asy. "You read me
like a book. Quite sure you aren't cold!"

"No," said Bobby; "but I'm getting awfully sleepy."

His pride took instant alarm. After all, it was not the hour to press
his suit. He rose, and tenderly drew the shining folds of her wrap about
her.

"I shall take you in. Can't allow you to lose your roses, you know.
To-morrow I must take better care of you."

Bobby gave a sleepy little laugh.

"What is it!" he asked.

"I was just thinking how mad we are making the captain. He wouldn't
speak to me all through dinner."

"I shall have a word to say to the captain to-morrow that will quite
change his attitude."

"What sort of a word?"

"Can't you guess?"

Before Bobby could answer, their attention was arrested by angry shouts
in the street behind them. A drunken sailor, evidently from an English
gunboat, was in fierce altercation with his jinrikisha-man, and was
announcing to the world, in language compounded of all the oaths in his
vocabulary, that he wished to be condemned to Hades if any more
pumpkin-headed, pig-tailed Chinks got another bob out of his pocket.

Percival was for hurrying his precious charge past the belligerents and
into the hotel, but Bobby insisted upon seeing the end of it.

"That sailor is fixing to get into trouble," she cried. "He doesn't know
what he is doing or saying."

"I dare say he'll manage very well," said Percival, urging her on.

"But he _isn't_ managing, He's making the coolie furious. Don't let
him hit at him like that! See, he's caught hold of his queue!"

The patient Chinaman had received the supreme insult, and in a second he
had flashed a short knife from his belt, and was lunging at the stupid,
upturned face of the half-recumbent sailor.

Percival sprang forward and seized the descending arm. He was not quick
enough to arrest the force of the blow, but he succeeded in deflecting
its course, and the blade, which would have given the sailor a decent
burial at sea, sharply grazed Percival's wrist, and buried itself in the
side of the jinrikisha.

It was all so quickly done that by the time a crowd collected and the
big Sikh policeman arrived in his yellow clothes and huge striped turban
Percival had got Bobby safely into the hotel lobby. He was exasperated
beyond measure that this very evening, of all, should have ended in his
participation in a vulgar street brawl. So far he had succeeded in
keeping Bobby from knowing that he was wounded, but the bea