he said caused Li Choo to answer: "Me get money, me do job. Me keep eyes
open. Me tell you."

From a window Louise had watched the colloquy, and she knew, as well as
though she stood beside them, what was being said. Li Choo had told the
truth: he had got the cash, and he would do the job. But not alone from
Joel Mazarine did he get money. Only two mornings before, Louise, for
all the extra work he had had to do during Orlando's illness and without
thought of bribery, had given him a beautiful gold ten-dollar-piece with
a hole in it. If the piece had been minus the hole, Li Choo would have
returned it to her, for he would have served her for nothing till the end
of his days, had it been possible. Because there was a hole in it,
however, and he could put a string through it and wear it round his neck
inside his waistcoat, he took it, blinking his beady eyes at her; and he
said:

"Me watch most petic'ler, mlissy. Me tell boss Mazaline ev'lytling me
see!" And he giggled almost as Orlando might have done.

After which Li Choo slip-slopped away to his work behind the kitchen.
When he saw Orlando's mother in the garden and the Young Doctor drive to
Askatoon, and Patsy Kernaghan mount an aged cayuse and ride off, he
clucked with his tongue and then went into the kitchen and prepared a
tray on which he placed several pieces of a fine old set of China, which
had belonged to Mazarine's grandmother and was greatly prized by the old
man. Then he clucked to the half-breed woman, and she made ready as
sumptuous a tea as ever entered the room of a convalescent.

Like a waiter at a seaside hotel, Li Choo carried the tray above his head
on three fingers to the staircase, and as he mounted to the landing,