He stood hesitatingly before us, gazing into nothingness. His
face was pallid, his lips hard set, and his stooping figure looking
curiously stiff and lifeless on that frozen morning--the temperature
below freezing point, and our noses were red, too!
"God bless the man, you no savee! I wantchee good chow. Why in the name
of goodness can't you give us something decent! What on earth did you
come for?"
"Alas!" he shouted, for we were at a rapid, "my savee makee good chow.
No have got nothing!"
"No have got nothing! No have got nothing!" Mysterious words, what could
they mean? Where, then, was our picul of rice, and our curry, and our
sugar?
"The fellow's a swindler!" cried The Other Man in an angry semitone. But
that's all very well. "No have got nothing!" Ah, there lay the secret.
Presently The Other Man, head of the general commissariat, spoke again
with touching eloquence. He gave the boy to understand that we were
powerless to alter or soften the conditions of the larder, that we were
victims of a horrible destiny, that we entertained no stinging malice
towards him personally--but ... _could he do it?_ Either a great wrath
or a great sorrow overcame the boy; he skulked past, asked us to lie
down on our shelves, where we had our beds, to give him room, and then
set to work.
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