"No, indeed, I don't want to get mixed up with lepers and filthy scum of the earth."
"Nonsense! There couldn't be any lepers, for they keep a very strict watch and hustle them off to Molokai as soon as one is discovered."
"Mrs. Beaumont saw one; she told me so."
"Oh, Mary Lee, did she really?"
"Yes, she was buying something in one of the Chinese shops at the time of the Chinese New Year, and this creature was begging outside when she came out. She says she shall never forget the sight, and that sometimes their friends hide them so the officers cannot find them."
"Well, they will not hide them on a King Street car, that's certain," retorted Nan. "If neither of you will go with me, I shall go by myself."
Finding her determined, Miss Helen and Mary Lee went on to their hotel while Nan boarded the car she had selected. It was about an hour before she rejoined them. "Well, how was it?" asked Mary Lee as her sister came in.
"It was great larks," was the answer. "You missed it, you two proper pinks of propriety."
"Come in and tell us, Nan," called Miss Helen from the next room.
Nan laid aside her hat and came to her aunt, sitting on the side of the bed while she related her experiences. "It was perfectly decent and respectable," she declared, "and the route is a beautiful one. A most polite Chinese person of the male persuasion took my car fare to deposit, handed me my change with an entrancing bow and then," she laughed at the recollection, "neatly abstracted his own nickel from his ear and put that in, too."