Mrs Spring Fragrance

Lae Choo does not sleep that night. She waits for the sun to come up so that Hom Hing can go and retrieve Little One. After Hom Hing leaves, Lae Choo keeps herself busy to prevent the hours from passing slowly. She had already put the noon meal on the table when Hom Hing, “arms hung down by his side,” (96) returns empty-handed: “They bid me call tomorrow” (96). Lae Choo then collapses to the floor.

Five months have passed, and the government has not returned Little One to his parents. He is being kept at a Mission, and officials told Lae Choo and Hom Hing that although he cried for his mother for a month, he was not unhappy at the Mission.

The white lawyer that Hom Hing has hired to get his son back visits him at his store. The young man shows Hom Hing a letter that he has received from Washington. It is the 16th such letter Hom Hing has received, and each time he gets his hopes up, it ends in disappointment. The lawyer offers to travel to Washington and retrieve the paper necessary to get Little One from the Mission. Hom Hing is excited about the prospect and calls Lae Choo to hear the good news. Once he has both parents in the room, the lawyer says he will need 500 dollars to start. When Hom Hing explains to the lawyer that he had given him all of the money he has to write the letters to the government, the lawyer bluffs and goes to leave, saying: “Oh, well then we won’t talk about it, old fellow. It won’t harm the boy to stay where he is, and your wife may get over it all right” (98).

When Lae Choo realizes he is not going to help them without money, she says, “You are not one hundred man good; you just common white man” (98). He answers, “‘Yes, ma’am,’ […] bowing and smiling ironically” (98). Hom Hing then offers to pay him something, even though he does not know where he will get the money from. The lawyer offers to get the necessary paperwork for 400 dollars, but when Hom Hing tells him he has no way of getting that money, the lawyer again starts for the door. Lae Choo yells, “Stop, white man; white man, stop!” (99). She then slips the gold bracelet off of her wrist and runs upstairs to get the rest of her jewelry. The lawyer is reluctant to take payment in jewelry, but Lae Choo is insistent. Hom Hing takes back one piece of jewelry. It is the ring that he had given Lae Choo when she dreamed of the tree with the red flower. The lawyer pockets the rest of the jewelry and leaves. 

The lawyers successfully get the paperwork necessary to reunite Little One with his parents. Lae Choo goes to the Mission to retrieve her son. The missionary woman that is leading Lae Choo to Little One tells the mother: “He had been rather difficult to manage at first and had cried much for his mother; ‘but children so soon forget, and after a month he seemed quite at home and played around as bright and happy as a bird’” (100). The woman tells Lae Choo to wait, and then after what seems like an hour, returns, holding the child now called "little Kim." Lae Choo falls to her knees and reaches for her son, “but the Little One shrunk from her and tried to hide himself in the folds of the white woman’s skirt. ‘Go’way, go’way!’ he bade his mother” (100).