When the party had gone and the stables were completely empty, the boy felt depressed—he was no longer "high-hearted" as he expressed it. Not that he was lonely. No Chinese is ever really lonely although, paradoxically, they are the most gregarious race on earth. But this dropping away of everybody impressed him unfavourably. It had the flavour of ruin about it—it was like the loss of much money. He remembered his master's injunction to seek him as soon as the ponies were gone; but somehow he had no desire to move.
He went into his tiny sleeping place, and fetched out from under the coverlet a little bamboo flute; and seating himself on the watering-trough, with his knees drawn up under him and his elbows resting on them, began playing fragments of plaintive tunes picked up in days gone by. He kept this up for a long time repeating little trills and mournful notes because they gave him odd pleasure. In the growing dusk the sparrows hopped nearer and nearer, stealing grain that had fallen on the cobblestones from the last feed he had mixed, and never paying any attention to him and his music. They fitted into the evening as a shadow fits under a tree, and were there because the tree was there.
At last he tired of it, and desisted. Quickly he cooked his evening meal of millet and cabbage, and boiled some tea. When he had finished he changed his tunic and put on his foreign hat and his riding-gaiters.
"It is time," he announced to himself.
He went off slowly, stopping whenever anything attracted his attention, and playing for a few minutes with a dog. But presently, in spite of these delays, he reached the house and slowly walked round to the back.
He peered into the kitchen and the pantry, but everybody was busy. The master was already having dinner and there were guests. In the most indifferent manner he marched to the front of the house; then on to the verandah outside the dining-room.
The master was sitting at the head of the table; with him were five or six foreign gentlemen, all eating and drinking and talking and waving their hands.
He coughed and moved forward into the light.
"Who is that?" called the master.
"It is I," he said, stepping into the room and standing there without awkwardness. "The foreign soldiers have taken away the ponies as ordered and now I await fresh commands."