Page:Henry rideout--The siamese cat.djvu/71

 So they left the pawnbroker braiding the pink threads into his pigtail, and crossed the viscid drain to the street. The light streamed level down the white vista of shops. Chao Phya shook his silver bells in Miss Holborow's lap, the sais shouted at the opium dreamers in the road, and they drove off through a double line of yellow coolies, each shouldering twin baskets like scales of justice and streaming past at a stiff-kneed,wincing trot.

Beyond the town, the race-course and the plains lay flooded in sunset light, and the shafts of betel palm against the west stood black and slender, like the crossed lances of a crowded squadron. The sight-seers alighted before the gates of Sapatomawan, where a carved and gilded bridge spanned a klawng brimming with great pink lotus chalices, and broad green leaves, stiff as bronze-work. When they had halted on the steps of the temple, it was already