Language of Operant Conditioning 233
Do Reinforcers Strengthen Behavior? 235
The Various Events That Can Serve as Reinforcers 239
Primary Reinforcers 242
The Opportunity to Engage in Some Behaviors
Can Serve as a Positive Reinforcer 244
Conditioned Reinforcers (Secondary Reinforcers) 246

x LEARNING: A BEHAVIORAL, COGNITIVE, AND EVOLUTIONARY SYNTHESIS

 The Four Varieties of Operant Conditioning 249
Procedures That Typically Increase the Future
Occurrence of Behavior 251
Procedures That Typically Reduce the Future
Occurrence of Behavior 257
Behavior Modification 263
Behavior Modification With Autistic Children 264
The Differences Between Pavlovian Conditioning and Operant
Conditioning 269
The Role of the Stimulus in Pavlovian and Operant
Conditioning (and Instrumental Learning) 270
Demonstrating That a Change in Behavior Is Due to
Instrumental Learning or Operant Conditioning and
Not Pavlovian Conditioning 271
Summary and Conclusions 274
Study Questions 275

CHAPTER 8 • How Individuals Adjust Their Behavior

to Meet the Demands of the Situation 279
Operant Conditioning From Two Different Perspectives 279
The Functions of Reinforcers in Operant Conditioning 280
Reinforcers as Sources of Incentive Motivation 281
Reinforcers and Feedback 285
Adaptive Behavior by Hill-Climbing 286
What Is Hill-Climbing? 287
Reinforcement and Hill-Climbing 289
Differentiation of Behavior by Reinforcement and Extinction 292
Differentiation of the Topography of a Behavior 293
Differentiation of Interresponse Times 295
Increasing Behavioral Variability and Novelty With Differential
Reinforcement 297
Identifying the Operant in Operant Conditioning 298
Three Different Kinds of Key Pecking, but
Only One Is an Operant 300
Summary and Conclusions 302
Study Questions 303

CHAPTER 9 • Adjusting to Schedules of

Partial Reinforcement 305
Classifying Schedules of Reinforcement 305
Ratio Schedules 307
Fixed-Ratio Schedules (FR n) 309
Variable-Ratio Schedules (VR n) 313

DETAILED CONTENTS xi
 Interval Schedules 315
Fixed-Interval Schedules (FI t) 316
Variable-Interval Schedules (VI t) 318
Explaining the Differences in Performance on Ratio and
Interval Schedules of Reinforcement 320
The Effects of Prior Experience on How Individuals Adjust to
Schedules of Reinforcement 322
Behavioral Persistence 327
Amount of Training and Persistence 327
Discriminability and Persistence 328
Persistence and Partial Reinforcement 330
Summary and Conclusions 332
Study Questions 333

CHAPTER 10 • Life Is About Making Choices 335

Choice and the Empirical Matching Law 336
Concurrent Schedules of Reinforcement 337
The Development of the Empirical Matching Law 339
Extending the Empirical Matching Law 343
The Generalized Empirical Matching Law 350
Deviations From the Empirical Matching Law 351
The Generalized Theoretical Matching Law 354
Tests of the Generalized Theoretical Matching Law 355
Why Matching Occurs 358
The Significance of the Matching Laws 363
The Empirical Matching Law Applied to
a Single Behavior 364
The Practical Implications of the Matching Law for Behavior
Modification 366
The Significance of the Matching Laws 370
Summary and Conclusions 371
Study Questions 371

CHAPTER 11 • Inference and the Representations

of Knowledge in Operant Conditioning 375
Operant Conditioning Is Also an Inference Task 375
Consistency 376
Temporal Proximity 381
Temporal Precedence 382
Reconciling the Data on the Effects of Temporal Proximity and
Contingency on Causal Inference and Operant Conditioning 383
The Representations of Knowledge in Operant Conditioning 383
Contrasting Views of What Is Learned in Instrumental
Learning and Operant Conditioning 383

xii LEARNING: A BEHAVIORAL, COGNITIVE, AND EVOLUTIONARY SYNTHESIS

 Evidence That Operant Conditioning Involves Declarative Knowledge
About Representations of Behaviors and Outcomes 385
Representations of Behaviors and Outcomes 388
Learning the Incentive Value of Outcomes 390
The Role of the Stimulus in Operant Conditioning 392
Discriminative Stimuli Are Occasion Setters 394
Discriminative Stimuli Can Elicit Representations of Outcomes 396
How Operant Behavior Is Generated From Representations 396
Operant Behavior as Procedural Knowledge 399
Extinction Revisited 404
Summary and Conclusions 410
Study Questions 410

CHAPTER 12 • The Similarities Between Operant

Conditioning and Natural Selection 413
Sources of Behavioral Variation 414
Induced Variation 414
Behavioral Variability 417
The Importance of Both Sources of Variation in Operant
Conditioning 418
The Mechanism of Selection in Operant Conditioning 418
Temporal Proximity Between a Behavior
and Outcome as the Mechanism
of Selection (“Superstitious Behavior”) 420
Contingency Between Behaviors and Outcomes as the
Mechanism of Selection in Operant Conditioning 424
Reconciling the Data on the Effects of Temporal Proximity and
Contingency on the Occurrence of Operant Conditioning 425
Does Selection Involve Gradual Molding of Behavior or
the Creation of New Behavioral Programs? 425
Are Selected Behaviors Strengthened or Retained? 426
Putting This All Together 428
Operant Conditioning as an Adaptive Specialization 429
Summary and Conclusions 431
Study Questions 431

PART III: The Social Transmission of Knowledge 433

CHAPTER 13 • Social Learning 435
Learning Food Preferences From Others 436
Demonstrating the Social Learning
of Food Preferences 436
Social Learning to Avoid Certain Foods 439
Social Learning Can Attenuate Food Aversions 440

DETAILED CONTENTS xiii

 Learning What to Fear Through Observational Conditioning 441
Social Transmission of Fear of Snakes in Monkeys 442
Social Transmission of Fears and Phobias in Humans 443
Social Transmission of Predator Recognition in Birds 444
Learning What to Do by Observing Others 446
Local Enhancement (Stimulus Enhancement) 446
Goal Emulation 450
True Imitation 450
Transmission of Information About What to Do Through Directed
Instruction 453
Forms of Instruction 453
The Effects of Verbal Instructions on Human Behavior 455
The Effects of Verbal Instructions on Pavlovian Conditioning 456
The Effects of Verbal Instructions on Operant Conditioning 457
The Importance of the Distinction Between Verbally Mediated and
Contingency-Mediated Behaviors 461
Summary and Conclusions 463
Study Questions 464

Epilogue 465
Glossary 469
References 487
Author Index 543
Subject Index 557

xiv LEARNING: A BEHAVIORAL, COGNITIVE, AND EVOLUTIONARY SYNTHESIS

Other documents randomly have
different content
restoring to the girl and the boy a living tongue for one he wished them to
think of as dead. He was jealous of Helen and Elizabeth, jealous of Mrs.
Ferris and Beresford, but above all things jealous of the quiet Nasmith, in
whose destiny he perceived some occult link with Nancy's itself.

"I will not give them up," he said vehemently. "After training them all
these years, after giving them something better and finer than anything they
could have got in England, what a fool I should be to turn them over to the
first blond strangers they meet. It would be a waste, nothing more than a
waste. Nasmith and the rest of them can hang before I'll let Nancy or
Edward see them again. I won't destroy my own work."

Having made this decision, which decided nothing, Herrick gave it

immediate effect. He ordered his children for their safety's sake not to go
out of the temple enclosure. He said nothing more about Nancy's visiting
the Ferrises. He was mastered by the need to forget all these urgent
problems. He called for wine, called for his opium pipe, called for Kuei-
lien.

She went to him with a happy smile on her face for she had been
waiting a long, long time to hear this summons. With the instinctive genius
of the wanton she lured the man to new frenzies of love, taunted him, by a
modesty artfully affected, into committing new blissful indignities,
glamorous outrages, in which her master tried to stifle the soul as well as
the body of his slave and succeeded only in stifling his own. Then she sat
naked on the floor before his couch, her hair raveled but her eyes cool, and
lighted the lamp and heated the first of the little pellets which were to
induce days of passionate stupor. He dozed; he dreamed; the sickly smoke
filled the room.

Kuei-lien picked up her scattered garments. She was still smiling.

CHAPTER XII
 For a full week Herrick lived behind closed doors. It was a long
devastating bout, and it was a hatefully dull week for Nancy and Edward.
Recent liberty made their present confinement wear all the more heavily.
Romantic memories of Elizabeth and Helen and David made the lonely
children captious and cross with one another. They had no zest for books;
the sun kept eternally shining; it called them away to the mountain tops.
Edward fumed because he could get no practice with his newly made bow;
Nancy sat on the platform above the ravine, musing as to who should rescue
her from her boredom, and more and more she wondered who could rescue
her from fear. For fear was beating at the gates of her courage.

In this narrow temple of the Western Hills Herrick's absence weighed

like sultry heat upon the atmosphere of the household, quieting the tongue
of the amah and the vociferous exchanges of the servants. Kuei-lien came
and went with the preoccupation of a nurse waiting upon a sick man. But
the fact Nancy saw and the fact she despised was that the preoccupation
was a happy one. At last, one day Nancy could stand it no more.

"I want to see my father," she said.

Kuei-lien looked at her with surprise. The sneer on her lips almost faded
before the resolute dignity of the girl. For the first time the all-conquering
audacity of the concubine was checked; Kuei-lien began to feel misgivings
about this stubborn child, misgivings and a little fear, because she could not
meet Nancy's obstinacy with her usual effective mockery.

"I want to see my father," the girl repeated.

"But you can't see him," Kuei-lien said. "He is busy. He would call for
you if he wished to see you."

"Ask him if I may see him."

"Oh, I can ask him, but I know what his answer will be."

Kuei-lien went away much disturbed.

 "I have had the most absurd request from Nancy," she told her master,
who was lying heavily on his couch. "She wants to see you. She told me she
must see you."

"Very well, tell her to come," said Herrick.

Kuei-lien could not believe the report of her own ears.

"You want her to come?" she asked. "I told her you were too busy to see
her."

"What right have you to speak for your master?" the man shouted. "Go
and tell her to come."

Kuei-lien had no course but to go.

"You have made a pretty mess of things," she warned Nancy. "Your
father is furiously angry at your asking to see him. He said, Yes, you should
see him, and ordered me to make you come."

"I am going without being forced," said Nancy with irritating self-
possession. "You don't have to make me."

Kuei-lien, balked in her effort to frighten the girl, went ahead of her and
opened the door of Herrick's bedroom. The shutters had been thrown wide
to let in the late afternoon sun, but there had not been time to clear the
mustiness of the place, the lurking odor of the drug, which clung to the bed
curtains and to the implements laid ready on a table by Herrick's side.

Nancy evinced not a sign of disgust as she entered the room and stood
waiting impassively for her father's first words. Yet she seemed out of place
amid the disorder of the chamber, which was littered with signs of Kuei-
lien's occupancy.

This was apparent to Herrick himself. Although the situation could not
foster any illusion as to how he had been spending his days, the father
nevertheless made the effort to greet his daughter with the ceremony proper
between them. His orgy had burned itself out, but his face showed the strain
of dissipation; his eyes were dull, there were haggard lines round the
mouth, pouches of puffy flesh beneath his eyes. Nancy could not avoid
glimpses of his unkempt fingers nor of the loose robe bound round his
body.

"And what is it so important that you must ask permission to see me?"
Herrick inquired, speaking in Chinese.

Nancy had her one sentence prepared. She uttered it in a low cool voice.

"I was afraid to leave my father so long alone with his enemy."

A pause, fraught with deep feeling, ensued upon these daring words.

"Is that all?" Herrick asked finally.

"Yes," admitted the girl, "that is all."

"Very well, you may go."

Nancy turned obediently and went out of the room. Even Kuei-lien had
the decency to wait until the child was out of earshot before she gave vent
to her mirth.

"Ha, ha, ha!" she laughed. "What a speech! Afraid to leave her father
alone with his enemy. Whom does she mean? Does she mean me?"

Her amusement was not very convincing. It seemed forced, bolstered up

by weak bravado.

"Yes, she means you," retorted her master, "she means you and she
means all this mischievous rubbish."

With a sweep of his hand he brushed the glasses, the opium pipe, the
little lamp, from the surface of the table. They fell with a crash to the floor.

"Don't be so wasteful," protested the concubine, more entertained by

this flare of temper on Herrick's part than by Nancy's grim sentence. "What
a shame to break all these things. You'll need them again."
 "Yes, that is the beastly part of it," Herrick acknowledged, "I shall need
them again—but not now—not now. And I don't need you either. You may
go."

"Your eloquence is not so impressive as your daughter's," said Kuei-

lien, as she retreated. Her indomitable capacity for being merry never
deserted the girl, even at times of defeat.

Left to himself at last, Herrick began to repair the disorders of the past
few days. He shaved, dressed himself neatly, returned to his books and his
pens. But throughout the mechanical functions which helped to bring back
self-respect, his mind was filled with the vision of Nancy's face, her
impassive demeanor, in unreproaching contact with the signs of his own
collapse. Again and again he mumbled the girl's words. It was a curiously
saving trait in Herrick's character that he did not resent them.

"'Alone with his enemy,'" he kept saying, "How right she was, how just!
Ah, but I must take care lest my enemy be her enemy too."

Then on a sudden came a frightening spasm of pain, the first in his life.
Always Herrick had been well and robust, seldom ill for two days together;
but now he gasped and choked, held his hand to his chest, thinking with
ungovernable terror that he was going to die with all the loose strings of his
life untied. After minutes that were years, the spell passed. He lay back
white-faced in a chair, his forehead pouring sweat. He recognized the
warning. His heart was affected. What use would there be in disguising the
truth?

Herrick had no intention to consult a physician. Physicians had not

saved his wife; they had never been of use to him. He knew the advice they
would give: diet, self-control, no excitement. They had no cure for this
complaint. Some people lived on for years, others were snuffed out in a
night; what was bound to fall fell despite the advice of all the doctors in the
world. After the gripping pain had relaxed—there was no room for any state
except fear while it lasted—the man even treated the subject jauntily and
swore he was as likely as any to round off his threescore and ten. But he
could not do it peacefully if he left any room for grief to befall Nancy and
Edward.
 It was after this attack that Ronald Nasmith received a letter to which
with surprise he saw Herrick's signature attached. The note was short,
impersonal in its wording; the writer had business of importance he could
not discuss on paper; he asked Mr. Nasmith to indulge the infirmities of an
older man by paying him a visit; he also must request that his letter and the
subject of the visit be treated as confidential.

Nasmith dispatched Beresford as acting-uncle on a picnic to some hot

springs while he slipped away to see Herrick. His mind during the past few
days had been much occupied with Herrick and the puzzle of the scrolls. He
had been studying a riddle which instinct told him was full of personal
import, a message that Herrick intended and wished him to decipher. Yet the
answer evaded his closest research. It might seem easy to Herrick, schooled
in these antithetical couplets by which the Chinese conveyed the many
thoughts they did not care to lay bare on the surface; it was not clear to
Nasmith, who burrowed through all his dictionaries and went to the length
of asking help from his teacher. The dictionaries explained little and the
teacher, although he exclaimed at once that the characters were the work of
a master, offered explanations so involved that Nasmith, even though he
understood less than half of what his teacher said, knew that this excess of
commentary was merely the happy Chinese way of concealing ignorance:
the teacher was groping for a clue, as Nasmith once before had caught him
doing when the drowsy pedagogue had elaborated the most profound moral
sentiments from what proved to be simply the Chinese transliteration of the
name Australia. In the end, exhaustive study had not told as much as
Herrick himself chose to reveal:—

The sun moving to the west kindles a splendid beacon

for the moon;
The moon following from the east tenderly displays the
reflection of the sun.

"I wonder if he will have expected me to master his riddle," thought

Nasmith, as he set out upon his long walk.
 Herrick received his guest in the same room as before. He was regaining
the dominance of his nerves but there was, nevertheless, a stiffness of
bearing which caused Nasmith to eye his host keenly, anxious for any hint
of the business in hand, and to note marks of the upheaval through which
the man had been passing. Something was wrong—business cares, worries
about property, some trouble in which the man could not turn to Chinese
friends for assistance. Perhaps Herrick wanted an executor or a witness to
his will. No, that could not be the difficulty; he would have called for
Beresford as well.

"I suppose you are mystified as to the reasons for my letter," Herrick
began. "Did you read the scroll I wrote for you?"

"I tried to read it," Nasmith admitted.

"And failed. I am not surprised. It was the truth, and the truth is always
far-fetched. I have, I am afraid, the Chinese faculty for talking in riddles
and as to the inner meaning of those two sentences I prefer not to explain it,
for the best part of your life will come when you find out the meaning for
yourself—if you do."

"That is putting rather too great a strain on my curiosity, don't you

think?"

"Perhaps. But I'm going to offer you the key to the puzzle and you can
make the best of it as you choose."

Herrick fingered the lip of his teacup for a minute or two while Nasmith
wondered if he had been summoned all this distance merely to hear more of
such cryptic nonsense.

"Do you think my wits are wandering?" Herrick asked with

disconcerting suddenness.

"I am not sure of it," replied his guest, willing to be as provokingly

frank. The older man laughed.
 "I have been ill," he said, "but my wits are still here. I have wit enough
to recognize an honest man; that is why I have asked you to come."

"Thank you; the compliment is enjoyed, even if it isn't deserved."

"How much patience would you have, to keep talking in this vein?"

"Not much more," Nasmith confessed.

"Ah, you will never become Chinese."

"I don't wish to."

"Good. You are thoroughly English, quite thoroughly English, aren't

you? You wouldn't care to follow my example and become Chinese?"

"If you wish me to say what I think, I should say a life like yours was a
waste, a shameful waste, not fair to yourself, Mr. Herrick, and especially
not fair to your two children."

"You are honest, that is the important point. For your opinions, Mr.
Nasmith, I don't care a snap of the finger. Opinions don't have half the
influence we imagine. But you have touched the subject I have in mind. It is
my children and what is fair to them that I am keeping in mind. I have been
ill: without mincing matters I might just as well tell you I have very definite
signs of heart trouble. You know what that means. It means that I might
drop even while I am talking with you here. That is disquieting. I don't care
to leave the future of my children dependent on the whims of this worn-out
heart of mine."

"Why do you keep them in China? Why don't you take them home?"

"I have a home here and I am too old to change it, don't wish to change
it, in fact. No, I didn't call you for advice, Mr. Nasmith; I am capable of
giving myself all the advice you can suggest. If I wished to, I could put
Nancy and Edward to school, but I don't wish to. Let's not argue about it,
just say I am too selfish, too pig-headed, not willing at my time of life to
lose the company of two delightful children. I want something more
definite from you, something which will be a real provision for the future
and not the making myself and my children miserable by shipping them off
to school among strangers and foreigners—"

"You want, then—" interrupted Nasmith, anxious to stem Herrick's

garrulous speech.

"I want to betroth my daughter Nancy to you."

CHAPTER XIII

Nasmith did not answer. The proposal was too unexpected to fit into any
compartment of his mind. Room had first to be made for it, room provided
with hesitation and an agitated heart. Nasmith did not deny that Nancy had
occupied much of his thought, more than he openly allowed. He could not
shake out of his memory the sight of the girl, poised tiptoe for flight, as she
stood between the doors of the temple. He had been haunted by the picture,
haunted by a crying sense of wrong in restoring the girl to a dangerous,
tragic future. But Herrick's offer was too real. It was stern stuff to be built
upon such vague foundations.

"Don't imagine I wanted to bring up this subject," said Herrick. "I don't
wish to see Nancy married to you or to anyone else. I would hide her from
every last one of you if I had the choice. You haven't got her, I tell you; you
haven't got her yet. I may hide her despite you. Ah, if I only had the choice!
This stupid heart of mine has taken the choice out of my hands."

"There is no need to be angry with me for weighing your own

proposal," Nasmith said. "Your suggestion is no less a shock to me than it
seems to be to yourself. But before going into my side of the matter, I think
we must consider Nancy's side. Whatever my own inclinations may be—
and I must confess they are not very definite—I would not consider your
offer for a moment if I thought the arrangement would be distasteful to your
daughter. What do you think she would say at being disposed of in this
summary manner to a man who is practically a stranger?"

"It's not at all so dreadful as you imagine. Nancy's training all her life
has led her to expect no other method of betrothal. Your haphazard Western
fashion would seem scandalous to her. A father is more competent to choose
a husband for his daughter than the girl herself; he knows the world, she
doesn't. No doubt she has her fancies, but if she is betrothed to a man who
is not utterly impossible it will not be hard to attach her fancies to the
husband chosen for her."

"That may be so; I am not prepared to deny it, though it seems to me, in
the main, a heartless business. But what about my share in the contract? I
have not been educated to think your Chinese way is normal. Can I attach
my fancies to a girl I have hardly known?"

"Is this merely a theoretical question or have you some practical plan in
mind? I certainly feel no need to advertise the merits of my daughter. You
have seen her and, if you are the man I take you for, you have understood
her. Remember this: it was not by throwing dice or tossing a coin that I
chose you instead of Beresford. He, I think, would have jumped at my offer
—I should suspect anyone who jumped at so unusual an offer as mine."

"No, I am not putting a theoretical question; I have a most practical

plan," said Nasmith.

"I know your plan; you want Nancy to live with your sister."

"Yes, and I want more than that. I want her sent to school with my
nieces."

"You want me to undo the last twelve years of her training."

"Not at all. I am quite satisfied with her training, but if she is to be a

Westerner it has to be given a more definite direction; it cannot continue on
Chinese lines. There will not be much shock now; there would be
tremendous shock a few years later."
 "Yes, I was prepared for all these arguments," said Herrick, "and for a
few more as well. By living with your sister, Nancy would come to know
you better; you in turn would have a better acquaintance with her. Yes, I
know all these arguments. And suppose, after this mutual acquaintance, you
found your tastes growing farther and farther apart, what would you do to
remedy the situation?"

"Break the engagement."

"No, that's not my notion of a betrothal. That simply transfers Nancy

from my care, puts her at the mercy of all the accidents which may occur in
your sister's home, possible jealousies or gossip or misunderstanding,—you
know the things I mean,—and leaves her with the chance of a broken
engagement at the end. Then what would she be fit for? Do you expect her
to go out and capture a husband as your Western women do or come back to
the Chinese life she has unlearned?"

"At least, it is better," protested Nasmith, "to discover uncongenial

tastes before marriage than afterward."

"Not at all. After marriage you have made your bargain. You have no
choice but to make your tastes congenial. Have you forgotten your old
proverb about necessity? It's when people have the option of being
uncongenial that they look for excuses to quarrel just to assert their
freedom. If I sent Nancy to you in a red chair to-morrow, I haven't the
slightest doubt that she would prove congenial. It would be your duty to see
that she did."

"You don't really wish me to marry her now?" demanded Nasmith,

somewhat disconcerted, "a girl of seventeen."

"A girl of sixteen," Herrick corrected. "No, indeed I don't wish you to
marry her now. I don't wish to surrender her a day before she is twenty, that
is, if my heart holds out. If I die, she goes to you at once and Edward with
her—he will be suitably provided for. But while I live or until she is twenty
Nancy remains with me."

"And you expect me to consent to betrothal on these terms?"

 "I do."

"Don't you think it is rather one-sided?"

"It is one-sided," Herrick admitted, "but it appears more one-sided now

than it will later. I am asking you to put inordinate trust in the judgment of
an old man who has done some thinking about the both of you. I have put
twelve years into what you might term an experiment. Nancy is the result,
and if you think the result lovable—as I do—you will give some credit to
the methods which achieved it. I want just four more years, four more
years; the Nancy you see now will not bear comparison with the Nancy I
am offering you as a bride. Ah, if my heart had not given out I shouldn't
need to be begging you; you would be begging me. Nancy needs no
excuses, sir, no apologies, but I—I need four years of security, four years of
peace of mind, to complete my work and to keep the love of my children. It
is only in your own interests that I am asking you to make a one-sided
bargain."

Nasmith was moved by Herrick's earnestness, but he was not convinced.

Nasmith paused.

"Then you refuse my terms," he said, at last, after allowing the effect of
Herrick's passionate appeal to grow cold, "you will not let Nancy visit my
sister, nor go to school with my nieces, not even if I bind myself to marry
your daughter."

"I cannot accept such terms even if you bind yourself. I have considered
them, Mr. Nasmith, considered them thoroughly, long before I sent for you.
They are too great a price for any betrothal. I would rather take chances
with my heart."

"Is it fair to take such chances, fair to leave a young girl without
protection?" Nasmith was angry in his deliberate way. "What other
alternative have you, if I refuse?"

Herrick smiled. He had his trump card to play.

 "I have the alternative I have entertained from the beginning—until I
met you, in fact, and thought I had found a man large-minded enough,
generous enough to make it unnecessary. I have the alternative of marrying
Nancy to a Chinese."

"You are trying to threaten me now," said Nasmith. "You chose the
wrong man. I will not be threatened into betrothing myself to your
daughter."

"Don't decide too hastily," said Herrick; "we'll have tiffin first."

"Thank you, but I have decided. There is no use wasting more time. You
have my terms; I have yours. The situation is simple. Which one of us
intends to change?"

"I don't," vowed Herrick.

"Neither do I."

With these words Nasmith picked up his helmet, bowed to his

astonished host, and departed.

"I've made the attempt," said Herrick to himself, much piqued by the
failure of tactics he had reckoned sure of success. "I have offered him the
choice decently and fairly. If he thinks I am going to seek him out and get
down on my knees, begging him to take a girl who is twice too good for
him, he can wait till the Yellow River runs dry."

Some such hope had occurred to Nasmith. The knowledge that Nancy
had been offered to him acted like sun and rain upon his memory of her, so
that only now did he begin to realize how strong was the hold she had
gained. Whatever the feeling might be, it disturbed him. In a fever of
uneasiness most unusual to his orderly nature he awaited Herrick's next
overture, waited till his impatience could be brooked no further. There was
that last ever-disquieting threat. Would the father be fool enough or selfish
or wrong-headed enough to carry it into effect? Nasmith even regretted his
own judgment, his own conduct, right though he knew these had been. At
last, unable to contain his distress, he walked the long road to Herrick's
temple and found it vacant, with only a bleary-eyed caretaker to tell him
Herrick had taken his family, son and daughter, concubine and nurse, back
to Peking.

CHAPTER XIV

The departure had been as sudden, as arbitrary, as Herrick's few acts of

decision usually were. The household had not recovered from the surprise
of Nasmith's visit when orders came to pack. In the mysterious way by
which news permeates a Chinese dwelling the subject of Herrick's
conversation with his guest was common property while the two men were
still debating it. Kuei-lien in great glee told Nancy that her engagement was
being arranged. She was to be married to one of the light-haired men who
had rescued her, the one with the little moustache under his nose. Nancy,
who recognized Nasmith from Kuei-lien's mocking description, blushed a
violent red and denied that any such transaction was in progress.

"Oh, yes it is," declared the concubine, "I know. They are discussing
your presents right now. What a way to do it, with no middleman! But that's
your foreign custom. Soon you'll be squeezing your waist into corsets and
hiding your face with a white veil like a mourner. Poor Nancy, you won't
have a red chair; foreigners never use them. They'll put you into a motor car
and send you to a foreign worship hall where you'll have to kiss your
husband and take his hand, so"—Nancy jerked free from Kuei-lien's
provoking fingers,—"and then you'll use a knife and a fork and eat goat's
meat till you smell like a Mongolian shepherd."

"I won't, I won't, I won't!" vowed Nancy, stamping her foot.

"Don't tease her," begged the nurse, beaming with smiles at the happy
news; "you know it is not seemly to talk to a maiden about her future
husband."
 "Oh, it's quite all right by foreign custom. Your fiancé will come every
day to see you; we shall all hide behind the door while you sit and talk and
make love together."

"Yes, that is the custom," the amah admitted. "She will grow used to it.
She ought to follow the practice of her ancestors."

Nancy, however, had not stayed to listen. She had slammed the doors of
her room in their faces and flung herself across the bed, where in the semi-
darkness she meditated upon a change she never for a moment doubted had
been agreed to. It was while the nurse still triumphantly declaimed the
fitness of Nancy's marrying an Englishman that Herrick appeared in the
courtyard to deliver his curt message that they were to return to Peking on
the morrow. The exultant words were frozen on the tongue of the amah. She
had seen in Herrick's eyes the defeat of all her hopes.

Nancy and Edward were miserable at coming back to Peking. It was

utterly dispiriting to be fenced by high walls in a garden that had shrunk: no
wide views, no sound of tumbling streams, no walks across hills teeming
with wild flowers—just the beat of paddles as the clothes were rinsed at the
pond and the tedious gossip of women whose minds were confined like
their bodies. The boy and girl relapsed into their old routine, took up again
studies with their teacher, intermittent lessons with their father, the usual
round of writing and reading, yet all with lassitude of spirit, with hearts
aching for the hills.

Not even the Mid-autumn Festival, which because of the fewness of the
Chinese holidays always had made such a stir in their lives, could wake the
children from this lethargy. Nancy passed idly by the flowering cassia, the
pride of her courtyard, and wholly forgot to thrust a sprig of the fragrant
white blossoms into her hair. More from habit than from relish she ate her
round moon cakes and climbed into the pine to see the largest moon of the
year rise slowly from the east. She was homesick for her brief hours with
Helen and Elizabeth and wrote them letters in English, long, affectionate
letters which she could not send because she had no knowledge of where to
send them. The exercise did bring some comfort; it seemed to provide some
intercourse with her friends, and would have entertained them greatly, could
the naïve, oddly phrased missives have found their destination.
 Kuei-lien did not visit Nancy as she used to do. The words the daughter
had spoken about her father's enemy were hard to forgive. She never
pressed Nancy for their meaning because she always avoided unprofitable
quarrels, but it became her policy to be cool to the girl, to snub her as one
might snub a pert child. Much of the time she spent with the t'ai-t'ai, to
whom she had related the tale of the summer. The t'ai-t'ai agreed
unreservedly that Nancy and Edward were a problem; they ought to be sent
back to the West. She offered no proposal, however, as to how they should
be sent. The fact was that she was nursing plans of her own, plans which
might not jump with Kuei-lien's humor.

She had gone to her husband, shortly after his return, and taxed him on
the subject of her own daughter, Li-an. The girl was twelve. Ought they not
to be choosing her a husband?

"Good God!" exclaimed Herrick in English, "have we got to find

another?"

"My heart will have no peace till she is engaged," she said.

"But Li-an is only a babe in arms."

"She is twelve," the mother repeated.

"I hardly know the child. Bring her here. Let me talk to her."

Herrick's attention had in truth been so predominantly centred on Nancy

and Edward that the second daughter came before her father like a stranger.
There had never been the contact of English lessons to quicken his
knowledge of this fast growing girl.

"Yes, she is pretty," he thought to himself, "and, thank heaven,

Chinese."

Herrick examined the scholarship of his daughter, put many questions

which she answered cleverly. Then the whim seized him to ask what he had
asked of Nancy, to see how she would pass the test of bringing what she
valued most. Li-an went at once to her mother and told her of Herrick's
strange request.

"The most precious thing you have?" inquired the t'ai-t'ai. "What a thing
to ask! We must think about it and make sure not to disappoint him. You
might take a copy of Mencius, or the Four Books, or perhaps your ink-stone
and brush. No, they won't do; I have a much better plan."

She extracted a photograph from her box.

"Take that," she said; "that will please him."

Herrick received the photograph and looked at it curiously. Then he

frowned. The picture was one of himself taken years before, a portrait
which revealed its subject in the stiff pose so dear to Chinese
photographers: there were flower pots bestowed in harsh symmetry on
either side of him, a drop painted to show trees and balustrades behind, and
Herrick, glued to the chair, facing the camera with exasperated belligerency
as though daring the lens to do its worst—which it did. The man had
forgotten such a picture existed. In a moment of weakness he had given way
before the entreaties of the t'ai-t'ai and consented to its being taken.

"Who put you up to bringing this atrocity?" he demanded. He tore the

picture asunder and threw the pieces on the floor.

"Tell your mother," he said, "that it is rather early to be teaching her

daughter to lie."

The t'ai-t'ai appeared, full of explanations, full of apologies. The child

had been puzzled by her father's command, and was unhappy because she
had nothing precious enough to take to her father.

"So I asked her whom she honored most. 'My father,' Li-an answered,
'of course I honor my father more than anybody.' I showed her the
photograph merely to test her and instantly she begged me to let her have it.
When I saw the happiness come over her face and how she valued it I
suggested that this was the gift to bring to her father. I am sorry it
displeased you, but there was no time to frame it suitably."
 The excuse was so much more flagrant than the offense itself that the
man could not keep back a burst of laughter.

"Not even from your lips can two lies cancel each other, my good lady,"
he remarked dryly in English. The t'ai-t'ai was a standard by which he could
mark his growing absorption into Chinese life and realize how much deeper
he still needed to sink himself before the waters covered his soul.

"I'm afraid your daughter is much too clever," he said, openly accepting
Li-an's ill-advised act as a joke. "Fancy a child of twelve practising such
artful wiles on her old father."

The mother's face beamed in relief.

"But we mustn't be in too great a hurry in choosing her a husband. We

must make certain of a suitable man. Meantime I want your help in
something far more pressing. You realize of course that Nancy is four years
older than Li-an. We must make some arrangement for her; we can't delay it
any longer. I thought for a time of marrying her to an Englishman, but now
that I have been thinking about the matter I know that Nancy, though she is
English-born, can never be at home in the West. She is Chinese by nature
and training and speech, and Chinese she ought to remain; so now I am
determined to find a Chinese husband for Nancy, and I want you to be
matchmaker. Please don't annoy me by a statement of objections and
difficulties; I know these as well as you. But there are a few points to keep
in mind: first, I must see the man you suggest. I am not going to be put off
with any dunderheads; I want the best. If I can't get the best there will be no
engagement. Furthermore, the man must be of good family; he must be well
educated, a man of scholarly tastes—and he must know no English, no
English at all. I won't have a son-in-law sucking his breath and grinning at
his own smartness as he gibbers 'Yes-s' and 'Alright.' Do you understand?"

The woman nodded.

"You may think I am asking the impossible in expecting such a paragon.

Well, you know the proverb that what we value cheaply we sell cheaply. We
don't need to apologize for Nancy and I will not have you setting about this
task as though we were asking favors. Yet of course there will be a
prejudice against the girl because of her foreign birth. That perhaps will
frighten the conservative families, the very families we ought to look to for
decent, obedient, scholarly boys. I am ready to make one concession to
overcome the handicap of Nancy's having been born English; if I am
satisfied with the man you choose, I will give Nancy a portion of ten
thousand taels at her marriage; if I am very well satisfied, I might stretch
the sum to fifteen thousand."

After this last offer, which outweighed all Herrick's other provisions, the
t'ai-t'ai accepted her commission as matchmaker. She was admirably fitted
for the post, since she came of good family herself, an excellent but
impecunious family with many ramifications, many branches, all prolific of
sons and daughters, all equally genteel, all equally poor. Within the confines
of her own family the t'ai-t'ai knew she could find many candidates for
Nancy's hand. She did not propose to look further.

Her father had been Herrick's teacher of Chinese. He was a gentleman

of the old school, a scholar of distinction, benignant in his ways, a
fountainhead of Chinese lore. The family had been broken by the disgrace
of the patron, whom an arbitrary whim of the Empress Dowager had
banished from court. Without exception every man of the family had been
thrown out of official employment. Years of vain waiting for reinstatement
had followed: they could not dig; to beg they were ashamed. Swiftly their
fortune melted away till Herrick's future father-in-law broke with tradition
by undertaking to instruct foreigners in the obscurities of the Mandarin
tongue.

For a long time he was the only man of his extensive family who
deigned to work. The others continued from day to day, living always on
the edge of solvency, getting food and clothing by some mysterious means
of which Chinese families are rarely so impoverished as to lose the secret;
they had been rather contemptuous over the one member who stooped to
teach foreign devils for a living, but they did not scruple to share in the
profits of his abasement; they were outraged by his marrying a daughter to a
foreign devil, but always borrowed a liberal part of the money the t'ai-t'ai
brought home as her gift to the exchequer. They waited and taught their
sons and grandsons to wait for the turn of affairs which might restore them
to office, restore them to the emoluments of magistracies and deputy
inspectorships. Waiting had become the family profession and was practised
with all the assiduity of the Oriental who has known better times and feels
sure that in some lucky cycle of the future, in the wheel which shifts
dynasties and oligarchies and republics and chaos, fate again will provide
better times to her patient servants. The t'ai-t'ai, surveying the case, decided
that fifteen thousand taels would be an extremely useful addition to the
family fortunes, the very harbinger of better times. There was more profit to
be made out of Nancy than out of her own daughter Li-an, for Nancy, being
no kin, could be married to a member of her prolific family, whereas Li-an's
dowry would be swallowed by some other voracious clan. It would be
foolish to let fifteen thousand taels slip out of her hands to the advantage of
someone else. With so many nephews and cousins sitting idle at home, one
surely could be sacrificed in the interests of the family, even to contract
something so undesirable as a mixed marriage.

The t'ai-t'ai put the reins of the household into the hands of the nurse—
she was always careful not to give power to a concubine—and after she had
stipulated this and stipulated that, lest the old amah wax rich in her absence,
she climbed into a mule cart and started lumbering along the dusty ruts of
the road home.
 CHAPTER XV

The visits of Hai t'ai-t'ai were always occasions of intense importance to

the family, and the woman, growing frankly elderly at the early age of
thirty, played her part with such pomp and independence of manner as
effectively to inspire awe in the hearts of her needier relations. Much
largess depended upon her smile, and all except her old mother, who
reigned haughtily like an autocrat now that her father was dead, crowded
round the t'ai-t'ai with many questions of concern for her welfare and the
health of her body.

The headquarters of the family were in a town some miles south of

Peking, a place of dust and sand, with streets worn far below the level of the
doors. Like all these villages on the flat plains of Chihli, it was subject to
relentless alternation of flood and drought, so that the people were
perennially close neighbors to starvation. They took the fortunes of the
weather philosophically, sowed crops of millet, beans, sorghum, and wheat
against the gamble of rain, gossiped over the salt water they drew from
alkali-tainted wells, and congratulated themselves if famine seemed no
nearer than a year away.

Into this land, making a doomed resistance against the desert which the
winds each year brought closer and closer, the t'ai-t'ai went gladly. She did
not sigh for the extravagance of mountains, even with tempting glimpses of
the Western Hills shimmering above the mirage of the horizon. She sat with
utter contentment in the dirty hallways of a huge ramshackle home, all
decay and discomfort behind pretentious walls, and thought nothing strange
of reducing Nancy to this, giving her pigs and chickens, mangy dogs,
slovenly women, sprawling brats for lifelong society, courtyards reeking
with the stench of manure for her window upon the joys of the world.

Her news caused great excitement. Fifteen thousand taels was a large
sum; remarkable was the crop of prodigies who sprang up to claim it. No
one, of course, suggested his own sons. In a land where smallpox and
typhus and cholera were the normal hazards of the day, five sons were not
too great an insurance against being left without heirs; even the likeliest
boys died suddenly: one day, active and grimy good health, the next day, a
stomach ache and the coffin. An indiscreet fondness for melons could mow
down whole harvests of children. No one quite took it upon himself to offer
up even the youngest of his sons as a husband for Nancy. They were all sure
to claim their share of the fifteen thousand taels, no matter whose son
secured it; the ingenious communism of a Chinese family guaranteed this
hope. Why be too forward in sacrifice? Every father regretted the stupidity
of his own offspring, extolled unselfishly the superior talents of his
nephews and cousins.

Finally the t'ai-t'ai lost patience.

"Bah! if you found lumps of gold in your fields you would complain
about the rockiness of the soil."

Prodded by her vigorous scorn, they stumbled upon the happy thought
of asking her to suggest Nancy's suitor.

The next few days were busy ones. The t'ai-t'ai visited all branches of
the family and hauled up the sheepish youths to answer her questions.
Seldom in her life had the t'ai-t'ai been in such fine fettle; she was as racy,
as outspoken as a dowager of twice her winters and paid back arrears of
jealousy and spite in the sarcasm she poured out so freely upon the
offspring of the relations who once used to slight her. There was not a likely
candidate, she vowed, not one whom Hai Lao-ye could not quash with a
single stern glance from above his tortoise-rimmed spectacles. What stupid
optimism their parents showed to bring up this generation to be gentlemen.
They would gape open-mouthed at a ricksha and fall headlong from the
windows of a railway carriage when the fire-wagon lurched forward. Better,
far better, to teach them to curse mules and make them competent donkey-
drivers; how could a full stomach go with an empty head, long nails with an
open mouth?

The t'ai-t'ai's abuse was accepted without resentment. It was so

impartially distributed that everyone had the chance to grin at the
discomfiture of his neighbor. Her sarcasm was the privilege of success. The
woman held the whip hand over her kinsfolk in her right to dispose of
fifteen thousand taels. There was none among them who would not have
asked the same interest from his capital. At the bottom of it all, they knew
she was observing and when she decided they were ready to acclaim her
decision for the t'ai-t'ai, after much sifting and searching, gave her choice to
a boy who was undeniably the ornament of the family.

He was the son of an older brother and had surmounted the handicaps of
a mother untaught, a home ignorant of hygiene, a family in which no one
hesitated to trespass on the privacy of others. As though these were the
conditions necessary to producing his type, he had grown up, like so many
Chinese youths bred in the same unpromising way, a tall, sturdy, clear-
complexioned boy, with quick, intelligent eyes, high forehead, slender,
masterful hands.

She had the lad suitably clothed, brought him to Peking with his father,
installed them both in a hotel, and then informed her husband that Nancy's
match had been found. The account she gave of his talents would have done
credit to the ablest scholar of the Han-lin.

"He must be a relative of yours," sniffed Herrick skeptically.

"He is," acknowledged his wife. "Why should I prefer the treasure
whose value I have known only by hearsay when I can bring the treasure I
have tested in my own home? He is my nephew, so I can vouch for him."

"Well, I am content to look at this paragon, though I heard of no unicorn

being present at his birth. Your father was a man of great parts; perhaps it's
not impossible some of his ability may have strained through to his
grandson."

Herrick waited for the father of the youth to call. The visit was
promising. Herrick had known the t'ai-t'ai's brother in days past and was
pleased to see him ripened into a dignified, well-spoken man with the
easiness of manner which characterized training of the old school. In due
time the son himself was produced. Herrick noted his face and his bearing,
summoned every resource of his own knowledge to examine him as to what
he had learned of the classics, made him write characters, interpret scrolls.
The boy stood the ordeal well. Every question that was put to him he
answered in a quiet, collected voice. He looked soberly handsome in his
dark green jacket and long green gown. He did not shift from foot to foot or
twist his hands or venture to stare at his inquisitor.

"I am glad to see that he has been taught the proprieties," Herrick said—
the first mark of satisfaction he had shown.

The engagement of course was not settled in a day. It was too grave a
business for such haste. The birthday cards had been exchanged and the
eight characters on each of them compared, to make sure that the year,
month, day, and hour of Nancy's birth matched those of Ming-te, the t'ai-
t'ai's nephew. The t'ai-t'ai was too wily a contriver to be balked by a little
detail of soothsaying: the making of Nancy's card was in her own hands. So
well she managed it that Chou Hsien-sheng, the father of the boy, was
astonished at a mating the stars themselves seemed to have predestined.

Yet Herrick was loath to bind himself to the final bargain. He was
satisfied with Ming-te, quite confident that no better Chinese husband could
be found for his daughter; nevertheless, the businesslike dryness of
arranging betrothal for a girl so instinct with delicate imaginings
disheartened the father, made him sore in spirit. He had specified that
Nancy should not be married for four years, a point he had some trouble
winning, for the fifteen thousand taels were not to be paid till the wedding;
to gain his will here, Herrick had to concede one third of Nancy's dowry at
her engagement. But after all the terms had been talked out, the amount and
number of betrothal presents decided, every obstacle cleared, Herrick still
hung back, for he knew when the red cards were exchanged he should have
given up irrevocably his claims upon his daughter.

"I wish Nancy could see the boy for herself," he told the t'ai-t'ai. "I
know my own judgment is better than hers and that I ought to do this
without a qualm—yet my heart does not feel quite right about it."

For once in her life the t'ai-t'ai could not control a vivid expression of
her feelings. She was appalled by her husband's vacillating temper. After all
the concessions she had made as matchmaker, after allowing Herrick not
only to see the father of the boy but the unprecedented privilege of seeing
the boy himself, her patience was outraged by the mere suggestion of his
turning back.
 "Of course she can't see him. How can she see him? When has that ever
been done?" she demanded.

Herrick agreed sadly. It was another case of his own inheritance

betraying him. He had fancied Nancy and Ming-te left by themselves for a
space, till the gentle influence of the garden should help them realize their
own community of soul. Alas, it was the fond picture of an old man. He
needed only a minute's attention to his wife's protests to know that neither
Nancy nor Ming-te would see the advantage of such a meeting. They would
stand awkward, tongue-tied, wondering who should release them from this
agony of embarrassment.

"Very well," he said, "the matter is settled. Call a fortune-teller and

choose a lucky day. I am ready to make the engagement."

The t'ai-t'ai secured a lucky day close at hand. It was cheaper, after all,
to buy a lucky day than to pay the hotel bills of her brother and her nephew.

Herrick, meanwhile, had not dared consult Nancy about his

negotiations. The t'ai-t'ai naturally told nothing. It was in her interest to be
secretive, especially about the matter of the fifteen thousand taels, which
every concubine would resent as robbing her of her chance, no matter how
remote, to plunder the family wealth. Yet the news of the intended
engagement leaked out. Every last woman of the household knew who
Nancy's husband was to be. The nurse was angry, yet afraid to make matters
worse by protesting, afraid lest she be parted from her foster children and
pensioned back to her southern home, a summary fate she knew the t'ai-t'ai
had hinted and might have influence enough to effect by making Herrick
believe he was doing a kindness to an old and loyal family servant.

Kuei-lien too was perturbed. So great was her admiration for the
shrewdness of the t'ai-t'ai that she could not rest comfortably till she had
uncovered all the inward reasons for this engagement. The t'ai-t'ai was not
the person to give away a favorite nephew without compensation, not the
one to argue her family into a profitless bargain. She suspected money
behind the agreement, but could get no proof; it was certainly what she
would have claimed, had she been in the t'ai-t'ai's place. Yet she, no more
than the amah, could presume to act against the mistress of the household,
to act openly. The t'ai-t'ai was her patron; had lifted her up, might yet cast
her down.

Kuei-lien determined to provoke resistance from Nancy herself.

"Do you remember when you suggested to your father that I was an
enemy?" she began, with engaging frankness. "I want to prove to you that I
am no enemy, but a friend."

Nancy, who was quite unable to fathom the purpose of the concubine,
chose the prudence of keeping quiet.

"I suppose you know your father is seeking but a husband for you," she
continued. "He tried Mr. Nasmith; they couldn't come to terms. So now
your father thinks it is cheaper to get a Chinese husband."

"Who told you all this?" Nancy asked angrily.

"Ah, my dear, the very walls have ears."

"I don't want to hear the tattle of the walls."

"Come, there's no profit in being angry. Let me finish what I have to

say. Now your father has found a suitable person. He is the nephew of the
t'ai-t'ai. Why do you think the t'ai-t'ai has offered her nephew for the place?
Because she is fond of you? Nonsense; it is because her family is poor and
needs the money your father is willing to pay."

At this moment the nurse herself appeared; Kuei-lien had contrived it

so.

"Now," went on the concubine, "perhaps you dislike me too much to

believe me, though I am not the enemy you think,"—her smile truly was
disarming,—"but you surely will believe your old amah, and you will see
that she agrees with every word when I say we Chinese do not like marriage
with foreigners just as your own people look down upon marriage with
Chinese. Isn't that so?"

"Yes, yes, very true words," assented the nurse.

 "Why did you marry a foreigner?" asked Nancy.

"I am not a wife. I am only your father's mistress. I was poor. I had no
choice."

Kuei-lien, flinging back Nancy's own words, had shamed the girl into
silence.

"The family of your husband won't welcome you," persisted the

concubine; "they will receive you, only because of the money you have
brought, but they will hate you, hate you; no matter how talented or how
beautiful you may be, they will hate you because you are different, they will
hate you even more because you are talented, because you are beautiful.
What do you suppose your ignorant mother-in-law will care about your
talents? Faugh! she cannot read a word or write a character. She will never
rest happy till you have forgotten every sentence you know, till you too are
like the other cattle of the house."

"Suppose all this is true," said Nancy calmly, "what is the good of
telling me? My father makes the decisions."

"We tell you because we can do nothing with your father. The t'ai-t'ai
would send us away if we opened our mouths to protest. But you have your
father's ear. The t'ai-t'ai cannot harm you. If you make your father
understand what this engagement means, he would love you too much to
bring such shame upon his daughter. Go and see him. According to your
Western custom you have the right to speak about these things."

"I know nothing about Western customs," Nancy replied, "but I do

know this: my father hasn't sent for me and he hasn't asked my advice.
There is nothing I can say till he asks me."

As soon as she had made the two women realize that she was not going
to lift the littlest finger against a fate which was not yet real to her mind,
Nancy escaped to join Edward and Li-an in the garden. October sunshine
glowed lazily through the trees, striking silky lights from the cobwebs.
Nancy sat down in the little summer house which seemed to brood with her
on the coming loneliness of winter; she kicked her feet through the crinkly
leaves and looked at the bright borders of the chrysanthemums which tossed
their curled petals like a rainbow of flame around her. She had wanted to
stay like this forever—forever—yet now had come this new, unwanted
intrusion to prove the rightness of her father's words.

"What is the matter, Nancy?" asked Edward, as he and Li-an came in

and stood beside her. "Why don't you come and play?"

"I am going to be engaged."

"So am I," Li-an joined in proudly. "Just as soon as you're betrothed,

mother's going to find a fiancé for me."

"Yes, we all have to be engaged," Edward agreed, "it's nothing to cry

about. Perhaps they'll have a feast."

"Why do you say such stupid things, Edward? You never think about
anything but your stomach. Do you think I have to be engaged just so you
can stuff yourself? I hate you."

"Don't you really want to?" asked Edward with concern.

"No, of course not."

The boy was taken aback by his sister's willingness to forgo an occasion
of such promising excitement. But Nancy got rid of Li-an and told her
brother all the dreadful prophecies Kuei-lien had made. Edward had never
thought of an engagement in this light.

"I'll go see father," declared the boy. "I'll tell him you aren't ready to be
engaged."

Nancy, despite herself, smiled at his unconventional daring, but she did
not stop him. It was an act Edward never before had thought of doing, to go
thus uninvited to his father's room. Yet no prudence deterred him, no
thought of hesitation even came into his mind.

"And what do you wish, Edward?" asked Herrick, who was sitting at his
desk. He always derived tender amusement from the animated, serious
ways of his son.

"Does Nancy have to be engaged now?" asked the boy, plunging into
his subject with an Occidental directness for which there was no
explanation except the blood in his veins, loyally Western despite all the
sages of China. "She doesn't want to be engaged."

"I don't want her to be engaged either," replied the father sadly, "but
time takes these affairs out of my hands."

As if to prove the truth of his statement there came suddenly the long
blast of a trumpet, the lilt of wind instruments like the festival sprightliness
of bagpipes, then a tremendous explosion of firecrackers, long strings of
them bursting with redoubled noise in the confines of the hallway.

"You hear," indicated Herrick with a weary gesture. Time had indeed
taken the affair out of his hands.

The father paced restlessly up and down the room while the noise
continued. Edward's curiosity impelled the boy to join the crowd of women
and servants gathered in the courtyard. The t'ai-t'ai had kept her secret so
well that only the father had been prepared for the coming of the betrothal
gifts, only the father had been allowed to see the trays of return gifts got
ready in an outer room of the house.

Amid the smoke and turmoil of crackers six pairs of coolies entered,
each pair carrying between them a red wooden tray laden with bales of silk
and cotton, with rice, with round pears and balls of steamed bread, and with
dried poultry on which had been pasted double characters cut out of red
paper to represent the word for happiness; there were eggs too, dyed red,
and slippers of silver paper. The overslung handles of the trays had been
festooned with garlands of red cloth.

All the middle doors had been flung open so that the coolies could bring
their hampers into the inner courtyards, while people from the street mixed
with people of the household, thronging the pavements despite the
belaboring curses of the gatemen. The t'ai-t'ai, who wore resplendently a
skirt of scarlet brocaded satin, stood beaming with importance, ready to
receive the gifts and to dispatch Nancy's in return. The consummation of
arduous diplomacy was symbolized by her sedate manner, the dignity
which no Chinese woman is too humble to reserve for the few great public
moments of her life.

But she had to share the haughty fruits of the occasion. A gasp from the
women standing round caused her to turn and to see Nancy, who of all
people in the world had no business to be there. Already, in noisy
undertones, the women were commenting upon Nancy's immodest
presumption in coming out so brazenly to receive her betrothal gifts when
she ought to be hiding in some adjacent room, pretending ignorance of the
festive proceedings. Nancy did not hear them, did not seem to mind the
asperity of the t'ai-t'ai's voice, when the reason for her being there was
demanded.

"This is my betrothal, is it?" the girl asked.

"Yes."

"And these are my betrothal gifts?"

"Yes."

Nancy stooped and looked at the contents of the trays. There was no
limit to her unmaidenly boldness.

"Very nice things they are," she commented, "and where are the things I
am to send?"

The t'ai-t'ai could not speak; she merely indicated with her chin the
other trays which had been brought from the gate. The girl walked round
them slowly, looked with a meditative gaze on the articles which had been
heaped upon them, then very deliberately took two of the large golden
chrysanthemums she was carrying and placed them on top of the foremost
tray.

"I want one gift to come from me," she said.