no answer. She felt apologetic when she saw her husband waiting impatiently with his head turned upward, and she called again at the top-of her shrill voice, resorting this time to the boy's more familiar milk name.
This produced immediate results. The clap, clap of leather soles neared, and soon Chuan-erh stood before them wearing a short coat, his fat round face glistening with perspiration.
"What were you doing? Can't you hear your dieh calling?" she scolded.
"I was practicing pa-kua-ch'iian," he said and turning to Ssu-ming he stood respectfully and waited inquiringly.
"Hsueh-cheng, I want to ask you this: what is the meaning of o-du-foo?"
"O-du-foo? . . . Does that not mean 'a ferocious woman'?"
"Nonsense! Stupid!" Ssu-ming suddenly burst out angrily. "Do you mean to suggest that I am a woman?"
Hsueh-cheng was scared by the outburst; he withdrew two steps and stood more respectfully erect than before. Though he had secretly felt that his father's gait resembled that of the actors of old men's parts, he had never thought him as having any effeminate traits. But he was certain that he had given the wrong answer.
"Do you think that I am so stupid as not to know that o-du-foo means a ferocious woman and have to ask you about it? This is not Chinese but foreign language, let me tell you. What does it mean? Do you understand it?"
"I . . . I do not understand it," Hsueh-cheng became more and more scared.
"Huh, I have spent a lot of money in sending you to school and you tell me that you don't understand even this? So this is what they call 'emphasis on both ear and mouth'? The speaker of those foreign words was only about fourteen or
