“Well, you see, one often judges how the weather is going to be by the behaviour of the animals about one. Birds, cattle, reptiles, insects, fish, if one studies them, give one hints of what sort of a season one is going to have. Chinese, too, are not slow in that way. You see Mao has come back.”
“Yes; but what has that to do with it?”
“A good deal. He has a sort of instinctive as well as experienced knowledge that the trouble is at an end, or else he wouldn’t have shown his nose here now. I shouldn’t wonder if he had a hint that the enemy were coming, some time before they arrived.”
“But if he had he would have warned you.”
“So he did, in a quiet sort of way, but I didn’t believe him. Yes, I begin to think that you gave the enemy such an awful thrashing—”
“I?” cried Stan. “Why, I only carried out your orders.”
“And well, too, my lad; and as I was about to say when you interrupted me so rudely, you gave them such an awful thrashing that in the future they will look out for some nut to crack that has a thinner shell and leave us most carefully alone. Mao has come back, and that means the storm is well over.”
“But you’ll be well prepared in case they do come again?”
“Trust me, my lad. You and I will begin to play chess of an evening in future.”
“Have you a set of chess-men?”