China -- History -- Revolution, 1911-1912 -- Fiction; Love stories; River boats -- Fiction; Yangtze River (China) -- Fiction
Miss Andrews, of Indianapolis, stepped out from her cabin through a
narrow corridor, and then, at sight of the table, stopped short, while
her color rose slightly. Miss Andrews was slender, a year or so under
thirty, and, in a colorless way, pretty. Shy and sensitive, the scene
before her was one her mind's eye had failed to picture; the seats about
the long table were half filled, and entirely with men. She saw, in
that one quick look, the face of a young German between those of two
Englishmen. A remarkably thin man in a check suit looked up and for an
instant fixed furtive eyes on hers. Just beyond him sat a big man, with
a round wooden face and one glass eye; he turned his head with his eyes
to look at her. A quiet man of fifty-odd, with gray hair, a nearly
white mustache that was cropped close, and the expression of quiet
satisfaction that only wealth and settled authority can give, was
putting a spoonful of condensed milk into his coffee. Next to him sat
a young man--very young, certainly not much more than twenty or
twenty-one--perhaps his son (the aquiline nose and slightly receding but
wide and full forehead were the same)--rubbing out a cigarette on his
butter plate. He had been smoking before breakfast. She remembered these
two now; they had been at the Astor House in Shanghai; they were
the Kanes, of New York, the famous Kanes. They called the son,
“Rocky”--Rocky Kane.
Unable to take in more, Miss Andrews stepped back a little way into the
corridor, deciding to wait for her traveling companion, Miss Means, of
South Bend. She could hardly go out there alone and sit down with all
those men.
But just then a door opened and closed; and across the way, coming
directly, easily, out into the diningroom, Miss Andrews beheld the
surprising figure of a slim girl--or a girl she appeared at first
glance--of nineteen or twenty, wearing a blue, middy blouse and short
blue shirt. Her black hair was drawn loosely together at the neck and
tied with a bow of black ribbon. Her somewhat pale face, with its thin
line of a mouth, straight nose, curving black eyebrows and oddly pale
eyes, was in some measure attractive. She took her seat at the table
without hesitation, acknowledging the reserved greetings of various of
the men with a slight inclination of the head.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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