At midnight Sooey Wan came in from Chinatown, following a prodigious burning of devil papers in a local joss-house and a somewhat profitable two hours of poker.
His slant eyes appraised Dan kindly. “Boss,” he ordered, “go bed. You all time burn ’em too muchee light, too muchee coal, too muchee wood. Cost muchee money.” He moved briskly about the room, switching off the electric light. “Too muchee thinkee, too muchee headache,” he warned Dan. “You not happy, boss, you thinkee too much. No good!”
“Oh, confound your Oriental philosophy!” Dan rasped back at him. “The curse of it is, you’re right!”
Sooey Wan pointed authoritatively upward and Dan slowly climbed the stairs to his room.
Thus ended a momentous day.
CHAPTER VIII
At breakfast the following morning Maisie Morrison decided to make no mention to her aunt and uncle of the interesting bit of news concerning Dan Pritchard of which she was the possessor.
Always cautious and conservative, she preferred to place herself in full possession of the facts in the case, and to have this information bolstered up by her own feeling about the situation following a meeting with Dan’s ward, before discussing his business with anybody.
Maisie was mildly amused in the knowledge that Dan, of all men, should have such a problem thrust upon him; she looked forward with no little interest to watching the peculiar man approach his unusual duty. She expected if she mentioned the matter that old Casson would laugh patronizingly and pretend to find the situation devoid of a mature man’s interest; he might even indulge himself in some light and caustic criticism, with a touch of elephantine humor in it. That had seemed to be his attitude toward Dan for a year past and Maisie resented it fiercely—all the more fiercely, in fact, because her position in Casson’s household forbade an expression of her resentment.
“I think I shall motor to Del Monte this morning for two weeks of golf,” old Casson announced to his wife and Maisie at breakfast. “Suppose you two pack up and go with me.”