About six weeks later, Mr. Brown was looking over his copy of the Shanghai Mercury which had come by the morning post.
"Here, Jack," he said, "this paragraph will interest you."
Jack took the paper, and read:
"One of the results of the treaty of peace recently signed between Russia and Japan is that the famous brigand, Ah Lum, has been summoned to Pekin. The military ability he displayed in his operations in northern Manchuria has been recognized by his appointment to a high post in the Board of Civil Office."
There is shortly to be started, in Hong-Kong, a new firm of produce brokers under the style of Brown, Son, & Co. Brown we know; Son we know; Co. at present consists of Mr. Hi An-tzu. Whether it will by and by include Mr. Hi Lo-ch'u depends on that young man's business aptitude: Son thinks it very probable. Brown is to be the sleeping, or as he prefers to put it, the consulting partner. Son will manage the London house; while Mr. Hi in Hong-Kong will open accounts with respectable Manchurian farmers, of whom one will undoubtedly be Mr. Wang.
Some of Brown's friends took him to task for lifting his former compradore from his lowly station to the equality of partnership. To their remonstrance Brown replied with a morsel of political philosophy.
"It's all very well," he said, "to sneer at the 'heathen Chinee', and look upon him as fit for nothing better than to smoke your opium and do your work in South African mines. Believe me, John Chinaman is not so very heathen; and he is waking up: and when he does move he will hustle. For myself, I prefer a colleague to a competitor."
What Brown thinks to-day his business friends generally think to-morrow.
Glossary
C=Chinese, P=Pidgin-English, R=Russian. The Chinese substitute l for r, and add the terminations -ee, -um, and -lo to many words.