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"The pearls? I have them."

And he muttered, not looking at her but at her wrinkled, wet hands,

"There is no use in keeping pearls for nothing."

Then she said slowly,

"I thought one day I might have them set in earrings," and fearing his laughter she said again, "I could have them for the younger girl when she is wed."

And he answered her loudly, hardening his heart,

"Why should that one wear pearls with her skin as black as earth? Pearls are for fair women!" And then after an instant's silence he cried out suddenly, "Give them to me---I have need of them!"

Then slowly she thrust her wet wrinkled hand into her bosom and she drew forth the small package and she gave it to him and watched him as he unwrapped it; and the pearls lay in his hand and they caught softly and fully the light of the sun, and he laughed.

But O-lan returned to the beating of his clothes and when tears dropped slowly and heavily from her eyes she did not put her hand to wipe them away; only she beat the more steadily her wooden stick upon the clothes spread over the stone.

Chapter 20

AND THUS it might have gone forever until all the silver was spent had not that one, Wang Lung's uncle, returned suddenly without explanation of where he had been or what he had done. He stood in the door as though he had dropped from a cloud, his ragged clothes unbuttoned and girdled loosely as ever about him, and his face as it always was but wrinkled and hardened with the sun and the wind. He grinned widely at them all as they sat about the table at their early morning meal, and Wang Lung sat agape, for he had forgotten that his uncle lived and it was like a dead man returning to see him. The old man his father blinked and stared and did not recognize the one who had come until he called out,

"Well, and Elder Brother and his son and his sons and my sister-in-law."

Then Wang Lung rose, dismayed in his heart but upon the surface of his face and voice courteous.

"Well, and my uncle and have you eaten?"

"No," replied his uncle easily, "but I will eat with you."

He sat himself down, then, and he drew a bowl and chopsticks to him and he helped himself freely to rice and dried salt fish and to salted carrots and to the dried beans that were upon the table. He ate as though he were very hungry and none spoke until he supped down loudly three bowls of the thin rice gruel, cracking quickly between his teeth the bones of the fish and the kernels of the beans. And when he had eaten he said simply and as though it was his right,

"Now I will sleep, for I am without sleep these three nights."

Then when Wang Lung, dazed and not knowing what else to do, led him to his father's bed, his uncle lifted the quilts and felt of the good cloth and of the clean new cotton and he looke at the wooden bedstead and at the good table and at the great wooden chair which Wang Lung had bought for his father's room, and he said,

"Well, and I heard you were rich but I did not know yot were as rich as this," and he threw himself upon the bed an, drew the quilt about his shoulders, all warm with summer though it was, and everything he used as though it was his own and he was asleep without further speech.

Wang Lung went back to the middle room in great consternation for he knew very well that now his uncle would never be driven forth again, now that he knew Wang Lung had wherewith to feed him. And Wang Lung thought of this and thought of his uncle's wife with great fear because he saw that they would come to his house and none could stop them.

As he feared so it happened. His uncle stretched himsel upon the bed at last after noon had passed and he yawned loudly three times and came out of the room, shrugging the clothes together upon his body and he said to Wang Lung,

"Now I will fetch my wife and my son. There are the three of us mouths, and in this great house of yours it will never be missed what we eat and the poor clothes we wear."

Wang Lung could do nothing but answer with sullen looks, for it is a shame to a