Page:Ernest Bramah - Kai Lungs Golden Hours.djvu/121

 if he passed them by unregarded his purpose might be suspected. "Have you eaten your rice?"

"How is your warmth and cold?" they replied courteously. "Yet why do you arrest your dignified footsteps to converse with outcasts so illiterate as ourselves?"

"The reason," admitted Lao Ting frankly, "need not be buried in a well. Had I avoided the encounter you might have said among yourselves, 'Here is one who shuns our gaze. This, perchance, is he who of late has lurked within the shadow of our backs to bear away our labour.' Not to create this unworthy suspicion I freely came among you, for, as the Ancient Wisdom says, 'Do not adjust your sandals while passing through a melon-field, nor yet arrange your hat beneath an orange-tree.

"Yet," said the leader of the band, "we were waiting thus in expectation of the one whom you describe. The incredible leper who rules our goings has, even at this hour and notwithstanding that now is the appointed day and time for the gathering together of the Harmonious Constellation of Paste Appliers and Long Brush Wielders, thrust within our hands a double task."

"May bats defile his Ancestral Tablets and goats propagate within his neglected tomb!" chanted the band in unison. "May the sinews of his hams snap suddenly in moments of achievement! May the principles of his warmth and cold never be properly adjusted but" "Thus positioned," continued the leader, indicating by a gesture that while he agreed with these sentiments the moment was not opportune for their full recital,