On a pleasant Sunday, early in February, Benito, Alice, Adrian and Inez walked in Chinatown with David Broderick. The latter was about to leave for Washington to attend his second session in Congress. Things had fared ill with him politically there and at home.
Just now David Broderick was trying to forget Congress and those battles which the next few weeks were sure to bring. He wanted to carry with him to Washington the memory of Alice Windham as she walked beside him in the mellow Winter sunshine. An odor of fruit blossoms came to them almost unreally sweet, and farther down the street they saw many little street-stands where flowering branches of prune and almond were displayed.
"It's their New Year festival," Adrian explained. "Come, we'll visit some of the shops; they'll give us tea and cakes, for that's their custom."
"How interesting!" remarked Inez. She shook hands cordially with a grave, handsomely gowned Chinese merchant, whose emporium they now entered. To her astonishment he greeted her in perfect English. "A graduate of Harvard College," Broderick whispered in her ear.
Wong Lee brought forward a tray on which was an assortment of strange sweetmeats in little porcelain dishes; he poured from a large tea-pot a tiny bowl of tea for each of his visitors. While they drank and nibbled at the candy he pressed his hands together, moved them up and down and bowed low as a visitor entered; the latter soon departed, apparently abashed by the Americans.
"He would not mingle with the 'foreign devils,'" Broderick smiled. "That was Chang Foo, who runs the Hall of Everlasting Fortune, wasn't it?"
"Yes, the gambling house," Wong Lee answered. "A bad man," his voice sank to a whisper. "Chief of the Hip Lee tong, for the protection of the trade in slave women. He came, no doubt, to threaten me because I am harboring a Christian convert. See," he opened a drawer and took therefrom a rectangle of red paper. "Last night this was found on my door. It reads something like this:
"Withdraw your shelter from the renegade Po Lun, who renounces the gods of his fathers. Send him forth to meet his fate--lest the blade of an avenger cleave your meddling skull."
"Po was a member of the Hip Yees when he was converted; they stole a Chinese maiden--his beloved and Po Sun hoped to rescue her. That is why he joined that band of rascals."
"And did he succeed?" asked Alice.