"What does she say, T'ong?"
"Oh, she b'long all same fool. She wantchee makee talkee talk. She have
got velly long tongue, makee bad woman. She say one piecee Japan man
makee stay here t'ree night. See? She say what makee good one piecee
Japan man makee good one piecee English man. See? No have got topside,
all same bottomside have got. Master, this no b'long my pidgin--this
b'long woman pidgin, and woman b'long all same fool." T'ong ended up
with an amusing allusion to the lady's mother, and looked cross because
I rebuked him.
Gathering, then, that the lady thought her room good enough for me, I
saw no other course open, and as the crowd was gathering, I got inside.
Before setting out to call upon the Canadian missionaries stationed at
the place, I held a long conversation with a hump-backed old man, an
unsightly mass of disease, who seemed to be a traditional link of
Luchow. I might say that this scholastic old wag spoke nothing but
Chinese, and I, as the reader knows, spoke no Chinese, so that the
amount of general knowledge derived one from the other was therefore
limited. But he would not go, despite the frequent deprecations of T'ong
and my coolies, and my vehement rhetoric in explanation that his
presence was distasteful to me, and at the end of the episode I found it
imperative for my own safety, and perhaps his, to clear out.
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