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You would spill the rice and soil your dress if you should try to do so, but these children know no other way, and they have learned to do it quite carefully. The sticks are called chopsticks; and up in the great house on the hill, where Pen-se went to carry fish, lives a little lady who has beautiful pearl chopsticks, and wears roses in her hair.
Here it was that Pen-se went on that happy day when she saw the little lady in the house on the hill, and she has not forgotten the wonders of that day in the streets.
So pass the days of our child Pen-se, who lives on the great river which men call the child of the ocean. But it was not always so. She was born among the hills where the tea grows with its glossy, myrtle-like leaves, and white, fragrant blossoms.
Do you remember all these things in the stories? And wasn't it the same tender love that made the sparkling water and sunshine for Pen-se, and the shining brown ducks for her too; the springs in the desert and the palm-trees for Gemila, as well as the warm sunshine for Manenko, and the beautiful River Rhine for Louise?
Here, too, grew the mulberry-trees, with their purple fruit and white; and Pen-se learned to know and to love the little worms that eat the mulberry-leaves, and then spin for themselves a silken shell, and fall into a long sleep inside of it. She watched her mother spin off the fine silk and make it into neat skeins, and once she rode on her mother's back to market to sell it.
Pen-se and her father will go in to breakfast now, under the bamboo roof which slides over the middle part of the boat, or can be pushed back if they desire. As Kang-hy turns to go in, and takes off his bamboo hat, the sun shines on his bare, shaved head, where only one lock of hair is left; that is braided into a long, thick tail, and hangs far down his back.
Up in the high-walled garden of the great house on the hill, the night-moths have spread their broad, soft wings, and are flitting among the flowers, and the little girl with the small feet lies on her silken bed, half asleep. She, too, thinks of the lake and the lilies, but she knows nothing about Pen-se, who lives down upon the river. See, the sun has gone from them.
When the tea-plants were in bloom, Pen-se first saw the light; and when she was hardly more than a baby she trotted behind her father, while he gathered the leaves, dried and rolled them, and then packed them in square boxes to come in ships across the ocean for your papa and mine to drink.
And forgetting how much the bandages pained her, and not thinking how sad it is only to be able to hobble about a little, instead of running and leaping as children should, she binds up the feet of Lou, her dear little daughter, in the great house on the hill, and makes her a poor, helpless child; not so happy, with all her flower-gardens, gold and silver fish, and beautiful gold-feathered birds, as Pen-se with her broad, bare feet, and comfortable, fat little toes, as she stands in the wet tanka-boat, helping her mother wash it with river-water, while the leather shoes of both of them lie high and dry on the edge of the wharf, until the wet work is done.
Pen-se often thinks of her, and wishes she might go again to carry the fish, and see some of the beautiful things in that garden with the high walls.
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