“So entrancing a possibility is, as you gracefully suggest, of unavoidable denial,” I replied. “Nevertheless, this person will not hesitate to join his acclamation with yours; for, as the Book of Verses wisely says, ‘Even the blind, if truly polite, will extol the prospect from your house-top.’”
“That’s so,” admitted the one by my side. “But I don’t know that there is any call for a special thanksgiving. As I happen to have more money of my own than I can reasonably spend I shall drop this in at a convenient police station. I dare say some poor critter is pining away for it now.”
Pleasantly impressed by the resolute benevolence of the one who had a greater store of wealth than he could, by his own unaided efforts, dispose of, I arranged myself unobtrusively at his side, and maintaining an exhibition of my most polished and genial conversation, I sought to penetrate deeply into his esteem.
“Gaze in this direction, Kong,” he said at length, calling me by name with auspicious familiarity; “I am a benighted stranger in this hyer city, and so are you, I rek’n. Suppose we liquor up, and then take a few of the side shows together.”
“The suggestion is one against which I will erect no ill-disposed barrier,” I at once replied, so inflexibly determined not to lose sight of a person possessing such engaging attributes as to be cheerfully prepared even to consume my rice spirit in the inverted position which his words implied if the display was persisted in. “Nevertheless,” I added, with a resourceful prudence, “although by no means undistinguished among the highest literary and competitive circles of his native Yuen-ping, the one before you is incapable of walking in the footsteps of a person whose accumulations are greater than he himself can appreciably diminish.”
“That’s all right, Kong,” exclaimed the one whom my last words fittingly described, striking the recess of his lower garment with a gesture of graceful significance. “When I take a fancy to any one it isn’t a matter of dollars. I usually carry a trifle of five hundred or a thousand pounds in my pocket-book, and if we can get through that—why, there’s plenty more waiting at the bank. Say, though, I hope you don’t keep much about you; it isn’t really safe.”
“The temptation to do so is one which this person has hitherto successfully evaded,” I replied. “The contents of this reptile-skin case”—and not to be outshone in mutual confidence I here displayed it openly—“do not exceed nine or ten pieces of gold and a like number of printed obligations promising to pay five pieces each.”
“Put it away, Kong,” he said resolutely. “You won’t need that so long as you’re with me. Well, now, what sort of a saloon have we here?”
As far as the opinion might be superficially expressed it had every indication of being one of noteworthy antiquity, and to the innately modest mind its unassuming diffidence might have lent an added charm. Nevertheless, on most occasions this person would have maintained an unshaken dexterity in avoiding its open door, but as the choice admittedly lay in the hands of one who carried five hundred or a thousand pieces of gold we went in together and passed through to a compartment of retiring seclusion.
In our own land, O my orthodox-minded father, where the unfailing resources of innumerable bands of dragons, spirits, vampires, ghouls, shadows, omens, and thunderstorms are daily enlisted to carry into effect the pronouncements of an appointed destiny, we have many historical examples of the inexorably converging legs of coincidence, but none, I think, more impressively arranged than the one now descending this person’s brush.