"Oh, I don't mind them if they please you."
We began to talk about my journey and in the course of conversation I happened to ask Mr. Wingrove how long it was since he had been in England.
"Seventeen years," he said.
I was surprised.
"But I thought you had one year's furlough every seven?"
"Yes, but I haven't cared to go."
"Mr. Wingrove thinks it's bad for the work to go away for a year like that," explained his wife. "Of course I don't care to go without him."
I wondered how it was that he had ever come to China. The actual details of the call fascinate me, and often enough you find people who are willing to talk of it, though you have to form your own opinion on the matter less from the words they say than from the implications of them; but I did not feel that Mr. Wingrove was a man who would be induced either directly or indirectly to speak of that intimate experience. He evidently took his work very seriously.
"Are there other foreigners here?" I asked.
"No."