The Imperial City has rose-red walls and the guard-houses on the walls have golden roofs. The guard-houses are like jewels having many facets. The elaborate horizon of the roofs is like a thread on which are strung fantastic jewels—red and gold and green and turquoise blue. Dragons and strange fishes and curling waves and plumes are strung upon the fringe of the pale sky. The central gate is the great pendant on the breast of the sky; the dark door of the city is set in a square mass of red plastered wall and over the archway the lines of the gold tiles are dramatically sober. The moat at the feet of the red wall holds a clear strange dream of all these things, reflections caught in a mesh of floating lotos leaves. Above the city fly the pigeons. The owners of the pigeons apparently fit their birds with little Æolian harps. A whispered wailing of flocks of pigeons falls constantly like an intangible tuneful rain upon Peking. “From Coal Hill you kin see right inside the city,” said Stone. “Doc says the eunuchs live under the blue roof and the big bugs under the yaller roofs.... Emerly and me and Doc had a picnic on Coal Hill. Emerly fed Cigarettes to the Chink soldiers—they was tickled to death—and she told us a crazy tale about a toob of Colgate’s shaving soap that one of these Chink empress dames figured was a love dope. Say, listen, I guess Emerly ain’t more’n ten years older’n me. Lots of men gets married to dames ten years older’n them. A feller at school called Jenkinson got married when he was eighteen. I guess I gotta have a speel with Dad and, if he raises hell about me being too young, I kin hand out all kinds of dope like that.” “You’d better make sure of Emily first,” said Edward. “Whaddyer mean—make sure of Emerly?” asked Stone, who was in a brave rude mood. “Emerly’s crazy about me, I tell yer. She certainly was peeved when her boss moved her out of Peking.” “Crazy about you!” said Edward, who felt glad that nobody else could hear him thus debating grotesquely with a shadow. “Might as well say she’s crazy about me. Don’t you know who she’s crazy about?” “Aw, cut it out,” said Stone uneasily. “Didn’t you see her look at Tam?” “Fergit it. Tam’s married. Emerly’s straight, I tell yer. Emerly’s not like my Mom. Any guy that says Emerly’s crooked’s going to hear from me....” He spat angrily but neatly into the moat. Not many boys so young as he acquire so much proficiency in the characteristic arts of their native land. Edward watched him and was afraid of him. Edward himself as a child never spat and never played roughly with the feelings of men and women. He had never dared, yet his had been a safer world. “Emily is shameless, I tell you, Stone....” * * * * *