“Need they know of it at Kang's yamen?”
“There can not be secrets 'n yamen of great mandarin from observation eyes of other mandarin. Nothing doing!''
“Oh, I see. Spying goes on all the time, of course.”
“Oh, yes! So I say farewell with tears to His Excellency, and in these old clothes of great disrepute, I”—he chuckled—“I make my skiddoo.” From within the rags about his body he drew a soiled roll of paper “It has occurred to me that at Ping Yang time might roll around heavily on your hands and then, if you don't care what fool thing you do, you might bring me great honor by reading this silly little thing. It is lecture of which I spoke lightly once too often.”
Absently Brachey took it. “But why can't old Kang see,” he asked—“and Prince Tuan, for that matter—that if they are to start in again slaughtering white people, they will simply be piling up fresh trouble for China? Pao, I gather, does see it.”
“Oh. yes, His Excellency sees very far, but now he must sit on fence and wait a bit. Kang, like Prince Tuan, is of the old.”
“Didn't the outcome of the Boxer trouble teach these men anything?”
“Not these men. Old China mind is not same as Western progress mind—”
“I quite understand that, but...”
Mr. Po was slowly shaking his head. “No, old China minds dwell in different proposition. It is hard to say.”