“Just hark at him!” cried Uncle Jeff. “He’s ready to be off at once.”
“But he isn’t going so soon as that,” said Stan’s father, wringing the boy’s hand warmly, and seeming loath to let it go.—“I dare say you’ll not start for three or four days. There are plenty of vessels sailing, but it isn’t every one that touches at the port from which you must go up the river in a trading-junk. But Wing will see to all that, and get you both passages in the first steamer that suits. Wing is a very good man for arrangements of that kind. In the meantime you must pack a portmanteau with just the necessaries you require—the simpler the better.”
“And before you go, my young pepper-pod, we’ll try if we can arrange for another piratical display with fireworks on the same scale as last night’s. Will that do you?”
“Now you’re beginning to laugh at me again, uncle,” said Stan in a reproachful tone.
“No, no, no, my dear boy,” cried Uncle Jeff warmly; “if I talk lightly it is only to hide what I feel. I’d been looking forward to all kinds of expeditions up-country with you, whenever your father would let two such idlers go out for a run; but now we must wait till you come back with one of our boatloads of silk and tea and dyewoods.—Here, Oliver, we’re in luck to have such a representative.—But I say, Stan, don’t take any notice of my face being so bare, but set to work and grow a respectable beard of your own.”
“I shan’t do that for years yet, uncle,” replied Stan, laughing.
“What! You don’t know, boy. It’s a wonderful climate out here for making your hair grow. Look at the Chinamen’s tails!”
“Oh, but a lot of that’s false, isn’t it?”
“In some cases, my boy, but generally it is all real; and if it were unplaited it would be longer. But don’t you imitate John Chinaman. You don’t want a long tail. You turn the hair-current from the back of your head on to your chin and let it grow there, so as to make you look big and fierce, ready for dealing with the Chinese merchants.”
“But I shall seem boyish for years to come, I’m afraid,” said Stan sadly. “I look very young.”