Free The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

children, for we are of one blood.”
    Wang Lung answered shortly,
    “You know I am not rich. I have the five mouths to feed now and my father is old and does not work and still he eats, and another mouth is being born in my house at this very moment, for aught I know.”
    His uncle replied shrilly,
    “You are rich—you are rich! You have bought the land from the great house at the gods know what heavy price—is there another in the village who could do this thing?”
    At this Wang Lung was goaded to anger. He flung down his hoe and he shouted suddenly, glaring at his uncle,
    “If I have a handful of silver it is because I work and my wife works, and we do not, as some do, sit idling over a gambling table or gossiping on doorsteps never swept, letting the fields grow to weeds and our children go half-fed!”
    The blood flew into his uncle’s yellow face and he rushed at his nephew and slapped him vigorously on both cheeks.
    “Now that,” he cried, “for speaking so to your father’s generation! Have you no religion, no morals, that you are so lacking in filial conduct? Have you not heard it said that in the Sacred Edicts it is commanded that a man is never to correct an elder?”
    Wang Lung stood sullen and immoveable, conscious of his fault but angry to the bottom of his heart against this man who was his uncle.
    “I will tell your words to the whole village!” screamed his uncle in a high cracked voice of fury. “Yesterday you attack my house and call aloud in the streets that my daughter is not a virgin; today you reproach me, who if your father passes on, must be as your own father to you! Now may my daughters all not be virgins, but not from one of them would I hear such talk!” And he repeated over and over, “I will tell it to the village—I will tell it to the village …” until at last Wang Lung said unwillingly, “What do you want me to do?”
    It touched his pride that this matter might indeed be called out before the village. After all, it was his own flesh and blood.
    His uncle changed immediately. Anger melted out of him. He smiled and he put his hand on Wang Lung’s arm.
    “Ah, I know you—good lad—good lad—” he said softly. “Your old uncle knows you—you are my son. Son, a little silver in this poor old palm—say, ten pieces, or even nine, and I could begin to have arrangements with a matchmaker for that slave of mine. Ah, you are right! It is time—it is time!” He sighed and shook his head and he looked piously to the sky.
    Wang Lung picked up his hoe and threw it down again.
    “Come to the house,” he said shortly. “I do not carry silver on me like a prince,” and he strode ahead, bitter beyond speech because some of the good silver with which he had planned to buy more land was to go into this palm of his uncle’s, from whence it would slip on to the gambling table before night fell.
    He strode into the house, brushing out of his way his two small sons who played, naked in the warm sunshine, about the threshold. His uncle, with easy good nature, called to the children and took from some recess in his crumpled clothing a copper coin for each child. He pressed the small fat shining bodies to him, and putting his nose into their soft necks he smelled of the sun-browned flesh with easy affection.
    “Ah, you are two little men,” he said, clasping one in either arm.
    But Wang Lung did not pause. He went into the room where he slept with his wife and the last child. It was very dark, coming in as he did from the outer sunshine, and except for the bar of light from the hole, he could see nothing. But the smell of warm blood which he remembered so well filled his nostrils and he called out sharply,
    “What now—has your time come?”
    The voice of his wife answered from the bed more feebly than he had ever heard her speak,
    “It is over once more. It is only a slave this time—not worth mentioning.”
    Wang Lung stood still. A sense of evil struck him. A girl! A girl