"What's a bad business?" said his master, appearing a little unexpectedly, and making him scramble to his feet. For the steward having been informed by the gatekeeper that the others had left, had communicated the information to the master in the non-committal form that there was "trouble in the stables."
"The others have fled," announced the boy in his democratic manner. "I was just thinking aloud that it would be no easy matter to attend to my work, Your Honour."
His master reflected a bit and then said:
"It is unimportant. All these ponies will be taken away soon. They will be wanted as food."
"As food!" echoed this child of the Chinese ghetto, his eyes round with astonishment and his squat, flat nose pointing upwards.
"We will all be hungry soon enough," was the master's grim rejoinder.
Then he was silent for a long while as he looked at the ponies and patted one or two, saying at last:
"Stay here until our soldiers come this evening to lead the ponies away. When that is over, come and find me."
In the evening the foreign soldiers came—a small party who spoke not a word of the language of the country. But they consulted a paper, and then held up nine fingers and slapped Wang the Ninth on the back and pointed into the stables, all of which was very intelligible to him.
"Li-t'ou (in there)," he said, nodding vigourously and laughing at them. Three men detached themselves from the others and each came out in a minute leading three animals.