But Wee Tu was not to be caught napping.

“Lige?” she answered, with a soft rising inflection that made the “k” in “like” sound as “g.”  “I do not know what Americans mean by the word—­’Lige.’  You ‘lige’ so many people.  A Chinese girl ‘liges’ only a few—­her parents, her relatives; sometimes she ‘liges’ her husband, but not always.”

“Don’t like your husband!” exclaimed Bab in surprise.  “Why, what do you mean?”

The little Chinese maiden was confused both by the American word and the American idea.

“The Chinese girl has respect for her husband; she does what he tells her to do, but she does not all the time ‘lige’ him, because her father has chosen him for her husband.  I shall marry a prince, when I go back to China, but he is ‘verra’ old.”

“Oh, I see!” Bab rejoined.  “You thought I meant ‘love’ when I said ‘like.’  It is quite different to love a person.”  Bab smiled wisely.  “To love is to like a great deal.”

“Then I love this Mr. Peter Dillon,” said the Chinese girl sweetly.

Bab gasped in shocked surprise.

“It is most improper that I say so, is it not?” smiled Miss Wee Tu.  “But so many things that American girls do seem improper to Chinese ladies.  And I do like this Mr. Peter very much.  He comes always to our house.  He is ‘verra’ intimate with my father.  He talks to him a long, long time and they have Chinese secrets together.  Then he talks with me so that I can understand him.  Many people will not trouble with a Chinese girl, who is only fifteen, even if her father is a minister.”

Barbara was overwhelmed with Wee Tu’s confidence, but she knew she deserved it as a punishment for her curiosity.  The strangest thing was that the young Chinese girl spoke in a low, even voice, without the least change of expression in her long, almond eyes.  Any one watching her would have thought she was talking of the weather.

“I go back to China when my father’s time in the United States is over and then I get married.  It makes no difference.  But while I am in your country I play I am free, like an American girl, and I do what I like inside my own head.”

“It’s very wrong,” Barbara argued hastily.  “It is much better to trust to your parents.”

“Yes?” answered Wee Tu quietly.  Bab was vexed that Peter Dillon’s careless Irish manners had also charmed this little Oriental maiden.  But Bab was wise enough to understand that Wee Tu’s interest was only that of a child who was grateful to the young man for his kindness.

Barbara rose to join her friends, who were at this moment saying good-bye to their hostess.

“It is the Chinese custom,” Lady Tu remarked graciously, “to make little presents to our guests.  Will not Mr. Hamlin’s daughter and her four friends receive these poor offerings?”

A servant handed the girls five beautiful, carved tortoise shell boxes, containing exquisite sets of combs for their hair, the half dozen or more that Chinese women wear.