tial smirks and jabbers something in pidgin English, which
not being able to understand you answer with a grunt and pass on.

The celestial says, "All right, savez, can do," and vanishes.

Reaching your quarters, you find two or three more beaming natives,
also armed with letters of recommendation, probably borrowed for the
occasion, and who severally inform you "My b'long welly good boy."

These letters of recommendation become kinds of heirlooms, and as
foreigners seldom know the correct names of their Chinese servants,
they are, for a consideration, handed about from one to the other
when seeking employment.

You must have a boy anyhow, and are just beginning to inspect the
candidates when a friend suddenly turns up.

"I'm awfully sorry, old man, I couldn't manage to come and meet you on
board, but the steamer arrived earlier than was expected, so I came
straight on here, and knowing you would require a boy, brought one
along who wants a job. I don't know anything about him, but he says
he's all right, and they are mostly pretty much alike. Anyhow, you
might give him a trial, and if he doesn't suit, just kick him out."

Before you can reply the door is thrown violently open, and your
luggage, which you had left for the time being in your cabin on the
steamer, is brought in on bamboo poles by half-a-dozen coolies and
dumped on the floor, the beaming celestial who met you on the pontoon
following close behind, carrying your collection of sun hats,
umbrellas and sticks. He immediately pays the coolies, unstraps rugs
and trunks, and commences to arrange the room.

Your friend says, "Oh, I didn't know you had brought your own boy,"
and goes on to talk of other things.

You feel rather pleased at all the luggage having turned up without
any effort on your part, pleased at being freed from the importunities
of out-of-work boys, and dumbly acquiesce, so that Lao San remains
until you have the time or inclination to engage a really good boy;
but as you seldom have the time, and never the inclination, he is
already pretty firmly established.

In the course of the day he introduces a cook as well as two or three
coolies that you do not want but must have, and explains that all
these men are of exceptionally good character, and that he "can secure
b'long all ploper." You submit, of course, and so your household is
arranged by the boy without you really having had a word to say. A day
or two later you suddenly remember