“There must have been poison in that hooch,” sobbed Stone. “Mebbe Doc’s a thug, after my thousand bucks.... ’Sociating with foreigners has ruined him. Emerly was a sport though she was a foreigner.... My, I’m lonesome without Emerly, I don’t mind telling you. Emerly and me was affinities, like Mom and Lon Merriman. But she quit. Doc says women are all that way.” He cried again hideously. “She useter kid me along. She useter make up tales about the stunts Tam could put over. She said he was a saint like in the Bible. Her and me was sharks for the polo-game. We useter went and look at the polo-game and she useter kid me along about the things Tam done when he went to the polo-game. It was like the tales in the kid’s supplement of the Sunday papers. Once she said he waved his stick and there was eight balls on the field so’s all the guys went off quite happy with a ball and they all shot a goal, and often, she said, he’d stick the ball on to the ground by magic and the fellers’d whack at it and whack at it and ride over it and curse at each other for missing it ... just kid’s tales, but the way she telledum just tickled me to death someway. Gee, makes me laugh right now.... I don’t mind telling you, this is a bum city without Emerly.” He was still crying a little but the effect of the cocktails was wearing off and soon he would hide himself again behind his rude walls. “Emerly and me was going to take a look-see at the Big Wall. I dunno why she quit. I can go by myself, I guess. I got a thousand bucks. Still, Emerly’s a piker.” “You and I’ll go and see the Big Wall,” said Edward. “You and I’ll be buddies now. We’ll go tomorrow.” They went to see the Great Wall. Stone Ponting found great pleasure in taking the tickets. Doc came with them, a stout, red, young man with a fixed smile, which only faded during his frequent and earnest seizures of laughter. They went up to the pass on a pig train from Nankow; they sat on the running board of the train and their sight was haunted by walls creeping furtively round the mountains and by dead walled towns.