Are you going home? asked the other. My wife, I know, is calling on Lady Keeling, and she will pick me up there. If she has not been so fortunate as to find Lady Keeling in, she will wait for me in the motor. May we not walk down there together?Frank found the air full of odors more or less heavy, and some of them the reverse of agreeable. They arose from numerous sticks of incense burned in honor of the gods, and which are irreverently called joss-sticks by foreigners. The incense is supposed to be agreeable to the god, and the smoke is thought to waft the supplicant's prayer to heaven. The same idea obtains in the burning of a paper on which a prayer has been printed, the flame carrying the petition as it flies upward. Traces of a similar faith are found in the Roman Catholic and Greek churches, where candles have a prominent place in religious worship; and the Doctor insisted to his young companions that the Christian and the Pagan are not so very far apart, after all. In addition to the odor of incense, there was that of oil, in which a keeper of a tiny restaurant was frying some cuttle-fish. The oil was of the sort known as "sesame," or barley, and the smell was of a kind that does not touch the Western nostril as agreeably as does that of lavender or Cologne water. Men were tossing balls in[Pg 126] the air in front of the restaurant, quite unmindful of the strong odors, and seeming to enjoy the sport, and a woman and a boy were so busy over a game of battledoor and shuttlecock that they did not observe the presence of the strangers.
FORE:HORSESHOE OR OMEGA GRAVE. HORSESHOE OR OMEGA GRAVE.I am afraid I am, sir, she said. But you kindly invited me to go to the luncheon and the opening of the new wing. I have been working ever since.
ONE:Attention was diverted by something of minor importance, that showed the Clockwork man in an altogether new and puzzling light. There had been some delay over the procuring of the third ball, and when this was forthcoming the over was called. The fielders changed about, but the Clockwork man made no attempt to move and manifested no interest in the immediate proceedings. He remained, with the bat in his hands, as though waiting for another ball to be delivered.Keeling felt, in spite of his business-like habits,{273} that this was unnecessary. True, this was a matter of business, and he should have verified the correctness of Lord Inverbrooms information. But instead he merely put it into his pocket.
TWO:"Pooh!" said Harry, "'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind' requires just the reverse!" and the surgeon avowed that it was required by a decent respect to her powers of endurance; he was every day afraid her slow improvement would stop and she would begin to sink. He admitted the event could wait, but he wished to gracious we could have her decision.[Pg 102]
THREE:"It is a way they have," replied the Doctor, "of addressing their petitions to the deity. A Japanese writes his prayer on a piece of paper, or buys one already written; then he chews it to a pulp, and throws it at the god. If the ball sticks, the omen is a good one, and the prayer will be answered; if it rebounds or falls, the sign is unlucky, and the petitioner must begin over again. I have been told," continued Doctor Bronson, "that some of the dealers in printed prayers apply a small quantity of glue to them so as to insure their sticking when thrown at the divinity."
FORE:"No-o!" he said, as if nobody but a gaping idiot would expect anybody not a gaping idiot to notice a leather-curtained spring-wagon. "No-o! did you notice the brown horse that man was riding who just now passed you as you turned off the road?"
CHAPTER VII"They've one consolation," Fred remarked"they have their compasses always about them, and have no need to figure up their reckoning with 'Bowditch's Navigator' to know which way to steer."Im sure its years since Ive been so upset as Ive been to-day, Thomas, she said, for what with you and Mamma worrying each other so at lunch, and Mamma stopping all afternoon and biting my head off, if I said as much as to hope that her rheumatism hadnt troubled her lately, and its wonderful how little it does trouble her really, for Im sure that though I dont complain, I suffer twice as much as she does when we get that damp November weatherDear me, this tea-pot was always a bad pourer: I should have been wiser to get a less handsome one with a straight spout. Well, theres your cup of tea, Im sure youll be glad of it. But there are some days when everything combines to vex one, and it will all be in a piece with what has gone before, if Alice forgets and takes some salmon-mayonnaise,{49} and Mr Silverdale goes away thinking that Im a stingy housekeeper, which has never been said of me yet.Till the world spreads out at our feet.
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