Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/206

 their turn at the launch. Jane was wondering whether this was like her expectation—these glimpses of clipped green lawns and dark trees, hotels and hongs, consulates and banks, lining the water-front. She could hardly have thought it would be a shore-line of blue porcelain pagodas and golden temples, yet—

But the launch was waiting. Mr. Bolliver took Jane firmly by the arm and they descended the gangway-steps.

Shanghai, to Jane, did not exist until she could see the boys.

"But they're not in Shanghai," Mr. Bolliver explained hastily. "They had to go off to wherever the T'ang Min people live. We can't tell where they are until we've seen my firm."

Then why couldn't she go with him to Tyler, Bolliver & Tyler's? Why must she stay at the hotel, alone? Mr. Bolliver decided that after all she mustn't stay there, alone. So she came along, half-seeing the cool bund, half-wondering at the shops that were so different and at the hurrying foreign crowd, but hardly realizing their existence.

Within the high, shaded office of his firm Mr. Bolliver cried, "Well, Nick!" to the