Boone continues, in an utterly different manner. There is that curious slender girl near the front seat with her companions, the Lady Avanel, and he does not want to seem to be speaking of her. But he says that these Singaporians are as afraid of white as the native soldiers of the Indian mutiny were afraid of breaking caste in their fashion, or the Egyptians were,—which enabled Cambyses to defeat them by heading his procession against them with a small and famous army of kittens. He says they are as afraid of white as the negroes of the South were afraid of it, which enabled the Ku Klux to send them scattering. It is no idle fancy of his that these people are as superstitious as the blacks of the old days. He says that in the last war of the World Government against the rebels of Asia, where Chinese, Japanese and Americans won so great a victory for world unity, there were a few Singaporians among the rebels, denounced by the Singaporian high priests, but these rebels seemed secretly authorized, and they had the typical lens gun equipment and the complete cocaine soul. And Boone tells what is evidently a familiar story, how one of the Springfield Amazons found a mysterious white pony on the battlefield, after her own had been shot under her. She rode him to the front line and drove a whole company of those cocaine fiends in flight, lens guns and all, with nothing in her hand but her Michael-forged blade. Boone says the Singaporians hate white because it is the color of truth and daytime and decency, and as for him, if he had had his way he would have painted every tower of this World’s Fair white, and the inner and outer walls of the city white, to keep out the Singaporian spies and missionaries, but Slick Slack Kopensky and Mayo Sims won a victory for the present color scheme. Then young Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third, to keep himself right with his friends, throws off his coat, and goes forward in the bricklayer’s clothes he has been wearing beneath. As a former High School student-bricklayer and one often practicing that profession still, he pledges himself to go out and work one of the bricklaying machines, or use the old fashioned trowel, as is needed, until the Fair buildings are done. And he calls for volunteers to join him, and many of the gay young bloods do so at once. So this evening as I serve the black Siamese wine to the Man from Singapore and his daughter, and I stand respectfully at her left hand, and give my report while her wonderful smiles come and go, she clasps her hands and tries to be gay over old Boone. But her eyes are tragic pools, indeed, when I speak of her lover, and of the evident conflict in his heart. And now it is her father’s turn to laugh and try to shift her mood.