“You don’t say anything about my shoes!” said Kate.
Now the crowd began to eddy and to whirl toward the next corner. There rose the clang of gongs, the shrilling of a Chinese pipe playing a mournful air in that five-toned scale Whose combinations suggest always the mystery of the East. About that corner swept the procession of the Good Lady, priests before, women worshippers behind. The priests set up a falsetto chant, the banner-bearers lifted their staves, and the parti-colored mass moved down on them.
“It’s like a flower-bed on a landslide!” exclaimed Eleanor.
Mark Heath gravely pulled out his left cuff and took rapid notes with a pencil.
“That goes into the story—anything more up your sleeve like that?”
“Wasn’t it good? Eleanor is always thinking up clever things to say,” Kate came in. Her voice was rather flat.
At the edge of the gutter where they stood, a Chinese shoemaker had set out on a lacquer tray his offering to the gods. Red candles 166 bordered it, surrounding little bowls of rice and sweetmeats, a slice of roast pig, a Chinese lily. As the banners approached, certain devout coolies found room on the sidewalk to prostrate themselves. Eleanor, absorbed now in a poetic appreciation of all this glory of color and spirit, felt a movement beside her. She looked down. The shoemaker was flat on his forehead beside his offering.
“Would you per-ceive that Chink grovel,” spoke the voice of Bertram Chester.
Before Eleanor could turn on him, he was addressing the shoemaker.
“Feel a heap better, Charlie? Say, who-somalla you? Brush off your knees!” The Chinese, if he understood, paid no more attention than he paid to the lamp post in his path. Gathering up his offering, he pushed his way back through the crowd.