The Two-Bar Brand - Chapter 11 The Whole Duty of Woman

"It's right beautiful," said Joan, "an' right strange to me. I never
seen anything like it before. That"--her eyes followed Wen Ho's
departure half-fearfully--"that man and all."

Prosper laughed delightedly, stretching up his arms in full enjoyment
of her splendid ignorance. "The Chinaman? Does he look so strange to
you?"

"Is that what he is? I--I didn't know." She smiled rather sadly and
ashamedly. "I'm awful ignorant, Mr. Gael. I just can read an' I've
only read two books." She flushed and her pupils grew large.

Prosper saw that this matter of reading trod closely on her pain.

"Yes, he's a Chinaman from San Francisco. You know where that is."

"Yes, sir. I've heard talk of it--out on the Pacific Coast, a big
city."

"Full of bad yellow men and a few good ones of whom let's hope Wen Ho
is one. And full of bric-à-brac like all these things that surprise
you so. Do you like bright colors, Joan?"

She pondered in the unself-conscious and unhurried fashion of the
West, stroking the yellow, spotted skin that lay over the black arm of
her chair and letting her eyes flit like butterflies in a garden on a
zigzag journey to one after another of the flowers of color in the
room.

"Well, sir," she said, "I c'd take to 'em better if they was more one
at a time. I mean"--she pushed up the braid a little from wrinkling
brows--"jest blue is awful pretty an' jest green. They're sort of
cool, an' yeller, that's sure fine. You'd like to take it in your
hands. Red is most too much like feelin' things. I dunno, it most
hurts an' yet it warms you up, too. If I hed to live here--"