ine I ever cared for
that puppy? Why, Peter--why didn't you wait? I'd have scratched his
eyes out! Of course, he kissed me! But the point is, my dear, I
didn't realize until it was all over.... I suppose I should have
jumped into the ocean when you left me so angrily. But I didn't. I
came to China on the _Empress of Japan_. I am now at the Bridge Hotel,
in Nanking, on my way to Ching-Fu, where you may find me. Just to show
you that I can have adventures, too!

"Great guns!" said Peter. He wondered if he could catch the Nanking
express; there was a Chinese steamer leaving Nanking for up-river
to-morrow noon.

There was a humble voice at his elbow. A deck-boy was grinning
dreamily at him; a queer flicker darted across his green eyes, vanished.

"Jen!" exclaimed Peter, glimpsing an abbreviated pigtail.

"Aie!" said the deck-boy.

"The man from the Jen Kee Road place!"

The deck-steward seemed puzzled. "My no savvy," he said. His look
became dreamy again, reminiscent.

"But you can speak English as well as 'pidgin,'" declared Peter,
frowning. "You did last night!"

"My savvy 'pidgin,'" said Jen brightly. "China allatime funny place!
China no can savvy allatime funny people! Funny!"

"What's that?" snapped Peter. He was baffled and angry. Had Jen
played the leading part in the mysterious and grim comedy of last
night, or was he only a work coolie, a deck-steward, harmless,
innocuous, babbling happily in his limited knowledge of a strange
language?

The deck-boy was pointing up-river with a long, yellow finger.

Peter stared. And he saw nothing, nothing but a great red sun with its
lower half enveloped in a glowing pool of green and red smoke into
which arose the black spars of ships from all over the world.

CHAPTER IX

The sky was clearing. Rain had ceased dripping from the bulging black
clouds, and a slender rod of golden sunlight pierced through and marked
a path upon the red bricks of the inn courtyard. Hazy in the
green-and-purple distance could be glimpsed the yellow withers of the
western range. Cooking smells, the sour odor of fish-and-rice chow,
were wafted from the braziers of village housewives.

Peter loafed against a spruce post, and moodily contemplated the
stamping animals in the enclosure. His hat was in his hand, and the
mountain breeze assailed his blond hair, which, rumpled and curly, gave
him something of the appearance of a satyr at ease. He was worried.