"My Tling-a-Ling!" he moaned in his native mandarin tongue. "Speak to
me, my little black friend!"
A bead of blood, like a ruby, dropped from the raven's beak. Sin Sin
Wa bowed his head and knelt awhile in silence; then, standing up, he
reverently laid the poor bedraggled body upon a chest. He turned and
looked at his wife.
Hands on hips, she confronted him, breathing rapidly, and her glance
of contempt swept him up and down.
"I've often threatened to do it," she said in English. "Now I've done
it. They're on the wharf. We're trapped--thanks to that black,
squalling horror!"
"Tchee, tchee!" hissed Sin Sin Wa.
His gleaming eye fixed upon the woman unblinkingly, he began very
deliberately to roll up his loose sleeves. She watched him, contempt
in her glance, but her expression changed subtly, and her dark eyes
grew narrowed. She looked rapidly towards Sam Tuk but Sam Tuk never
stirred.
"Old fool!" she cried at Sin Sin Wa. "What are you doing?"
But Sin Sin Wa, his sleeves rolled up above his yellow, sinewy
forearms, now tossed his pigtail, serpentine, across his shoulder and
touched it with his fingers, an odd, caressing movement.
"Ho!" laughed Mrs. Sin in her deep scoffing fashion, "it is for me you
make all this bhobbery, eh? It is me you are going to chastise, my
dear?"
She flung back her head, snapping her fingers before the silent
Chinaman.
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