Sir Charles went stolidly and attentively on with his very good dinner. His wife raised her eyebrows—and led trumps—at least she hoped that it would prove she had.
“A perfectly charming Chinaman, Charlie.”
But Sir Charles neither dropped his knife nor spilled his claret.
“Most of them are,” he told her. “This canvas-back is a great improvement on those we had last week. But the sauce needs a dash more cayenne and more than a dash more lemon.”
“Do you like the Chinese?” Ivy asked him quickly.
“Very much,” he replied. “Every one does who knows them. They’re the salt of the Eastern earth.”
“Have you known many Chinamen—well?” Reginald Hamilton asked his host a little superciliously.
“I lived ten years among them,” Snow replied curtly. “I was sent to Pekin when they first let me pass my Civil Service Exam. And I wish they’d left me there. But after ten years—for my sins—they promoted me—to Geneva! Yes, I have known many Chinese—some of them fairly well. The more you know them, the better you like them: bound to. By the way, Emma, ‘Chinese’ is a better word, more descriptive, I think, and better taste than ‘Chinaman.’ There is one Chinese in Washington I very much want to get on easy terms with.”
“To Scotland Yard special-branch him?” his wife quizzed him.
“Never mind that part,” her husband retorted.