Kwei-li.
3
My Mother,
I have such great news to tell thee that I hardly know where to begin.
But, first, I will astonish thee-- Ting-fang is home! Yes, I can hear thee
say, "Hi yah!" And I said it many times when, the evening before last,
after thy son and the men of the house-hold had finished the evening
meal, and I and the women were preparing to eat our rice, we saw a
darkness in the archway, and standing there was my son. Not one of
us spoke a word; we were as if turned to stone; as we thought of him
as in far-off America, studying at the college of Yale. But here he
stood in real life, smiling at our astonishment. He slowly looked at us
all, then went to his father and saluted him respectfully, came and
bowed before me, then took me in his arms in a most disrespectful
manner and squeezed me together so hard he nearly broke my
bones. I was so frightened and so pleased that of course I could only
cry and cling to this great boy of mine whom I had not seen for six
long years. I held him away from me and looked long into his face. He
is a man now, twenty-one years old, a big, strong man, taller than his
father. I can hardly reach his shoulder. He is straight and slender, and
looks an alien in his foreign dress, yet when I looked into his eyes I
knew it was mine own come to me again.
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