Mr Ma and Son by Lao She

Ely was paying a visit, Miss Wedderburn selected several long passages from a letter that her boyfriend had sent her and read them out to the old clergyman. He had in fact dropped by with the intention of persuading Miss Wedderburn to come to church on Sunday, but as soon as he heard the letter, he departed in haste.
    In her youth, Mrs Wedderburn too had had boyfriends. But her ideals were vastly different from her daughter’s. The hero she pictured was a man who could slay a tiger with one punch, and knock a wild elephant flat with a couple of kicks, but who, the moment he encountered a woman, would turn infinitely tender, suave and flatteringly attentive. The heroine, for her part, would always have a very slender waist and tiny hands, and be ever ready to swoon, at which time she’d unerringly fall into the hero’s arms. Such a man was only permitted to utter a few fond words beneath the moonlight amid blossomy gardens, or to discreetly request a kiss in some private grove.
    Miss Wedderburn’s romantic ideals and experiences had nothing in common with such literary notions. The moment she opened her mouth, it was to tell her mother how, after she was married, she’d go driving with her husband at eighty miles an hour; how, if they didn’t hit it off with one another, they’d go to court and get a divorce; and how she’d like to marry an Italian chef so she could go to Italy and find out for sure whether Mussolini had a moustache or not. Or else she’d marry a Russian, and go to have a look round Moscow, just to see whether Russian women’s skirts went down past their knees, or whether they went bare-legged and didn’t wear skirts at all.
    Since Mrs Wedderburn’s husband had died, she had occasionally thought of marrying again. But the greatest obstacle to remarriage was the economic problem. She’d never involve herself with any man who lacked a secure and steady income. She’d never mentioned this to anyone, however, as the notion of love was a private one, to be mused over in secrecy. And even if she thought about the economics of it all, she still wanted to believe in true love.
    ‘Go on, then! Be off with you and marry your Russian blighter!’ would say Mrs Wedderburn to her daughter, losing patience.
    ‘Yes, that’s what I’ll do! Furs are bound to be cheap in Moscow. I’ll get him to buy me a dozen fur coats, and I’ll wear a different one each day. Wouldn’t I look beautiful, eh? Eh, Mum?’
    Mrs Wedderburn, without a word, would pick up her little dog and go off to bed.
    It wasn’t only in the matter of love that Miss Wedderburn’s opinions differed from her mother’s, for the same rift existed with regard to clothes, hats and jewellery. The daughter’s aesthetic viewpoint held that, whatever it was, the newer the better, and that as long as a thing was new, it was good. Any further enquiries as to whether it was beautiful were unnecessary. The shorter the skirt, the more fashionable the hat, the better it was. In her view, at least a foot should be cut off all her mother’s skirts, and not only were the brims of her mother’s hats absurdly broad, but the long-petalled flowers on them were utterly ludicrous. Her mother always talked about the quality of the material, while the daughter was more interested in the latest style that had come out in Paris. They would go at it till they talked themselves to a standstill.
    ‘If you buy another of those little eggshell hats,’ the mother would say, ‘you needn’t eat at the same table as me any more!’
    ‘And if you go on wearing that green country-bumpkin coat,’ the daughter would say, ‘I’m not going shopping with you any more!’
    Mother and daughter differed in looks as well. Mrs Wedderburn’s face was very long, slipping away as it descended to leave only a tiny triangle when it reached the chin. Her light-brown wavy hair, which already bore a few streaks of white, was curled up into two buns and secured on the top of her head.