Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/81

 party. He was shut in the office, sitting before his father's desk, with his books and papers and cargo-bills before him. When, much later, Bart Bolliver had climbed the gracious stairway to the room he was to sleep in, he saw still the pulsing candle-light through the door-crack of the office. And somewhere below, out there beyond the tall young elms that brushed his window, out there where the harbor spread dark and still, the Gloria lay waiting for him, waiting for the dawn-tide that set out to sea and China.

Mr. Bolliver had stayed long in the East. After his apprenticeship, he had become a tea-taster for a great export house—a very curious trade, thought Jane, putting a hesitant question as to the duties of the profession. It appeared that all the fine grades of fragrant China tea must be tested, before being packed and shipped; and Jane had a momentary vision of Mr. Bolliver sipping endless cups of tea, perhaps seated cross-legged upon a mat. Not so; to her surprise she heard that the tea was not really drunk at all. A little of it was poured into a tiny saucer, held in the palm of the hand, and sniffed at judicially; a sip of