Page:Henry rideout--The siamese cat.djvu/58

 pariah dogs, and black sows, dived under a monstrous Chinese lantern, and led the party into the dusk and disorder of a pawnshop. On his platform beside a tall glass case of silver ware, a young Chinaman, naked to the waist, sat braiding pink threads into his queue. He stared at the ladies, and coiled the half-finished strand about his neck.

Borkman presented a hieroglyphic letter, which the pawnbroker read slowly through horn-rimmed spectacles, whispering to himself, and spacing off groups of characters with a long blue thumb-nail. Meantime the booth was penned in by a chattering crowd, both Thai and Hainanese, gathered to watch the bargain; while imps of children, smeared as with yellow ochre and dressed only in heel-bangles or silver fig-leaves, gleefully skipped in pestilential dust.

The pawnbroker gravely finished the painted