TWO:THE CLOCKWORK MAN EXPLAINS HIMSELF
THREE:Mrs Keelings party that night, which sat down very punctually at half-past seven, and would disperse at half-past ten, was of the only-a-few-friends nature. Julia Fyson, Alices bosom friend, whom she had begun to dislike very cordially, was there, with her father and mother, the former, small and depressed, the latter, large and full-blooded and of a thoroughly poisonous nature. The four Keelings were there, and the extremely ladylike young woman whom Hugh had lately led to the altar. She was a shade too lady-like,{134} if anything, and never forgot to separate her little finger from the others when she was holding a cup or glass. They were ten in all, Mr Silverdale and Dr Inglis completing the number. As was usual at the table of that generous housekeeper Mrs Keeling, there were vast quantities of nitrogenous food provided in many courses, and it was not till nine that the dining-room door was opened, on the run, by Mr Silverdale to let the ladies leave the room. He made a suitable remark to each as she passed him, and Julia Fyson and Alice, with waists and arms interlaced, stopped to talk to him as they went out. Precisely at that moment, while they were all in the Gothic hall together, the boy covered with buttons opened the front door and admitted Norah Propert. The door into the dining-room was still being held wide by Silverdale, as the interlaced young ladies answered his humorous laments over the setting of the sun now that the ladies were leaving, and through it Keeling standing at the head of the table saw Norah there. She had had but one moment for thought as the front-door was opened to her, but the light from the hall streamed full on to the step and she judged it better to come in than, having been already seen, retreat again. Without looking up she walked across to the library door while still Mrs Fyson stared, and let herself in. She heard the dining-room door opposite close again while she fumbled for the switch of{135} the electric light; she heard indistinguishable murmurs from the hall. Only one caught her ear intelligibly when Mrs Keeling said, Oh, Mr Keelings typewriter. She is cataloguing his books.Those evenings spent at Mr Keelings house had a great attraction for her. She enjoyed the work itself, and as she made her slips she had refreshing glances at the books. It was a leisurely performance, not like her swift work in the office. Charles helped her in it, making author-slips or illustration-slips as she made title-slips. There was a fire on the hearth, a tray of sandwiches for them before they left, and more often than not Mr Keeling came and sat with them for half an hour, unpacking fresh volumes if any had come in, and looking through the book-catalogues that were sent him. And Norah was honest enough with herself to confess that it was not the work alone that interested her. Friendship, no less than friendship sudden and to her quite unexpected, had been the flower of the original enmity between{130} her and the man, who was never sir to her even in the office now. It dated from the moment when he had made his unreserved apology to her over the matter of the book-plates. She knew what it must cost to a man of his type to say what he had said to his typewriter, and she had to revise all her previous estimates of him, and add him up honestly again. She found the total a very different one from that which she had supposed was correct. True, a woman does not like or dislike a man directly because of his qualities, but his qualities are the soil from which her like or dislike springs. They are part at any rate of his personality, in which she finds charm or repulsiveness. The upshot was, to take it at its smallest measure, that instead of disliking her work for him, she had grown to like it, because it was for him that she did it.
THREE:I said he did not. The General turned his strong eyes to Gholson's and kept them there while he took three luxurious puffs at his cigar. Then he took the waiting paper, and as he wrote his name on it he said, smiling, "I wish you had been in Lieutenant Ferry's place, Mr. Gholson; you would have done your duty."
THREE:"But they were not made by the Japanese, as this one was," Frank responded, "and they are statues of figures standing erect, while this represents a sitting figure. A sitting figure sixty feet high is something you don't see every day."At the highest point of the mountainabout eighteen hundred feet above the water-levelthere is a signal-station, where all vessels coming into port are announced by means of flags. Our friends were carried along a zigzag road to this station, the coolies stopping every few minutes to rest from the fatigue of ascending a steep road with a burden on their shoulders. At the station they had a view extending a long distance out to sea and over the coast of China, and the mountain was so nearly perpendicular that it seemed as if they could toss a penny on the town or into the harbor. Fred tried it, and so did Frank; but after throwing away several ounces of copper, and finding they only went a short distance, they abandoned the experiment. They returned well satisfied with the excursion, and agreed that no one who visits Hong-kong should omit the journey to the top of the mountain.
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