* * * * * “Good morning,” he smiled as he crossed the threshold of his shop. “Good morning, sir,” came the answering chorus from the half dozen Chinese clerks, while his chief salesman, Wen Pao, stepped forward and told him that, an hour earlier, his good customer, Mrs. Peter Van Dissel, had come in and bargained about that pale-blue Suen-tih Ming bowl with the red fish molded as handles. “Seven thousand I asked,” said Wen Pao. “Five thousand she offered--then five thousand five hundred--then six thousand. She will return to-morrow. Then she and I will talk business.” He smiled. “The eye of desire fattens the price,” he added. “Ah--excellent!” replied Ng Ch’u. “Trade indeed revolves like a wheel. She can have the bowl for six thousand five hundred dollars. It is a noble piece, worthy of a coral-button Mandarin’s collection.” He turned to look at the sheaf of letters that awaited his perusal on a teak-wood table at the back of the store. Then, suddenly, he again addressed the clerk. “Wen Pao,” he said. “I have reconsidered. The bowl is not for sale.” “Oh--?” the other looked astonished. “No,” repeated Ng Ch’u. “It is not for sale. Put it in the small safe in my private office. One of these days, when a certain necessary thing shall have been pleasantly accomplished, I shall use the bowl myself, to eat therefrom my evening rice. There is no porcelain in the world,” he went on rather academically, “like ancient Ming marked on the reverse side with the honorific seal of peace, longevity, and harmonious prosperity. It rings sweetly--like a lute made of glass--under the chop-sticks’ delicate touch.” “Ho!” whispered Nag En Hin, the American-born son of Nag Hop Fat, the Pell Street soothsayer, who had recently graduated from high school. “In the estimation of some people the strings of their cotton drawers are equivalent to a Manchu’s silken breeches of state.” Ng Ch’u had overheard. “They _are_ equivalent, little, little paper tiger without teeth,” he purred--“in durability--” He turned and bowed low before a customer who had entered the shop; and, for the next three hours, there was in his coward’s heart hardly a thought of his old enemy. Only dimly the figure of Yang Shen-hsiu jutted into the outer rim of his consciousness, like a trifling annoyance, which, presently, when the time was ripe, he would cause to pass out of his consciousness altogether. * * * * *