"Oh, come now, don't," exclaimed the energetic person, striking himself
together by means of his two hands. "It's sinful to talk about suicide
the day before bank holiday. Why, my only Somali warrior has vamoosed
with his full make-up, and the Magnetic Girl too, and I never thought of
suicide--only whether to turn my old woman into a Veiled Beauty of the
Harem or a Hairy Lama from Tibet."

Not absolutely grasping the emergency, yet in a spirit of inoffensive
cordiality I remarked that the alternative was insufferably perplexing,
while he continued.

"Then I spotted you, and in a flash I got an idea that ought to take and
turn out really great if you'll come in. Now follow this: Missionary's
tent in the wilds of Pekin. Domestic interior by lamp-light. Missionary
(me) reading evening paper; missionary's wife (the missus) making tea,
and between times singing to keep the small pet goat quiet (small goat,
a pillow, horsecloth, and pocket-handkerchief). Breaks down singing,
sobs, and says she feels a strange all-over presentiment. Missionary
admits being a bit fluffed himself, and lets out about a notice signed
in blood that he's seen in the city."

"Carried upon a pole?" this person demanded, feeling that something of a
literary nature might yet be wrested into the incident.

"On a flagstaff if you like," conceded the other one magnanimously. "A
notice to the effect that it is the duty of every jack mother's son of
them to douse the foreign devils, man, woman, and child, and especially
the talk-book pass-hat-round men. Also that he has had several
brick-ends heaved at him on his way back. Then stops suddenly, hits
his upper crust, and says that it's like his blamed fat-headedness
to frighten her; while she clutches at herself three times and faints
away."

"Amid the voluminous burning of blue lights?" suggested this person
resourcefully.

"By rights there should be," admitted the one who was devising the
representation; "but it will hardly run to it. Anyway, it costs nothing
to turn the lamp down--saves a bit in fact, and gives an effect. Then
outside, in the distance at first you understand, you begin to work up
the sound of the advancing mob--rattles, shouts, tum-tums, groans, tin
plates and all that one mortal man can do with hands, feet and mouth."

"With the interspersal of an occasional cracker and the stirring notes
produced by striking a hollow wooden fish repeatedly?" I cried; for let
it be confessed that a