I stiffened up as though I heard a thief picking the lock of my lawful treasure. She threw me, side wise, a bantering smile and then a more winsome glance, but I refused to see either. I burned with so many feelings at once that I could no more have told them than I could have raised a tune. "Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be very arch.
Frank observed that the steamer had been provided with a pair of eyes, which were neatly carved on wood, and painted so as to resemble the human eye. The captain explained that this was in deference to the Chinese custom of painting eyes on their ships and boats; and if he looked at the first boat, or other Chinese craft, large or small, that he saw, he would discover that it had eyes painted on the bow. This is the universal custom throughout China; and though a native may have a suspicion that it does no good, he would not be willing to fly in the face of old custom. In case he should leave his craft in blindness, and any accident befell her, he[Pg 330] would be told by his friends, "Serves you right for not giving your ship eyes to see with."I stiffened up as though I heard a thief picking the lock of my lawful treasure. She threw me, side wise, a bantering smile and then a more winsome glance, but I refused to see either. I burned with so many feelings at once that I could no more have told them than I could have raised a tune. "Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be very arch.
FORE:He drew the sheets towards him, and began signing in silence, wondering when she proposed to say how sorry she was for misjudging him about his generosity. Surely he could not have misinterpreted that radiant glance she gave him when he rose to reply to the toast of his health.
There was a moon somewhere above the snow-clouds that already were beginning to grow thin from the burden they had discharged, and the smug villas on each side of the road were clearly visible. She had to go up the length of Alfred Road, then turn down the street that led by St Thomass Vicarage, and emerge into West Street, where she lived with her brother. Already, a fortnight ago he had ascertained the number of their house, not asking for it directly, but causing her to volunteer the information, and since then he had half a dozen times gone through the street, on his way to and from the Stores in order to take a glance at it as he passed. He had wanted to know what the house looked like; he had wanted to construct the circumstances of her life, to know the aspect of her environment, to see the front-door out of which she came to her duties as his secretary. That all concerned her, and for that reason it concerned him. He knew the house well by now: he knew from chance remarks that he had angled for that her bedroom looked into the street, that Charless looked on to an old{154} disused graveyard behind. There was the dining-room and the sitting-room in front, and a paling behind which Michaelmas daisies flourished in a thin row. She cared for flowers, but not for flowers in a six-inch bed. They rather provoked her: they were playing at being flowers. She liked them when they grew in wild woodland spaces, and were not confined between a house-wall and a row of tiled path.Mary had been seized with the prevailing mania for Japanese porcelain, and among the things in her list she had noted especially and underscored the words "some good things in Japanese cloisonn." Frank had seen a good many nice things in this kind of work, and he set about selecting, with the help of the Doctor and Fred, the articles he was to send home. He bought some in Yokohama, some in Tokio, and later on he[Pg 242] made some purchases in Kobe and Kioto. We will look at what he bought and see if his sister had reason to be pleased when the consignment reached her and was unpacked from its carefully arranged wrappings."Worth stealing," a Society journalist lounging by remarked. "I could write a novel, only I can never think of a plot. Your old housekeeper is asleep long ago. Where do you carry your latchkey?"Im afraid Ive been staying a very long time, sir, he said. I had no idea it was so late.
