Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/298

 good idea; and while I'm thinking it over, you'd better mind your P's and your little Q's. Show up at the office about three, and I dare say I'll be ass enough to find you a fiver."

Hilda followed her father to the door. She always "saw him off."

Ah Wong at the sideboard continued to select tit-bits for the tray she was going to carry to her mistress's room. She intended, by fair means or by foul, to coax Florence Gregory to eat.

Basil pushed back his plate. He had been pretending to eat, but the food was revolting.

He was longing to see his mother, and he was dreading it. They had not spoken together yet.

He was terribly anxious to know if there were any truth in the report of Wu's death. Probably Ah Wong knew. He looked at her curiously as she carried her tray away; but somehow he could not question her.

On the whole, he wished his mother would send for him and get it over. This suspense was only a little less terrible than his suspense in the pagoda had been.

But all Robert Gregory's anxieties were laid. He reached the office in high good humor. Government House confirmed the rumor of Wu's death. And Gregory felt assured that, his formidable (for the Chink had been formidable) rival wiped out, the only heavy disasters that had ever threatened his own almost monotonously successful business career would disperse under his astute, firm management as summer clouds beneath the sun, and that disaster would not menace him again.

And by the time he reached the club for lunch, he was quite too highly pleased with himself and with his world, and more particularly with his share in it, to keep up any longer even a pretended anger at his son. He