“Beautiful!” ejaculated Elliott, unconsciously, overjoyed at the sight of a place that looked as if it knew neither business nor rain nor heat.
“Beautiful enough—but dead and accursed,” replied a man who had been reading in a deck-chair beside him.
“It looks dead, I must say,” Elliott admitted, glancing again at the deserted wharves.
The other man stood up, slipping a magazine into his pocket. He was gray-haired, tall, and very thin, with a face of reposeful benignity. The magazine, Elliott observed, was the Religious Outlook, of San Francisco.
“An American missionary,” he thought; and his heart warmed at the sight of a fellow countryman.
“I suppose it is pretty bad,” he said, aloud. “The more reason for men of your cloth to come over here.”
The old man looked puzzled for a moment, and then gently shook his head with a smile.
“I’m not a missionary, as you seem to think. At least, I ain’t any more of a missionary than I reckon every man ought to be who tries to live as he should. I’m just a tired-out Hongkong bookkeeper.”
“You’re an American, anyway.”
“You are too, ain’t you?”