CHAPTER XVII
Some time later he was sitting with some newly-made friends, who had come in for protection because they had received foreign religion. They had built a sort of rude hut which he found enchanting because it was under a big tree and contained all the disjectamembra of a disrupted household and he was just in the middle of a long conversation, when a messenger ran him to earth.
"The master is looking for you," he was told.
The summons was so urgent that he made his way off without a word. He was certainly going to be taken to task for the shiftless life into which he had fallen, sleeping wherever he might be and having his food with any one who was good enough to offer him a bowl. He tried to think of a good, plausible way of describing what he was doing; but for some reason his excuses did not seem to him very good. His stained blue cotton coat, his muddy trousers and his torn shoes made him look a veritable ragamuffin; and when he arrived at his destination and found a number of foreign gentlemen sitting together at a table his awkwardness redoubled. He wracked his brains in a vain effort to discover what was going to happen to him.
Presently his master, who was inside a house came out with a large sheet of paper in his hand. Then he saw all the foreigners put their heads together and talk for a long time arguing so earnestly that he began to realize that it was a matter of great moment. More paper was requisitioned, and several began writing while the others talked.
He watched them intently, trying to pick up what it was all about by their manner and their gestures since he could not understand a word. Through the open window, behind the group, he could see in the room of the house a piece of embroidery spread on a chair which had a golden dragon on it. A ray of sunlight, striking in through the window, lit up the dragon in an amazing way and made it flash and gleam, as if it lived and moved. It amused him to study it. All these fine things would speedily disappear, he mused, if the foreigners decided to go away—everything would be stripped in a flash. He himself would like to own that fine dragon....
A general movement of chairs snapped the thread of his thoughts. The foreigners seemed to have made up their minds. For nobody spoke any more, and his master had folded up his papers. Now they all looked at him and made remarks in undertones.
The boy forgot about the dragon and shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.
"Wang the Ninth," said his master at last in the vernacular, addressing him in the familiar local way and looking at his soiled figure very earnestly. "We have a very important request to make to you."