called out, "Welly good tea me bling gen'l'man." This was his way of
warning Orlando Guise, and whoever might be with him, of his coming.

He need not have done so, for though Louise was in Orlando's room, she
was much nearer to the door than she was to Orlando. She hastened to
place a table near to Orlando, for the tray which Li Choo had brought,
and, as she did so, remarked with a shock at the cherished china upon the
tray.

"Li Choo! Li Choo!" she gasped, reprovingly, for it was as though the
Ark of the Covenant had been burgled. But Li Choo, clucking, slip-
slopped out of the room and down the stairs as happy as an Oriental soul
could be. What was in the far recesses of that soul, where these two
young people were concerned, must remain unrevealed; but Li Choo and the
halfbreed woman in their own language--which was almost without words--
clucked and grunted their understanding.

Left alone again, Louise found herself seated with only the table between
herself and Orlando, pouring him tea and offering him white frosted cake
like that dispensed at weddings; while Orlando chuckled his thanks and
thought what a wonderful thing it was that a bullet in a man's side could
bring the unexpected to pass and the heart's desire of a man within the
touch of his fingers.

Their conversation was like that of two children. She talked of her bird
Richard, which she had sent to him every morning that it might sing to
him; of her black cat Nigger, which sat on his lap for many an hour of
the day; of the dog Jumbo, which said its prayers for him to get well,
for a piece of sugar-that was a trick Louise had taught it long ago.
Orlando talked of his horses and of his mother--who, he declared, was the