FORE:One of the most interesting street sights of their first day in Pekin was a procession carrying a dragon made of bamboo covered with painted paper. There was a great noise of tom-toms and drums to give warning of the approach of the procession, and there was the usual rabble of small boys that precedes similar festivities everywhere. The dragon was carried by five men, who held him aloft on sticks that also served to give his body an undulating motion in imitation of life. He was not pretty to look upon, and his head seemed too large for his body. The Chinese idea of the dragon is, that he is something very hideous, and they certainly succeed in representing their conception of him. Dr. Bronson explained that the dragon was frequently carried in procession at night, and on these occasions the hollow body was illuminated, so that it was more hideous, if possible, than in the daytime.HIOGO (KOBE). HIOGO (KOBE).
FORE:I made no reply. He looked momentous, leaned to me sidewise with a hand horizontally across his mouth, and whispered a name. It was new to me. "Charlie Toliver?" I murmured, for we were at the tent door.
FORE:
THREE:THE JUNK AT ANCHOR. THE JUNK AT ANCHOR.Charles Propert, who presently arrived from the kitchen-passage in charge of the boy in buttons, was one of those who well knew his employers generosity, for Keeling in a blunt and shamefaced way had borne all the expense of a long illness which had incapacitated him the previous winter, not only continuing to pay him his salary as head of the book department at the stores during the weeks in which he was invalided, but taking{40} on himself all the charges for medical treatment and sea-side convalescence. He was an exceedingly well-educated man of two or three-and-thirty, and Keeling was far more at ease with him than with any other of his acquaintances, because he frankly enjoyed his society. He could have imagined himself sitting up till midnight talking to young Propert, because he had admitted him into the secret garden: Propert might indeed be described as the head gardener. Keeling nodded as the young man entered, and from under his big eyebrows observed that he was dressed entirely in black.
THREE:"You see, Doctor" (she blushed and stammered a little as she spoke), "you know I like to take a walk in the morning, and happened to come down to the station."He rose. Had he been wrong about the glance he had got from her? If so, he might have been wrong in everything that concerned her from the first day of her appearance here.
