Chinese servants as a rule never accept a situation under a foreigner simply for the wages that are offered them. These usually are higher than could be got in a purely Chinese home. It is the fat percentages that are the main attraction, for by these the salary will often be increased as much as fifty per cent. A Chinaman is ever on the look-out for these, and like the eagle in the sky can scent his prey from afar. You have had occasion, for example, to dismiss your boy. The news spreads in the most rapid and unexplained manner. There are no registry offices that are interested in supplying servants. Not an hour has passed by, however, before you are told that two men want to see you. "Ah! the new boy," you mutter, as you walk out to see them. One of the two is your cook, and a glance shows you that the other is the expectant boy. The cook does all the talking, whilst the other looks nervous and uncomfortable. He moves uneasily from one foot to the other, gives now and then a short, dry cough, all signs of that species of nervousness that a man feels when some important question is going to be decided. He hangs his head, and his black, piercing eyes seem absorbed in his contemplation of the ground, but in the meanwhile he is reading your character and figuring up in his own mind how much he is going to make and whether he is likely to get on with you. The cook seems to be in the happiest of moods. His face is wreathed in smiles, and his speech is adorned with Oriental similes that excite poetic thoughts in your mind, if it is capable of such. He knows that you are in want of a boy, he says. Boys are difficult to be got: they are at a premium just now. Good capable ones are not to be obtained at any price, but as good luck would have it, here is one that has just turned up, a very paragon in his way, and one that would suit the master down to the ground. You look at the man with a critical eye, but you get but very little out of that sphinx-looking face of his. Does he understand his work? you weakly ask the cook, more for something to say than for any hope of obtaining any exact knowledge about the man before you. "Certainly he does," he replies, with a toss of his head in the air and a wave of his right hand as though he had just demonstrated a problem in Euclid, and was ending with the triumphant formula, Q.E.D. After some further questioning, you ask the cook if he is prepared to stand security for the man and be responsible for his honesty. He is evidently ready to do so, for he at once strikes an attitude, slaps his breast with his open palm, and with gleaming eyes and impassioned look he says, "This is my affair; I will guarantee the man that he is a good and a safe one, and you may accept him as a servant without any fear." You are satisfied, and you at once take him on. The cook is also pleased, for the man will have to pay him the heavy percentage of one-half of his month's salary for the service he has just rendered him.