the
end of his days, had it been possible. Because there was a hole in it,
however, and he could put a string through it and wear it round his neck
inside his waistcoat, he took it, blinking his beady eyes at her; and he
said:

"Me watch most petic'ler, mlissy. Me tell boss Mazaline ev'lytling me
see!" And he giggled almost as Orlando might have done.

After which Li Choo slip-slopped away to his work behind the kitchen.
When he saw Orlando's mother in the garden and the Young Doctor drive
to Askatoon, and Patsy Kernaghan mount an aged cayuse and ride off, he
clucked with his tongue and then went into the kitchen and prepared a
tray on which he placed several pieces of a fine old set of China, which
had belonged to Mazarine's grandmother and was greatly prized by the
old man. Then he clucked to the half-breed woman, and she made ready as
sumptuous a tea as ever entered the room of a convalescent.

Like a waiter at a seaside hotel, Li Choo carried the tray above
his head on three fingers to the staircase, and as he mounted to the
landing, called out, "Welly good tea me bling gen'l'man." This was his
way of warning Orlando Guise, and whoever might be with him, of his
coming.

He need not have done so, for though Louise was in Orlando's room, she
was much nearer to the door than she was to Orlando. She hastened to
place a table near to Orlando, for the tray which Li Choo had brought,
and, as she did so, remarked with a shock at the cherished china upon
the tray.

"Li Choo! Li Choo!" she gasped, reprovingly, for it was as though
the Ark of the Covenant had been burgled. But Li Choo, clucking,
slip-slopped out of the room and down the stairs as happy as an Oriental
soul could be. What was in the far recesses of that soul, where these
two young people were concerned, must remain unrevealed; but Li Choo
and the halfbreed woman in their own language--which was almost without
words--clucked and grunted their understanding.

Left alone again, Louise found herself seated with only the table
between herself and Orlando, pouring him tea and offering him white
frosted cake like that dispensed at weddings; while Orlando chuckled
his thanks and thought what a wonderful thing it was that a bullet in a
man's side could bring the unexpected to pass and the heart's desire of
a man within the touch of his fingers.

Their conversation was like that of two children. She talked of her bird
Richard, which she had sent to him every mor