CHAPTER IX


PASSAGE AT ARMS

"Boy."

"Sai."

"S'pose Mr. Forrester bym-by come, you talkee he, master no got, you
chin-chin he come-back."

"Can do."

The long-coated boy scuffed away, across the chunam floor, and
disappeared in the darkness. Heywood submitted his head once more to the
nimble hands of his groom, who, with horse-clippers and a pair of
enormous iron shears, was trimming the stubborn chestnut locks still
closer. The afternoon glow, reflected from the burnt grass and white
walls of the compound, struck upward in the vault-spaces of the ground
floor, and lighted oddly the keen-eyed yellow mafoo and his serious
young master.

Nesbit, pert as a jockey, sat on the table swinging his feet furiously.

"Sturgeon would take it all right, of course," he said, with airy
wisdom. "Quite the gentleman, he is. Netch'rally. No fault of his."

"Not the least," Heywood assented gloomily. "Did everything he could.