Page:Ernest Bramah - Kai Lungs Golden Hours.djvu/285

 lips would undoubtedly be the first essential of my penance, High Excellence."

"It is gran—inflicted," agreed Shan Tien, with swift decision.

"The necessary edict may conveniently be drafted in the form of a safe-conduct for this person and all others of his band to a point beyond the confines of your jurisdiction—when the usually agile-witted Ming-shu can sufficiently shake off the benumbing torpor now assailing him so as to use his brush."

"It is already begun, O virtuous harbinger of joy," protested the dazed Ming-shu, overturning all the four precious implements in his passion to comply. "A mere breath of time"

"Let it be signed, sealed and thumb-pressed at every available point of ambiguity," enjoined Shan Tien.

"Having thus oppressed the vainglory of my self-willed mind, the presumption of this unworthy body must be subdued likewise. The burden of five hundred taels of silver should suffice. If not"

"In the form of paper obligations, estimable Kai Lung, the same amount would go more conveniently within your scrip," suggested the Mandarin hopefully.

"Not convenience, O Mandarin, but bodily exhaustion is the essence of my task," reproved the story-teller.

"Yet consider the anguish of my internal pang if, thus encumbered, you sank spent by the wayside, and being thereby unable to withhold the message, you were called upon to endure a further ill."

"That, indeed, is worthy of our thought," confessed Kai Lung. "To this end I will further mortify myself