Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/262

 the settlement to deal with, as they should have seen at once. And apparently the word of the Medical Mission was law, for men ran to do her bidding—to lift the treasure-box into one of the chairs, which had arrived, and to bow, smiling gravely, at Alan.

To Alan's intense relief, it was Miss Macdougal who took Ping-Pong upon her lap, addressing her in Oriental monosyllables and running a professional finger over her plump little arms and legs. The three chairs swung out of the yamen courtyard, and Alan looked about him and began to think the nightmare was assuming more nearly the characteristics of a pleasant dream. It was a long way to the settlement—through suburban reaches where mulberry trees leaned above high walls; through the interminable narrow ways of the city, with the stench and noise and turmoil of it, the chair-coolies uttering fearful cries as they dashed among the jostling pedestrians and ingeniously avoided the thousand obstacles in the route.

At last they came to the settlement, aloof on its pathetic pretense of bund, and the chairs came to a jolting standstill outside the administrative building.