Thus Nan spent all one morning drilling him in the proper etiquette of
answering doors. Mindful of John McGlynn's advice, she did this by
precept, ringing her own door bell, presenting a card as though calling
on herself. Wing Sam's placid exterior changed not. A half hour later
the door bell rang, but no Wing Sam appeared to answer it. It rang
again, and again, until Nan herself opened the door. On the doorstep
stood Wing Sam himself.
"I foolee you, too," he announced with huge delight.
Painstakingly Nan conveyed to him that this was neither an amusing game
nor a practical joke. Later in the day the door bell rang again. Nan,
hovering near to gauge the result of her training, saw Wing Sam plant
himself firmly in the opening.
"You got ticket?" he demanded sternly of the deliveryman outside. "You
no got ticket, you no get in!"
Which, Nan rather hysterically gathered, was what Wing Sam had gained
of the calling-card idea. After that, temporarily as she thought, Nan
permitted him to go back to his own method, which, had she known it,
was the method of every Chinese servant in California. The visitor
found his bell answered by a blandly smiling Wing Sam, who cheerfully
remarked: "Hullo!" It was friendly, and it didn't matter; but at that
stage of her development Nan was more or less scandalized.
Nan's sense of humour always came to her assistance by evening, and she
had many amusing anecdotes to tell Keith, over which both of them
laughed merrily. Gringo added somewhat to the complications in life. He
was a fat, roly-poly, soft-boned, ingratiating puppy, with a tail that
waved energetically but uncontrolledly. Gringo at times was very
naughty, and very much in the way. But when exasperation turned to
vengeance he had a way of keeling over on his back, spreading his hind
legs apart in a manner to expose his stomach freely to brutal assault,
and casting one calm china-blue eye upward.
"Can there anywhere exist any one so hard-hearted as to injure a poor,
absolutely defenceless dog?" he inquired, with full confidence in the
answer.
The iniquities of Gringo and the eccentricities of Wing Sam Nan
detailed at length, and also her experiences with the natives. She as
yet looked on every one as natives. Only later could she expand to the
point of including them in her cosmos of people. Nan was transplanted,
and her roots had not yet struck down into the soil. In her shopping
peregrinations she was making casual acquaintance, and she had not yet
become accustomed to it.
"I bought some darling little casseroles at Phelan's to-day," she said.
"The whole Phelan family waited on me. Where do you suppose the women
get their perfectly awful clothes? Mrs. Phelan offered to take me to
her milliner!" or "You know Wilkins--the furniture man where we got the
big armchair? I was in there to-day, and he apologized because his wife
hadn't called!"
They went to bed early, because they were both very tired.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account