TWO:This conversation occurred while the boys were in front of the hotel, and waiting for the Doctor, whom they expected every moment. When he came, the three went out for a stroll, and returned in good season for breakfast. While they were out they took a peep into a Japanese house, where the family were at their morning meal, and thus the boys had an opportunity of comparing their own ways with those of the country they were in.
THREE:"I am," Rose insisted, distantly, "much more than you think. I've got lots on."
THREE:On that the blood surged to Ferry's brow, but he set his mouth firmly, locked arms with the speaker and led him down the veranda. Gholson took on an uglier pallor than before and went back into the house. I followed him. He moved slowly up the two flights of hall stairs and into a room close under the roof, called the "soldiers' room". It had three double beds, one of them ours. Without a fault in the dreary rhythm of his motions he went to the bedpost where hung his revolver, and turning to me buckled the weapon at his waist with hands that kept the same unbroken measure though they trembled and were as pallid as his face. In the same slow beat he shook his head.
"You know how a tea-chest looks, so I need not describe it any more than to say that the chest is lined with tin, and that the tin is carefully soldered, so that not a single particle of dampness can get in while the tea is on the ocean. If it should, the tea would be spoiled, as the least dampness will injure it, and a great deal will make it quite useless. They always try to hurry the new crop of tea as rapidly as they can, since it is the best, and has more and better flavor than the crop of the previous year. When a ship sails with new tea, she races for home as hard as she can go, and the quickest voyages ever made from this part of the world to Europe and America have been made by ships with cargoes of new tea.""But I can't help it," pleaded the Doctor. "Take away my humour and I'm frightened at what's left of myself. There's nothing but an appalling chaos."
