Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/203

 But Mr. Bolliver thought that in all his long and hard-fought life he had never had a greater task than to keep an unruffled spirit for Jane, who, with the light come back to her eyes, was counting the hours to Shanghai. It was not so difficult to conceal anxiety, there in Nagasaki, the day they went ashore while the ship coaled. Jane was too much delighted by this fairyland to notice any sort of expression Mr. Bolliver might wear.

They left the big steamer, where hundreds of toiling coolie-women passed the coal up the side in pitifully small baskets, and wandered off through the city. Jane had scarcely believed, till now, that she was really on the other side of the world. It had all been so swift and sudden, and so anxious. Even now she fancied she might be imagining these picture-book people and strange shops. She hadn't believed, for instance, that she must really take off her shoes before she could enter a temple; she was enormously amused at such tales coming true. Her low tan shoes were easily disposed of; Mr. Bolliver preferred to don a pair of gaudy plush slippers over his boots.

In Nagasaki Jane saw all the old, the