“Just allee same,––allee same! White man flower;––Chinaman chicken!”
Jim laughed. “Best forget it, Phil;––he’s a dyed-in-the-wool Chinaman, fully Canadianised. You can’t beat him. He has a pat answer for anything you like to put up to him. And, after all, when you come to analyse the darned thing,––there is about as much sense in the pork and punk-stick stuff as there is in the flowers. Give me my bouquets when I am alive,––that’s what I say.”
After breakfast, Phil saddled his horse and rode to town. It was still snowing softly, but a rift of blue and a shaft of sunlight overhead gave promise of a let-up, while a wind with a nip in it prophesied a drop in the barometer and a tightening up.
When he got back in the evening, he found the front 270 door bolted on the inside. He rapped on the panel, and Jim opened it very slightly, making a scooping motion with his foot along the floor, as if helping something out of the kitchen or trying to prevent something from coming in.
“What’s up, Jim? Scared for burglars?”
“Burglars,––no! Darned black cats! The door won’t stay closed without being bolted, and these ugly black devils of Sing’s have taken such a fancy to the place and the heat, that I have been busy all day slinging them outside.”
“That accounts for the negro shuffle you did as I came in,” laughed Phil.
“Exactly! I’ve got the habit now.”
“But what on earth does the Chinaman do with so many black cats?”
“Just another tom-fool notion these loonies have. They’re plumb scared o’ the dark. The dark and the devil work a sort of co-operative business against the chink. That is why Sing keeps his light burning all night.”