“True. Have you found in the earth, then, the cure for each ailment of man?”
“For most, yes. They seek yet, where I learned the art of healing, an antidote for the cobra’s bite. I know of no other they lack.”
“Where you were taught they must know more than we of this country know.”
Fong Wu gave his shoulders a characteristic shrug.
“But,” she continued, “you speak English so perfectly. Perhaps you were taught that in this country.”
“No—in England. But the other, I was not.”
“In England! Well!”
“I went there as a young man.”
“But these herbs, these medicines you have—they did not come from England, did they?”
He smiled. “Some came from the hills at our back.” Then, crossing to his shelves and reaching up, “This”—he touched a silk-covered package—“is from Sumbawa in the Indian Sea; and this”—his finger was upon the cork of a phial—“is from Feng-shan, Formosa; and other roots are taken in winter from the lake of Ting-Ting-hu, which is then dry; and still others come from the far mountains of Chamur.”