herself downright ill." "Oh! we flatter these damned Chinamen too much in thinking them so clever." "Oh! if you know the way to manage Chinamen. You should have seen the way I talked to that compradore. I frightened the beggar—just as I'd frightened Wu the day before. He saw it was a bit dangerous to play any games with me, by the Lord Harry, and so he called off the strike. I scared him stiff. And I scared Wu half to death, I can tell you." "Oh, yes! he's dead, right enough. No, I don't know how he died. Perhaps he was ordered to commit suicide. Well, I had no objection, I can tell you. And I shan't go into much black for him." "He always was a bit of a handful. Kept his school-masters busy. But that did them good and him no harm. And they were well paid for it. Boys will be boys, you know. Why, when I was his age. . . ."
In the smoking-room other men came and went all day and a good bit of the night, but Robert Gregory's voice went on forever. And Mrs. Gregory and Basil, walking up and down, grew careful to keep at the other end of the big ship. For the smoking-room was near the front, and opened on to both sides of the promenade deck.
Basil Gregory scarcely left his mother from Hong Kong to Liverpool.
As the great ship drew anchor, he drew her arm in his, and they stood together so and watched Hong Kong until their sight had gone from it quite. This was their passing from China, but not from tragedy, and the woman knew it.
They did not speak of Wu Li Chang. They had spoken of him definitely together for the last time. They did not speak at all as the island faded slowly away from them. But they knew that to-day the mandarin's
