They grew from the extreme outer edges
of his upper lip, the centre of which, usually the most hirsute, was
hairless as the lip of an infant. He possessed the longest and
thickest pigtail which could possibly grow upon a human scalp, and his
left eye was permanently closed, so that a smile which adorned his
extraordinary countenance seemed to lack the sympathy of his surviving
eye, which, oblique, beady, held no mirth in its glittering depths.
The garments of the one-eyed Chinaman, who sat complacently smiling at
the visitors, consisted of a loose blouse, blue trousers tucked into
grey socks, and a pair of those native, thick-soled slippers which
suggest to a Western critic the acme of discomfort. A raven, black as
a bird of ebony, perched upon the Chinaman's shoulder, head a-tilt,
surveying the newcomers with a beady, glittering left eye which
strangely resembled the beady, glittering right eye of the Chinaman.
For, singular, uncanny circumstance, this was a one-eyed raven which
sat upon the shoulder of his one-eyed master!
Mollie Gretna uttered a stifled cry. "Oh!" she whispered. "I knew I
was going to scream!"
The eye of Sin Sin Wa turned momentarily in her direction, but
otherwise he did not stir a muscle.
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