“And where is that?”
“The Delaware Valley. These people,” he went on, “are mightily relieved to hear I am going to keep you for the night.”
Again I thanked him, and indeed he and his friends were friends in need. “And I cannot make them understand like you do,” I said a little futilely. "Well, I ought to,” he laughed. “I'm the Language Officer.”
He decided my carts had had time to come from Peking and go back again, and they must have gone up the wrong valley, and he and his friends took me in and fed me, and comforted me, so that I was ready to laugh at my woes, and then, just as we were finishing an excellent dinner, there appeared on the terrace, where we were dining, an agitated individual with a guttering candle, my boy, whom I hardly knew by sight yet.
He told a tale of woe and suffering. According to him, the road to Jehol must have been nothing to that road from Peking to the Western Hills, and I and my new friends went down to inspect what was left of my outfit. There wasn't much in it that was smashable, and beyond salad oil in the bread and kerosene in the salt, there was not much damage done. I could not understand though how they had come to grief at all, for the loads were certainly light for two carts, and once in the hills, of course, the goods were carried by men. And then the truth dawned on me. It was the way of a Chinese servant all over. I had been foolish enough to give my boy the five dollars to pay for the two carts. He had made one do, and pocketed two dollars fifty cents. I asked him if such were not the case.
“Yes, sah,” said he, and I wondered, till I found that he always said “Yes, sah,” whether he understood me or not. More often than not he did not understand, but that “sah” made me understand he had learned his little English from a countryman of my friend, the Language Officer.
And after all I think I was glad of the little adventure. I had not realised how eerie a temple would be all by myself at night, and it was good to think that for a night or two at least there would be people of my own colour within a quarter of an hour of me on the hill-side.
