boarding-house is no sort of home though it may get you a living. His
feelings were horribly rasped by the idea of the boarding-house. In his
rank of life he had that truly aristocratic temperament characterized by
a scorn of vulgar gentility and by prejudiced views as to the derogatory
nature of certain occupations. For his own part he had always preferred
sailing merchant ships (which is a straightforward occupation) to buying
and selling merchandise, of which the essence is to get the better of
somebody in a bargain--an undignified trial of wits at best. His father
had been Colonel Whalley (retired) of the H. E. I. Company's service,
with very slender means besides his pension, but with distinguished
connections. He could remember as a boy how frequently waiters at the
inns, country tradesmen and small people of that sort, used to "My lord"
the old warrior on the strength of his appearance.

Captain Whalley himself (he would have entered the Navy if his father
had not died before he was fourteen) had something of a grand air which
would have suited an old and glorious admiral; but he became lost like
a straw in the eddy of a brook amongst the swarm of brown and yellow
humanity filling a thoroughfare, that by contrast with the vast and
empty avenue he had left seemed as narrow as a lane and absolutely
riotous with life. The walls of the houses were blue; the shops of the
Chinamen yawned like cavernous lairs; heaps of nondescript merchandise
overflowed the gloom of the long range of arcades, and the fiery
serenity of sunset took the middle of the street from end to end with a
glow like the reflection of a fire. It fell on the bright colors and the
dark faces of the bare-footed crowd, on the pallid yellow backs of the
half-naked jostling coolies, on the accouterments of a tall Sikh trooper
with a parted beard and fierce mustaches on sentry before the gate of
the police compound. Looming very big above the heads in a red haze of
dust, the tightly packed car of the cable tramway navigated cautiously