were for the Chinese; the bazaars, crammed with strange Eastern things,
were meant to attract women of the Orient, little flitting creatures in
embroidered silk jackets and long, tight trousers, who passed and gazed,
with dark eyes aslant; let European women come, or stay away, as they
pleased, there were plenty of Chinese husbands whose purses were full
enough to keep the merchants of Chinatown contented. The tiny, dressed-up
Oriental dolls--boy and girls--who strolled about with pink balloons or
butterfly kites, in the short intervals between "Mellican" school and
Chinese school, were not baby-actors playing parts on the stage, but real
flesh and blood children, who had no idea that they were odd to look at in
their gay-coloured gowns and tiny caps.

They did not even know that the streets through which, they toddled were
any more strange than the "Mellican" streets outside Chinatown, which they
doubtless considered extremely dull, made up of huge gray and white
buildings like mountains or prisons; whereas the tortuous ways and blind
alleys of their home-town were full of colour; balconied house fronts,
high and low, huddled together, painted red or blue, and decorated with
flowers, or shaped like Chinese junks or toy castles and temples. It was
all new, of course, this town of theirs, since the fire; at least what was
above-ground and known to foreigners was new; but it had been built in
imitation of past glories. The alleys were as blind, there were as many
mysterious, hidden little courts, and packing-case houses and bazaars as
ever, so that the children saw no difference; and already a curious look
of age, a drugged weariness, had fallen upon the seven-year-old Chinatown.

Angela walked beside Nick through the lighted streets, enchanted with the
flowerlike lanterns that bloomed in front of balconied restaurants or
places of entertainment, and with the crowding figures that shuffled
silently by in felt-soled slippers or high rocker shoes. Tiny, elaborate
women, young and old, slim youths with greeny-yellow faces like full
summer moons, little old men with hands hidden in flowing sleeves, and
dull eyes staring straight ahead, were to her ghosts of the Far East, or
creatures of a fantastic dream from which she would soon awake.

When they had "done" the principal thoroughfares and Angela had bought
ivory boxes, jade bracelets, and a silver bell collar for Timmy the cat,
Nick said that the time had come to join thei