Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/159

 doors of old yellow crones mumbling tea and old men smoking water-pipes and talking in a low sing-song.

Mark had wholly altered his opinion as to Shanghai's likeness to an American city. He was interested, but slightly apprehensive, and he kept his wits sharply about him. He decided, however, that it was better to follow his guide than to slip away and try to reach Hongkew alone through this meaningless tangle of alleys, so he trudged on. They passed houses of slate-colored brick, and strange shops where ivory and jade and amber and brass and black-wood were displayed, and other shops where unsavory strings of wizened edibles hung from the doorways, and still others with curious canisters and jars of medicine—herbs and roots and nauseous bones and Chinese drugs. Then presently, sure enough, there opened at the end of a street a dark pond lit by uncertain moonlight, and there could be discerned the shadowy angles of a zigzag bridge and the upward-curving eaves of the Willow Pattern Tea-house.

"Velly famous, plecious, nice tea-house,"