THE MARRIAGE MAKER 143 



the old woman was located. As soon as he approached the 

 neighbourhood a varied assortment of malodours assailed his 

 nostrils. It was undeniably a poor locality, where beggars 

 and the lowest coolie classes congregated and eked out a 

 miserable existence in all their poverty and putrescent 

 squalor. Kagged children, covered from head to foot with 

 the grime of many months, played in the perennial slime 

 of the narrow streets among pigs and starving dogs that 

 perform the functions of scavengers in such places. The 

 nouses, or rather hovels, were all low and in the last stage 

 of dilapidation, and apparently had no doors. Wei Ku 

 peered into each doorway as he advanced, stepping warily 

 over puddles and heaps of decomposing refuse. At last he 

 came to the market-place, where the women, unkempt and 

 unwashed, wrangle daily over the few course articles of food 

 required to keep them alive in their wretchedness, and there, 

 at the corner of the street, was the dingy little shop with its 

 stand of tou-fu, already cut into two-inch squares, and partly 

 covered with a wet cloth, exposed for sale. "Within the 

 shop, and occupying nearly the whole of one side, was a 

 brick stove with the large round iron boilers sunk into the 

 brickwork; their wooden lids were standing on edge against 

 the wall, while the water in the boilers, seething over a 

 crackling wood fire, sent up dense clouds of steam. There 

 was also a collection of other things in the shop, such as 

 strainers, sieves, and racks; in short, all the paraphernalia 

 required in the manufacture and sale of this very inexpensive 

 and common article of diet, as well as several wooden 

 buckets containing the greenish-white residue of the beans, 

 called tou-fu-cha, which is sold for next to nothing to feed 

 swine, and which, being in a state of fermentation, emitted 

 an offensive sour smell. 



At first Wei Ku could not see into the dimly lighted 

 interior, filled as it was with smoke and the steam from the 

 boilers; but he soon heard the plaintive puling of an infant, 

 and this pierced him to the quick. Simultaneously, an old 

 woman with a child in her arms hobbled forward, and as 

 she emerged into the daylight she demanded of Wei Ku 

 what he wanted. Heedless of the enquiry, Wei Ku only 

 stared blankly at the apparition before him. The child, 

 poor thing, presented the appearance of nothing more than 

 a bundle of unwholesome rags. Wei Ku was filled with 

 abhorrence. The old woman, uncouth, hideous as well as 

 uncleanly, and never accustomed to speak with civility to 

 anyone, repeated her question with increased vehemence in 

 a rasping, raucous voice, which so startled Wei Ku that he 

 turned on his heels and fled. He had seen enough. 



