“Then you'll have to come with us in the car.” Long tried to protest, but the man was already speaking to the child, his voice measured and reassuring. “Mary, my brave girl, I need you to help me. Your mama's all wet and cold and she needs me to carry her to the car. This nice man here hurt himself helping Mama; can you take care of him and his boy? Do you think you can bring them to the car for me?”

The child's pale eyes considered the situation, and then she clambered out of her mother's sodden embrace and extended her hand to Tom. The man swung his wife up easily, waited until Tom had got his father upright, and led the way across the sand.

It was Tom's first ride in a motorcar, and he was torn between the softness of the upholstery and the hisses his father let out, like a prodded kettle, every time the car bumped and swayed. At the end of the ride, the white man pulled into the drive of a house so grand Tom wondered if he was the mayor. He turned off the motor and trotted around to lift his protesting wife out of her seat and carry her to the door, which opened an instant before they reached it. They vanished inside; a stern-looking white woman peered out of the doorway, and appeared to be coming out until a command from within made her hesitate. She said something, at which a voice so sharp it could be heard from the car made her turn and retreat inside, leaving Tom, his father, and the little girl seated in the car.

Child and boy looked at each other in the silence, self-contained blue eyes meeting apprehensive black ones.

“What's your name?” she asked. Behind the piping lisp of youth, her voice sounded like her mother's, some kind of accent, Tom thought.

“My name is Tom.”

“Mine's Mary. Is your papa okay?”

“He hurt his shoulder in a fall a while ago. I think he's hurt it again helping your mother.”

The pale gaze travelled from the cradled arm to the Chinese face. “I'm sorry,” she said.

Long had to smile at her seriousness—he did not know young children well, Tom having come to him half-grown, and the size of Western infants always confused him, but despite her fluent speech he didn't think this one could be older than three. “It will be fine, missy,” he reassured her.

“Does it hurt?”

“A little, yes.”

“My papa will make it better for you,” she said, without a doubt in the world. “Would you like to come in?”