"The same." His jauntiness was oppressive, dominated as it was by those perturbed and hungry eyes.
"Oh—" I meditated. But presently I decided. "Then why do you let Ching Po intrude upon her in her own house?"
"Ching Po?" He quivered all over as if about to spring up from his chair, but he did not actually rise. It was just a supple, snake-like play of his body—most unpleasant.
"I saw him there an hour ago—when I fetched my eggs. My cook's off, you see."
Still that play of muscles underneath the skin, for a moment or two. Then he relaxed, and his eyes grew dull. Follet was not, I fancy, what the insurance men call a good risk.
"She can take care of herself, I expect," he said. They all seemed surer of that than gentlemen in love are wont to be.
"She and Ching Po don't hit it off very well, I've noticed."
"No, they don't." He admitted it easily, as if he knew all about it.
"I wonder why." I had meant to keep my hands off the whole thing, but I could not escape the tension in the Naapu air. Those gods of wood and stone were not without power—of infection, at the least.
"Better not ask." He bit off the words and reached for a cigarette.