“It didn’t annoy me; that was not the sound I heard. It was the sound I heard in the dream I told you of—that devil—”
A figure stood in the doorway: it was Campanula returned.
CHAPTER XXI
M’GOURLEY’S LOVE AFFAIR
Mac had gone down to the office that morning in a temper.
The staff consisted of himself and Ah Hop Sing, the Chinese office boy. He could not quarrel with himself, so he quarreled with Ah Hop Sing, using a rattan cane to enforce the argument, till Ah Hop Sing hopped and sang in a fashion that justified his title.
Then Mac wrote business letters and whilst he wrote, the thoughts of this dusty and unlovable-looking Scot went far astray on pleasant and picturesque roads, under blue skies, by brakes all gay with the crimson japonica flowers and the glorious beauty of the red camellias, and beneath the solemn darkness of the cryptomeria woods of Nikko.
That is to say, they would stray to these places, and then he would recall them to indite letters of advice to Maconochie of Glasgow, a letter of abuse to Mr. Oyama—a gentleman who never fulfilled his contracts when they threatened loss, sheltering his business self behind the ample kimono of the Tokyo guild—and letters to divers other people in trade.