FORE:"You see, I had lost faith in myself," said the Clockwork man, plaintively. "I had forgotten what I could do. I was so terribly run down."The thunder of our own hoofs Was all the sound we heard.
FORE:"Doesn't a good story revive the poetry of our actual lives?" He wiped the rim of his cap with a handkerchief of yellow silk enriched at one corner with needlework.
FORE:"That's a lie," he pleasantly remarked, and lay back, enjoying my silent wrath. "Send him, General," he added, "he's your man."Han-kow is a great centre of trade. Frequently the mouth of the Han is so crowded with junks that the river is entirely covered, and you may walk for hours by merely stepping from one boat to another. The upper Yang-tse and the Han bring down large quantities of tea, furs, silk, wax,[Pg 349] and other products, both for home use and for export. There are heavy exports of tea from Han-kow direct to England, and every year steamers go there to load with cargoes, which they take to London as rapidly as possible. Our friends were told that there was a large trade in brick tea, which was prepared for the Russian market; and as the boys were anxious to see the process of preparation, a visit to one of the factories was arranged. Frank made a note of what he saw and wrote it out as follows:
THREE:"I wonder why I'm not clever," Arthur remarked, after a long pause. Rose clutched him indignantly towards her.
THREE:Well, he was not going to ask twice after one refusal of his favours, but, as the next week went by, he found the sir and the dropped eyes altogether intolerable. These absolutely impersonal relationships were mysteriously worrying. She had shown herself a compatriot of the secret garden, and now she had retreated into the shell of the secretary again. This week the weather turned suddenly cold, and since there was no fireplace in her room, he invited her to sit at the table by the window in his, which was close to the central-heating hot-water pipes. A certain employer-sense of pride had come to his aid, and now he hardly ever glanced at her. But one day the whole card-house of this pride fell softly on the table, just as he took his hat and stick after the days work.
