We must draw a veil over the horror of the days that followed the agony of the mother, the despair of the father, the rage of the grandmother when she saw the children would die, and the ill-concealed malice of the other women. A few days passed when a little body, wrapped in a piece of old matting, was carried by the father to the children's pit outside the city. A little later this scene was repeated, and Mrs. Wang's day of happiness ended.
The cruel death of their two beautiful boys was the beginning of dark days for _our_ Mr. and Mrs. Wang. The old grandmother died shortly after from excess of rage. (The fits of rage to which women give way in China cannot easily be understood by the Westerner). It was in one of these attacks, caused no doubt by disappointment at the result of her treatment of her grandchildren, that the poor old autocrat collapsed and died. The day before the funeral was to take place the old husband was found dead in bed.
An expensive funeral and excessive feasting which followed and which custom required reduced the family to desperate financial straits.
The days following the funeral were tempestuous ones for the Wang household, and the "domestic typhoons," as they have been correctly described, were fiercer and more frequent than ever. At last the day came when the family mutually decided to separate, which they did in true Chinese fashion--each couple would be responsible for their own finances, but would continue to live as before "within the one gate."
This arrangement would have been favorable to our branch of the family had not Mr. Wang lost his situation as teacher almost immediately after the change. Then followed several moons (months) of fruitless search for employment. Everything that could be was sold or pawned to get food.
One day Mr. Wang's boatman brother returned from the coast. He told them of a man who had come up on their boat who was looking for a teacher for a missionary living in an adjoining province, and he urged Mr. Wang to take this position. The women-folk, however, bitterly opposed saying, "If he once gets under the spell of the foreigner we shall never hear of him again." But they could not starve, and when it was learned the salary would be considerably more than what he had been getting even the women yielded.