Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/225

 sameness of their meals made morning, noon, and evening seem strangely alike.

"Do you blow up, or anything, if you eat nothing but rice?" Alan inquired.

"If you do," Mark grunted, "the Chinese Empire—Republic, I should say—would be blown off the face of the map by this time. I must say, though, they don't all boil it in mud."

"And think of Mr. Huen's dinner!" Alan sighed.

"Don't think of it!" Mark counseled. "It's your trick at the yulow. Up and doing, now!"

It was during that day that they met Ping-Pong. (She was thus named, afterward, by Mark.)

She was, perhaps, two years old, and she was floating placidly down the stream in a boat surely made for no one larger than herself. It was not exactly a boat, though it was boat-shaped, and it floated rather lopsidedly.

"What in the name of the biggest joss in China!" said Alan, who was at the bow. The Sham-Poo was overtaking the strange apparition ahead. Mark leaned out from the yulow to look.