All the time you have been questioning him he has been looking at you with those black, piercing eyes of his and trying to read you. Are you shrewd and wideawake, or are you so green that you can be cheated with your eyes open? Are you acquainted with the wiles of the Chinese mind, or will you accept everything you are told as though it were gospel truth? Will you watch everything that is going on in your kitchen, or will you leave the full control in his hands? These are some of the questions that flash through the Yellow brain, and before he quits you he will have formed a very accurate idea of the kind of mistress you are to whom he has engaged himself. There is one thing that is quite settled, and that is from the moment of his engagement the one great aim of his life is to make as much money as he can out of the situation he has just gained. His facilities for doing so are very great, for the custom in the East is for the cook to purchase all the daily food that is used in the family. The mistress never does this. It would be impossible for her to rise every morning by daylight and go into the narrow ill-smelling streets and buy from the farmers as they bring in their produce from the country in the early dawn. There are months in the year, besides, when the heat is so intense and the rays of the sun are so scorching that she would not dare to venture out to make her purchases. The result is, the duty of buying is left to the cook, and as his conscience is an exceedingly elastic one, it may easily be conceived what an opportunity this gives him of making money. In the art of doing this every Chinaman is an adept. He begins to learn it when he is a boy. His mother sends him out when he is a small lad to buy some simple thing for the home. He returns with the article minus ten per cent., which he considers his lawful commission, though he is careful not to let his mother know, and with this he plays pitch-and-toss with other youthful gamblers in the street. As he grows in years, he becomes more expert in the art of extracting commissions from every sum entrusted to his care, and now that he has become a cook a golden field is opened up before him, where his gains are only bounded by the ignorance or carelessness of his employer. As it is impossible for his mistress to follow him down the narrow, crowded streets where the provisions for the day are to be bought, he has a wide field for the exercise of his ingenuity as to how much extra he is to charge for everything he buys. She does not know the market rates, and therefore within certain very undefined limits she is at his mercy. It is as good as a play to watch the progress of the taking an account of the purchases for any particular day, and to see how the wily Chinaman, with his childlike, innocent-looking face, and the Englishwoman with her open-hearted, guileless disposition, settle such a difficult financial problem.